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The purpose of this paper is to present a study assessing residents’ satisfaction with the integration of natural environment in public housing designs in Enugu urban, Nigeria.

The study followed qualitative and quantitative strategies. Personal observations and one-on-one interviews were conducted where necessary. A survey of 898 households residing in two main prevalent residential building typologies, systematically selected based on quota of their existence in seven public housing estates, was conducted, with a questionnaire as the key data collection instrument. A five-point Likert scale was used in measuring residents’ level of satisfaction of three key housing environment sub-components. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics.

Residents expressed dissatisfaction with overall housing estate environment in terms of naturalness in the estate landscaping and availability of green areas, and also with immediate dwelling unit environments in terms open spaces and naturalness in external finishes. Many of the residents, however, claimed to be indifferent about the extent of response of layout designs to natural factors, and street layout concepts to climatic influences. This reveals a high level of apathy of residents to their estates designs.

Collecting relevant data from the government agency that are the providers of the public housing studied was a herculean task, as there was no existing organized data bank. Consequently, the researcher depended more on extensive field work. In addition to the above, getting the questionnaire respondents to agree to participate in the study was another major challenge, as they were not used to participating in such studies before the current study.

Findings from the study imply that residents’ are adaptable to whatever housing environment they are provided with; therefore, therapeutic housing environment, if provided, would enhance healthy living for public housing residents in Nigeria.

This work is a pioneering effort at evaluating public housing environment in the study area in relation to residents’ perception.

Retrospective studies of therapeutic community (TC) treatment for drug abuse found reductions in drug use, criminality, and increased work participation after treatment completion. These studies have also shown treatment benefits, even without completion, are correlated with days of stay in residential treatment. However, others have found that high rates of early leaving from TC treatment reduce the proportion of clients with positive outcomes, raise the total cost per treated client, and lower the treatment benefit-to-costs ratio. The purpose of this paper is to describe an experimental approach to raising the days in residential treatment using earlier vocational access for clients.

The current study used a random assignment design to compare earlier integration of on-site vocational training in a vocationally integrated therapeutic community to off-site vocational training initiated after one year of residence in a traditional therapeutic community.

The resulting data support the hypotheses that client expectations and early training in job skills increase rate of treatment affiliation, the proportion of clients having effective lengths of stay, and the rate of treatment completion.

Research limitations/implications include the difficulty of assuring unbiased selection and controlling treatment assignment and conditions.

Practical implications of this research project are to support practitioners striving for longer, more effective lengths of stay, while at the same time attempting to reduce treatment time and increase effectiveness.

Social Implications of this project are to encourage social support for addiction treatment and emphasize the value of paired residential treatment and vocational education.

The originality and value of this research project lies in the adoption of a working model at Phoenix House TC (in-house vocational preparation), which utilizes early in-house vocational education as a means to increase residential program participation, increase employment skills and prospects, and decrease overall length of treatment.

The purpose of this paper is to inform readers and researchers about the use of a “lived experience” of therapeutic community work as an effective intervention for severely emotionally troubled children.

An explanation of the main developmental influences and how the Mulberry Bush School is continuing to incorporate new theories and approaches.

How the Mulberry Bush as a specialist therapeutic residential provision can bring about excellent outcomes for severely emotionally troubled children.

The paper explores the work and legacy of the school's founder Barbara Dockar-Drysdale and of her collaboration with Donald Winnicott to create a lived experience of community as an agent of therapeutic change. The paper also provides descriptions and a case study of the current multi-disciplinary work of the school, including how neuroscientific research is influencing the evolution of the therapeutic task with traumatised children.

The paper shows how a highly evolved model of integrated provision can support excellent outcomes for traumatised children and young people.

To broaden and deepen knowledge about the use of therapeutic community principles in the treatment of severely emotionally trouble children and young people.

There is increasing interest in applying strength-based approaches to offender rehabilitation. The purpose of this paper is to use the Good Lives Model (GLM) as an example to illustrate the fit that exists between strength-based approaches to offender rehabilitation and therapeutic communities.

The authors briefly describe the GLM before discussing the key themes that link the two perspectives; the authors argue they naturally fit together in a number of areas.

Both perspectives emphasise the importance of creating a safe and trusting therapeutic environment in which capacities (e.g. skills) can be developed that assist individuals to go on to live lives which are personally meaningful, and in which all their needs are met, enabling them to live offence free. Both also place importance on the role of personal responsibility.

The authors conclude the GLM could usefully contribute to improving outcomes for those transitioning into the community after leaving a Therapeutic Community, through developing clear life goals that are personally meaningful, and identifying practical steps for achieving these goals.

The purpose of this paper is to present a model of democratic therapeutic community (DTC) for people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and psychotic disorder, namely the Group-Apartment (GA). The authors will describe it in more detail, discussing the ideas which lie behind it, considering the relative cost of treating people in larger residential DTCs and in GAs, outlining findings from the first data gathered on a GA and looking at the usefulness of this model in post-modern societies, with particular reference to Sicily.

In brief a GA is a flat, located in an urban apartment building, inhabited by a small group of people. In this paper the authors consider an apartment inhabited by a group of three or four patients with the presence of clinical social workers who work in shifts for several hours a day on all or most days of the week (Barone et al., 2009, 2010). GA is also inspired by the pioneering work of Pullen (1999, 2003), in the UK tradition of the apartment post TC for psychosis.

