This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Tim's Journal: Liz and Ellen, Social Workers Who Recreate Lives

How social workers at Runnells Specialized Hospital help rebuild lives.

Liz Migneco and Ellen McNamara find that many of the psychiatric patients they work with at Runnells Specialized Hospital in Berkeley Heights have limited insight into their illness.

 

“Getting them to recognize that they need to continue with their treatment plan when they leave the hospital” is just part of their jobs as social workers at the county hospital, Ellen says.

Find out what's happening in Clark-Garwoodwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

 

Ellen, an LSW, has been a part of the social work team that is led by Liz, an LCSW,  for the past 10 years. Liz has been at Runnells for 27 years. They’ve seen a lot of patients come and go, and sometimes come back again. And they remember each and every one of them.

Find out what's happening in Clark-Garwoodwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

 

“If someone can leave here with one tool that works for them, we’ve accomplished something,” Liz says. “We try to make little changes.”

 

When they find out former patients are doing well in the community, it “always makes my day,” Ellen says. “We see them when they’re acutely ill, so when we hear about them doing well a few years later, it’s very rewarding,” she says. Family members, who she often works with while their loved one is in the hospital, sometimes call to let her know how things are working out.

 

Liz says that working with family members can be crucial to recovery. “We want the families to be involved as much as possible,” she says. She says Runnells’ doctors try to be available to family members to answer questions.

 

Yet some patients are estranged from their families or homeless.  This can make discharge planning all the more difficult.

 

Just as the social workers develop relationships with patients and their families, they also need to build relationships with community-based programs that can be supportive after discharge.

 

“There are many options, but many have limited access,” Liz says, when describing discharge challenges. While there are more programs available now than when she first started at Runnells, finding housing remains one of the biggest challenges.

 

“We hit many brick walls,” says Liz, who Ellen calls “the troubleshooter” when it comes to finding options for patients leaving the hospital.

 

Runnells’ two psychiatric units, Cornerstone East and West, have 44 beds and the average stay is about 40 days, though some patients are there for several months. It is where Union County psychiatric patients go following short stays at acute facilities such as Trinitas Hospital. Liz says the two units are always operating at 100% capacity, with a waiting list of 15 in mid-June.

 

“We can’t always get a patient stable, which is frustrating,” Liz says. When that happens, the patient is transferred for a longer hospital stay at a state psychiatric hospital. For Union County, this has traditionally been Trenton Psychiatric Hospital, but that changed this spring when Greystone became the state hospital that serves our county. About 15% of Runnells patients need to be transferred to a state hospital, they said.

 

In addition to planning for discharge, the social workers often help patients apply for benefits. Now and then, a patient being discharged has no money, and when this happens the staff rallies together, Ellen says.

 

“We all donate clothes if they are needed,” she says, recalling how they were able to find a suit for a young man who needed to attend the funeral when his mother died while he was in the hospital. “Everyone in the hospital is this way. It’s just what we do.”

 

She sums up the job this way:  “We recreate lives. We develop a whole support system for them.”

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?