Conard House

Each year, Conard House serves more than 1,600 adults by:

Creating welcoming, caring and empowering communities
- Fostering personal insight into illness and recovery
- Promoting long-term independent living; providing access to secure, well-maintained housing
- Helping our clients understand and negotiate the public mental health and health systems of care
- Restoring hope

Conard House owes its history of successful innovation to the pioneering work of Elaine Mikels (1921-2004). This visionary social worker saw the need for transitional housing alternatives when adults no longer needed institutionalization, but had no place to go. She came to understand that appropriate housing, though essential, was not enough to bring about long-term stability and reintegration into the community.

Founder Elaine Mikels, her mentor Conard Rheiner and other charter members of the Conard House board were pioneers in the "deinstitutionalization movement," proponents of the "consumer movement," as well as innovators among "psycho-social rehabilitation" (PSR) service providers.

What began in 1960 as a "therapeutic halfway hostel," Conard House today is a spectrum of programs and services designed to support, rather than direct, our client's plans for recovery. We continue to be guided by founding principles of PSR — least restrictive, community-based, independent living; individual capacities, abilities and strengths define resources; a focus on the whole person, environment and functional behavior; and, the essential partnership between client and treatment provider.

In addition to incorporating well-known services models — Residential Treatment, Supportive Housing, Supportive Employment, Money Management and Harm Reduction — we continue to innovate. The integration of principles of PSR and best practices in self-management of chronic medical conditions creates an approach we are calling Community-Supported Self-Management (CSSM).