ABSTRACT
Leaders recognize that their experience was primarily with one particular group, the former mental patient. These issues are as relevant for any institutionalized person — prison inmates, those leaving facilities for the handicapped, the chronically ill, recovering alcoholics, and so on. Throughout the country, there are many people who will be leaving institutions where they have been isolated from normal social interaction and whose problems have identified them as different. The Case Aide would then try to make an appointment with a local doctor or a psychiatrist from the community mental health facility. In Program, the Case Aide became friend, family, and link to the world outside the hospital. This role was a heavy one for them. The volunteer can define and coordinate the various systems linking and inter-connecting them, flexibly and economically. Originally, the Case Aide Program was conceived of as a way to bring together the hospital and the community, two totally different systems, each moving in its own sphere.
