Perspectives on the Standards

This Standard gives us a feeling of security and control—no decisions are made about us or our community without our participation. Clubhouses do not allow staff to keep secrets from members, or the other way around. Each member has a voice in the running of our clubhouse. The clubhouse is not a tiered agency of professional decision makers. We do not allow an "us and them" feeling about how decisions are made to compromise our clubhouse.

Meetings are open to all members and staff. We make decisions by a consensus of all colleagues. We never have to feel that we are being talked about in a staff meeting and we do not have to feel left out and manipulated. Many members have been hospitalized, and the clubhouse offers equality between members and staff—which never takes place in hospitals or in other treatment programs. We all gain a sense of self-esteem and self-confidence from this openness.

This Standard does not mean that all colleagues must be at all meetings, or that a group of staff or a group of members can’t gather separately and/or spontaneously to discuss things. But we do not make any decision without the ideas of all interested colleagues—no colleague is excluded from a meeting merely on the basis of their status as member or staff.

In addition, all staff have a real investment in the fate of the community. In contrast to "consumer-run" programs, clubhouses don’t have member only meetings from which staff are excluded. This Standard has an underlying assumption; that it is members and staff together that make the community run. It’s the encounter between members and staff and the sense that they have a shared fate that’s important.