Meet Mariane Dupuis, psychosocial counsellor for the PRISM program
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Meet Mariane Dupuis, psychosocial counsellor for the PRISM program
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Mariane Dupuis, psychosocial counsellor for the PRISM program.
Could you introduce yourself?
My name is Mariane Dupuis. I'm a psychosocial counsellor with the PRISM program. I celebrated my fifth year with the Old Brewery Mission in January.
Could you explain what you do at PRISM?
PRISM is a reaffiliation program for people experiencing homelessness and mental health issues. We collaborate with the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l'Île-de-Montréal, working with a nurse and a social worker from the CIUSSS and a psychiatrist who comes to see our residents once or twice a week.
People entering the program have a variety of mental health issues, mostly psychotic in nature, and no treatment team. We provide a treatment episode for people who have no access to care. Sometimes they have never had a treatment team—or they had one in the past but, for various reasons, such as moving, are no longer being followed.
What is the goal of PRISM and how do people access it?
Our residents are referred to us—either internally, by the hospital system, other organizations, or the prison system. For example, a person who has been discharged from a psychiatric ward and has no housing or treatment team might be referred to us by a social worker.
Our goal is to take these people in and stabilize them. Often, but not always, it involves medication. Once that process has begun, we start working together on the social side of the equation, such as tax returns, since your taxes have to be up-to-date to apply for subsidized housing. Often they don't have a Medicare number, so we make sure they get a Quebec health card and all the other documents they need to apply for housing. Once all that is ready, we recommend the person for an apartment. We have a good partnership with Diogène and other organizations.
Once people have housing, is there any kind of support?
Yes. Once a person has an apartment, our colleagues at the CIUSSS make sure they receive intensive follow-up in the community, variable-intensity follow-up or follow-up at an outpatient clinic, to ensure the treatment continues. We are involved only during the transition from the street to stabilization.
Tell us about your background.
After taking adult education classes, I enrolled in a CEGEP offender treatment program. It was very focused on the prison environment, very institutional. One day, early in my second year, I raised my hand in class and said I was interested in homelessness, I wanted to work with people in that situation. I asked if we were going to talk about it, and they said I wasn't really in the right program and homelessness wasn’t going to be dealt with much. I got up and said, "OK, bye.” I dropped out of the program and enrolled in a fast-track 2-year program leading to an Attestation of College Studies in special education. Then I worked for a while at a therapy centre and after that, I was hired by the Old Brewery Mission.
Do you like your job? Is it rewarding?
Yes. When people see that you're there for the right reasons, that you really want to help them, it creates very positive relationships. We get a lot of gratitude. I’ve had more positive interactions with residents than negative ones. I think I've made more friends among the staff here in five years, good friends, than in my whole life before working here. My close friends are almost all people I've met here.
