About COPE

Initiatives

Promoting Recovery

The mission of recovery is not only to acknowledge it as an attainable goal, but also to integrate and embrace it.

At COPE, recovery is a process whereby each person, fueled by hope and building on their strengths and abilities, takes responsibility for his or her life, grows more resilient and healthy, and develops an identity apart from an illness. At its essence, recovery embraces each person’s potential for a healthy, happy life by learning from the past.

COPE staff participate in recovery rallies, which foster the feeling of openness in the recovery process, celebrate even the smallest achievements on the path to recovery, and reinforce that one person can make a difference in the life of another.

Following are steps to recovery and some techniques and ideas that COPE staff use to help people piece their lives back together:

• Grief: People need to be allowed to grieve their losses and to accept that they have a mental health disorder, but the process must not end there. Staff help people process their grief and move on.
• Hope: Hope is the number one predictor of recovery. Without hope that life can be better, there's no reason to try to do anything. It may be necessary for staff to be purveyors of hope by believing in people before they are able to believe in themselves.
• Education: Education increases hope and builds self esteem. Through education, staff empower individuals and dispel misinformation. By learning coping skills and how to stay well, COPE clients become more able to help themselves.
• Vision: To be truly motivating, hope has to be more than just an idea. People must have an actual image of how life could be. While results may be different from those envisioned, it is essential to have some sort of clear image if people are going to make difficult changes. Staff help people develop a positive vision of what they can be and then help them achieve it.
• Success: Often it takes some successful experiences for people to really believe they can be successful. Since "readiness" often occurs only in retrospect (after something has been done successfully), staff help by identifying and pointing out successes.
• Empowerment: To recover, people need a sense of their capability, their power. Their hope needs to be focused on things they can do rather than on what someone can do for them. The appeal of being taken care of can derail recovery as can being too frightened to take risks. COPE staff encourage people to take reasonable risks.
• Responsibility: People who recover realize that no one else can recover for them, that they have to take charge of their own recovery. Having dreams and goals ignites personal responsibility, but people are sometimes afraid to take responsibility. Staff can support their efforts to recover, but people cannot be "taken care of" or "protected" into recovery.
• Choice: People need to make choices between viable options. Making their own decisions, taking their own risks, and learning their own lessons are essential to recovery. Staff can promote personal growth by allowing people to make non-lethal mistakes while staff continues to believe in, educate, and encourage them.
• Meaningful Role: To recover, people must have some meaningful role apart from their mental health disorder. At first, a sense of belonging may only be possible with others who have a mental health disorder or with their supporters. Eventually, having a meaningful role will become possible in a variety of contexts.
  COPE provides comprehensive services and supports for people in recovery.

Promoting Cultural Competence

COPE has been successful in improving the health and quality of life of individuals in our community by growing its capacity for culturally appropriate collaboration and engagement with the community. Recognizing, valuing, and promoting cultural diversity is embedded in every facet of the organization, including how we relate to one another, to those we serve, and to the community; how we provide programs and services; how we partner with groups and organizations in the community; how we solve problems and make decisions; how we improve our service quality and responsiveness; and how we recruit, train, and retain staff.

Promoting Customer Service

COPE’s Customer Service Committeehas successfully created a positive and welcoming environment for COPE clients and the community. Our customer service philosophy is to provide the best possible service to eveyone all of the time. 

Promoting Internal Communications

COPE has established an agency-wide committee to improve internal communication methods, guided by employees’ ideas and commitment to excellence.