GAs in Italy have become one of the main methods of support housing in recovery-oriented treatment, because it allows the empowerment of the users and fights against the stigma of mental illness (Barone et al., 2014; Bruschetta et al., 2014). The main therapeutic activities provided in the GA depend on the type of recovery route being supported, on the level of autonomy being developed and on the level of participation in the democratic life of the local community.

GAs appear better, cheaper and a more appropriate treatment for mental problems in the current financial and social climate than larger institutions. Where they have been tried out, they have been found to be effective, by users and by stakeholders. They exemplify the advantages of the DTC for encouraging recovery, but cost less to run. In accordance with DTC principles, the social democratic process is used not only to evaluate the clinical effectiveness of GAs, but also to build a network to support the development of innovative mental health services and new enabling environments (Haigh et al., 2012).

The purpose of this paper is to present a previously unpublished letter from children’s therapeutic community pioneer David Wills to his younger colleague in the field, Robert Laslett, which attempts to define and summarise a lifetime’s understanding of the essence of a therapeutic environment. This raises concepts and issues of relevance to current theory and practice in therapeutic environments.

The authors contextualise the 1977 letter from David Wills before presenting it verbatim, with clarifying annotations relating to people and events. They then analyse and discuss the fundamental arguments presented in the letter, with relevance to current thinking and practice.

The approach presented by David Wills to his younger colleague is deeply challenging to current concepts and understandings of therapeutic environments and the role in the therapeutic task of subjectivity and “attitude of mind”. The view is taken that this presents “a great question for wide debate, right now”.

Very little historical/analytical research has taken place into the experiences, thinking and practice of those who have built the diverse fields of therapeutic communities and environments, not least because history disturbs and challenges the present. This paper opens a small window on the vast resources which are available, and indicates something of the rich potential for debate and practical challenge Experts by Experience pose to living and, hopefully, learning practitioners to day.

Questions are raised: the debate they engender should eventuate into clearer, better grounded, more radical, and more effective practice.

This letter challenges assumptions about the role and nature of the “therapeutic attitude” and the place of subjectivity, with profound implications for the therapeutic enterprise itself, and the organisation of therapeutic environments, as well as policy, assessment and regulation regimes.

The use of previously unpublished archive material opens living questions to examination from a different perspective, widening the debate to include voices of expertise and experience which are generally, consciously or unconsciously, excluded from it. Presenting the letter in its whole, and not excerpted as supporting evidence, allows the voice of expertise by experience to contribute directly to discussion and debate; unbalancing and enriching it.

This paper aims to describe a method of training for practitioners in democratic Therapeutic Communities (TCs) which has been used in several settings across the world over the past 25 years: the “Living-Learning Experience” (LLE) workshop. It goes on to consider the cross-cultural implications of the work.

Drawing on the experience of running exactly the same programme in different countries and cultures, the paper examines the cross-cultural adaptability and describes necessary adaptations for local circumstances. It also contains original ethnographic research in UK and Italy; further study is planned for other countries.

The workshops are readily transferable to different cultures and are appreciated for their democratic and relational way of working.

The ethnographic study examines the workshops in some depth, in UK and Italy, and could usefully be replicated in other countries. No quantitative, outcome or follow-up studies have yet been done, and this paper could contribute to the design of useful quantitative studies.

The paper demonstrates that the LLE is a useful experiential learning tool in widely different settings. It could be developed in different ways, such as for developing relational practice or establishing therapeutic environments in different settings.

The workshops' acceptance in widely different cultures indicates that the open and non-didactic format addresses essential and fundamental qualities required for therapeutic engagement and human relatedness.

This is the first description of the principles of democratic TCs being applied across different international settings. Its value extends beyond the TC field, to the use of democratic and relational principles' applicability in therapeutic pedagogy and training.

Training in therapeutic community and related approaches has not been widely available, and there is debate about the form this should take. This has had a negative impact on the field. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The authors consider the history of training in democratic therapeutic community methods in the UK in particular, and trace some of the reasons for its lack of development.

With the expansion of TC methodology into new areas, such as therapeutic and enabling environments, the ability to provide training in DTC approaches and techniques is increasingly important. The developing evidence base, and the increasing detail in which the method has been described, make dedicated TC training increasingly important.

Training in therapeutic community methods, and enabling and therapeutic environment approaches, provides a grounding in technique and theory that would otherwise be impossible to acquire for most workers, and can lead to a general increase in the level of competence and confidence in the way these environments operate.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the social climate of therapeutic wings and mainstream wings within one prison, to identify positive areas of social climate that can be built upon and areas for improvement.

In total, 1,054 social climate questionnaires (the Essen Climate Evaluation Schema – EssenCES) were sent to prisoner-facing staff and all prisoners within an English Category B prison holding indeterminate sentenced prisoners. Perceptions of social climate on therapeutic wings and mainstream wings and perceptions of social climate between staff and prisoners were compared.

The results showed that the therapeutic wings felt safer, there were better staff-prisoner relationships and there was better peer support among prisoners than people on the mainstream wings. Also, prisoners felt safer than staff, staff rated the overall social climate as more positive than prisoners and staff felt that they supported prisoners, but prisoners did not feel the same.

The main limitation is that the EssenCES measure does not explain the participants’ ratings of the social climate.

There is a need to transfer the principles and values of therapeutic wings to mainstream wings. In addition, there is significant room for improvement in the social climate of this prison.

This is the first study to compare the social climate of therapeutic and mainstream wings within one single prison. The research has a valuable contribution to the development of positive social climates conducive to better clinical outcomes.