The Banyan (NGO)

The Banyan
Motto I exist therefore I am
Founder Vandana Gopikumar and Vaishnavi Jayakumar
Type NGO
Location
  • Chennai, India
Website Official website

Established in 1993, by Vandana Gopikumar and Vaishnavi Jayakumar, The Banyan, is one of the largest mental health service organisations in the country, and adopts a person-centric, health systems, and inclusive approach embedded in a culture of upholding social justice and equity. The Banyan’s in-depth inquiries over two decades, into the intersections between homelessness, mental ill health, poverty and the resulting distress has led to the development of an adaptive mental health systems framework with the ability to respond effectively to an individual’s evolving needs along their path to recovery.

This includes a range of innovative, appropriate and comprehensive approaches to mental health care, particularly for low resource settings, described in the four verticals below:

Currently, The Banyan's services are accessible to some of the most vulnerable and marginalised individuals and groups across 5 districts in Tamil Nadu and 1 block in Maharashtra, through 15 service access points.

There are very few comprehensive services for homeless persons with mental health issues, and The Banyan is one acknowledged for its contribution globally. The Banyan was invited to the central government instituted Mental Health Policy Group, and several recommendations including the need to focus on vulnerable and marginalised groups (particularly the homeless), integration of social care, approaches for long term care, human resource development and developing value frameworks for mental health service provision have been drafted into this policy.

History

Vandana Gopikumar and Vaishnavi Jayakumar founded The Banyan on 27 August 1993 following their encounter with an extremely distressed homeless woman who was almost in the nude, right outside their college. The woman was not much older than they were at the time, and the sheer injustice of her life being invisibilised, and her inability to pursue her dreams and aspirations coupled with their need to be entrepreneurial and take on a challenge spurred Vandana and Vaishnavi to found The Banyan. Vandana and Vaishnavi have been key functionaries involved in bringing issues of homelessness and mental ill health to the forefront when they were still invisible and ridden with stigma. Most women rescued were battered and abused while on the streets and arrived into the care centre in medically and psychologically grave conditions. By showcasing individual stories of courage, hope, strength, and resilience demonstrated by women who reclaimed their lives, and roles in society following their lives on the margins, the Government, civil society organisations (including corporates, foundations, and philanthropists) recognised the importance of engaging with the organisation and by extension the cause. Not just was mental health a topic of discussion, but people on the fringes were also gaining a voice thanks to the robust, strong articulation and advocacy of The Banyan.

What began as one project in a small two-bedroom rented premises is now an organisation that has reached out to close to 10,000 persons in distress, employs over 160 full time staff, engages in cutting edge research and capacity building for national and international organisations, cultivates multiple cadres of driven and committed mental health and development practitioners, and contributes meaningfully to evolve progressive policy direction. The growth of The Banyan has been both organic and strategic, and all services, programmes and policies designed have been directly in response to the needs of the client / user, and the organisation remains firmly rooted in the philosophy and value of deep engagement, responsiveness and user-centricity.

Programmes & Impact

Emergency and Therapeutic Care Services for Marginalised Groups – This approach addresses multiple deprivations experienced by persons affected by homelessness and mental illness (including sexual abuse, violence, marginalization, abject poverty) through a comprehensive range of emergency and therapeutic services with the fundamental goal of restoring dignity, safety and rights.

Adaikalam- Transit Care Center- Adaikalam is a 24/7 Transit Care Center providing care, treatment, vocational training, rehabilitation and aftercare services to homeless women with mental illness. The Banyan’s first programmatic intervention, Adaikalam has since 1993 achieved what many perceived as impossible – enabling a second life for people who have lost everything – their family, livelihood and identities.

The project’s unique amalgamation of social and clinical interventions has revolutionized the concept of institutional mental health care by enabling people restored to health to make choices about their future and restoring them back to communities. The cornerstone of Adaikalam is its philosophy of mental health practice focused on consumer choice and empowerment. A therapeutic community in a home like atmosphere, the model of care is multi axial and combines the following dimensions of care:

Rehabilitation, After-Care and Networking

The Banyan defines rehabilitation as enabling a person to lead a life of dignity in a community. Rehabilitation initiatives are consumer centric and are driven by the choice that an individual makes rather than protocols or norms. People who make a recovery from homelessness and mental illness make different choices about their future course of life – some want to go back to their families, some may have resistant families, no families to go back to or may not want to go back to their families and therefore seek employment and some require long term support due to age or profound physical or mental illness. The various rehabilitation options that The Banyan facilitates are:

Families and consumers require after care support in two forms: regular psychiatric reviews that enable them to sustain their recovery and economic support that helps alleviate burden that the illness places on their scant resources. After Care support at The Banyan is provided through:

Open Shelter- 30 bed open facility for homeless men with psychosocial needs, street engagement and personal services.

Impact:

Inclusive eco-systems for people with mental health issues –

This approach promotes the idea of being, self identity, a sense of awareness and promotes kinship, independent living and autonomy. Community Living also known as The Banyan Village was launched in August 2007 as a community based care and living for long term residents of The Banyan. The initiative provides consumers, who require continued physical/psychological and economic, long term support in a dignified, non institutional setting where they are part of a new family with a cottage to call their own. The Community Living project envisages the creation of a model of care that has a high level of self-sufficiency but ensures that all necessary care and support are provided to ensure a satisfactory quality of life. The initiative plays a significant role in advocacy for care in a community setting and deinstitutionalization of long term residents of State Mental Health Institutions. More often than not, due to lack of rehabilitation options, people stay for extended periods of time in institutional settings bereft of a community life even after they recover.

