Community support services are rehabilitative and provide environmental support considered essential in assisting the client in achieving rehabilitation and recovery goals that focus on building and maintaining a therapeutic relationship with the client.  Services promote the development of age-appropriate behavior. Community Support Workers assist clients in defining their goals for recovery and in meeting those goals. The strengths of the clients are emphasized in the client’s plan of care or treatment plan.

Community Support Workers first build a relationship with the client, develop the recovery plan together, and help the client to implement the plan. Some of the activities of the community support worker are to assist clients to maintain psychiatric stability; visit clients in their homes; teach menu planning, how to grocery shop, and how to cook; assist in looking for housing and employment. Community Support Workers also work with clients on substance abuse issues and physical health care needs.

One easy to summarize what Community Support Workers do is to remember these three duties:  educate, empower, and advocate.  Everything you do as a community support worker should fall under one of these categories.  Given the examples listed in the previous paragraph think about how each activity/task could fall into one of the three main categories for community support work.  I have provided some examples below.

1. Maintain psychiatric stability – You can educate the client on the benefits of maintaining psychiatric stability and how to do this.  You can empower the client to take the personal responsibility for his or her psychiatric stability.  You can also advocate for the client, if necessary, with regard to communication with the client’s psychiatrist or other treatment team members.
2. Visit clients in their homes – This activity must be done with a ‘lesson’ in mind.  You could be educating the client on cleanliness of his/her home, you could be empowering the client to address housing issues (e.g. mold, broken appliances, etc) to the client’s landlord, or you could be advocating for changes in housing placement based on regular visits to the client’s home.
3. Teach menu planning – This activity would definitely be educating client on how to plan and/or prepare meals.  You should link back the importance of physical health to the client’s mental health and overall well-being.