Clustered group homes- Cottages with living spaces for 60 women, co-located with the campus of The Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health.

Shared Housing- Housing options with supportive services for 80 women in urban localities and rural villages; Independent living or with graded levels of support facilitated by health coaches

Impact:

Health and mental health systems

In order for a society to be most equitable and sustainable when it comes to mental health, The Banyan has formulated two of her most effective programmes.

Rural mental health programme(RMHP)

Availability of care locally is crucial to prevention of homelessness. It has been proved worldwide that providing community based support is more economical than providing institutional support. Envisaged as a model for early intervention and prevention of homelessness, the Rural Mental Health Programme (RMHP) is centered around rural outreach activities in Thiruporur Block in Kancheepuram district. The RMHP is based out of Kovalam, a village devastated by the effects of the tsunami that hit South East Asia in 2004. The Banyan began relief work in Kovalam and surrounding areas immediately after the tsunami. The RMHP was launched as a structured programme of outreach in 2006.

The Rural Health Care Center based in Kovalam acts as a nodal center for mental health care services for 14 panchayats in Thiruporur block in the context of community development. RMHP’s model of community based delivery of mental health and allied community development services enables incremental progress in community awareness and sensitivity leading to greater demand in services for mental health care which in turn has greater greater demand for adequate implementation of services by the Government.

RMHP provides community based:

  1. Psychiatric Reviews and Medicines
  2. Family Counseling and Guidance
  3. In patient Services
  4. Recreational Services
  5. Family Support Group Facilitation and Services
  6. Economic Support Services like Disability Allowance, Livelihood facilitation
  1. Reviews and Medicines
  2. Early Detection Camps
  3. Basic Laboratory Tests

I. Kundrathur block: Partnership with Government of Tamil Nadu’s Pudhu Vazhvu Thittam covering 42 village panchayats through 3 monthly community clinics and social care through 40 Cluster Development Facilitators.

II. Thiruporur Taluk: Covering 50 village panchayats through 3 weekly community clinics and social care through network of 27 wellness mobilisers and 15 link workers

Urban mental health programme(UMHP)-

Urban Community Outreach provides free localized mental health care in three urban communities in Chennai – Mogappair, Choolaimedu and KK Nagar.

Impact

NALAM:

Lay worker delivered intervention combining social care with clinical care in mental health.

NALAM (Tamil for ‘wellness’)sought to establish that a multi interventional framework of services delivered by lay workers that combines social care with mental health care will lead to better mental health and wellbeing. At the start of the project, it was anticipated that gains in knowledge, attitudes and practices in relation to mental health in NALAM conditions would be more than in control conditions. Social care services conceptualised to be delivered by lay workers included the following:

  1. welfare entitlement facilitation (disability allowances, citizenship documents, pensions, loans and so on),
  2. livelihood facilitation.

Mental health services conceptualised to be delivered by lay workers included the following:

  1. screening and referral to services,
  2. supportive counselling,
  3. home based follow up and aftercare.

VU, Amsterdam collaborated on conceptualizing the study and on qualitatively exploring social welfare dynamics, in particular attributes or strategies of mobilisers or local government systems that impeded or encouraged welfare delivery. Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) collaborated on the development of the curriculum. In particular the module for NALAM mobilisers on ‘Self and reflexive’ practice based on noetic sciences was developed and delivered by a resource person from TISS. Dr. Vandana Gopikumar (Professor, School of Social Work, TISS) was involved in the conceptualization, planning and execution of the NALAM intervention.

Impact

Geographies and Reach

The Banyan offers services in rural and urban parts of Tamil Nadu including 4 districts through 11 service points and 11 different clinics run in collaboration with multiple partners ranging from Government primary health centre, Panchayats [local governing bodies in rural areas] to corporate clinics, educational institution clinics and clinics run in our own health centers to about 5000 people of which 2500 are in active registry. Hospital based inpatient and outpatient services in both rural and urban areas. We have reached over 4000 people and over 1000 people have been rehabilitated back to their family. In addition to the to two hospitals, we also run an open shelter, which is unlike the other two facilities, primarily for men with psychosocial disabilities experienced homelessness in Santhome. Long term graded services- clustered group home co-located with an educational institution, reaching out to people in distress with diverse range of disabilities. People who are in a position to largely manage their life with quasi institutional set up in Kovalam. Followed by our initiative of Home Again : where people live in communities and are offered access to various support networks which are facilitated by personal assistant and case management team in and around Kovalam- Vellamal area, stretched over 8-10 independent houses with 3-4 members staying together with a support. The third level is access to complete independent living for those who don’t want to or can’t go back home, don’t need a constant supported environment through personal assistant. Housing related service points by The Banyan.

We are now in the process in establishing chapters in Kerala and Delhi through the scale up of some of our programmes in partnership with either local state government, local civil society organisations or local peer lead or care-giver lead movement. By 2018, we will operate out of 4 states in addition to the 4 districts in Tamil Nadu.

http://www.frontline.in/cover-story/the-banyan-model/article9049917.ece

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/conference-focuses-on-sanitation-for-homeless/articleshow/53952617.cms?from=mdr

http://www.dtnext.in/News/City/2016/09/02000447/Addressing-the-needs-of-the-homeless.vpf

http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/chennai/Mental-illness-plagues-homeless/2016/09/03/article3609597.ece

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za-9CMV8SAs

References

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