Homewood Ravensview Blog

March 2019

As Director of Nursing at Homewood Ravensview, I have the unique opportunity to build my nursing team from the ground up. I am lucky to be able to form a team around the vision and values of a health care company with over 135 years of experience in the field of mental health and addictions. My leadership philosophy is built on the foundations of servant leadership and appreciative inquiry. As a servant leader, I strongly believe that my role as nurse leader is to serve and support the people I supervise. Our nursing team will only be strong if they have everything they need for success and it is my job to ensure those tools are provided. Additionally, as an appreciative inquiry practitioner, I subscribe to the belief that everyone has strengths and abilities that can be nurtured to grow. Additionally, I subscribe to the belief that ‘words create worlds’. As such, I am careful to use positive language and work to find the good in every situation. Highly effective teams use six times more positive language than negative.

Before coming to Homewood Ravensview, I managed an Assertive Community Treatment Team. My clientele were the most disenfranchised patients in the Victoria area. Most had severe addictions, severe and persistent mental health issues, homelessness and criminality. Although my team worked diligently to help this patient population, there were many barriers to success and hope was often low. That’s one of the reasons I am enthusiastically working with Homewood Ravensview. I look forward to seeing the other side of recovery and working with patients who are eagerly pursuing self-betterment.

I am excited to work with an excellent team of leaders, Robert De Clark, GM; Lyn MacBeath, Medical Director; and Michael Berry, Clinical Director. We look forward to opening our doors to welcome our first cohort of patients in late May. We will be working with a variety of patients with substance use issues, trauma, process addictions, anxiety, and depression, as well as many other co-morbid mental health conditions. We will grow and learn along with our patients with the excellent support of the Homewood family.

Alexis Winter, BA, RPN, MPN (c)

February 2019

There are many exciting aspects involved in opening Homewood Ravensview. I spent the first 20 years of my career working in British Columbia in the inpatient addiction field and for the last year, I’ve reflected both personally and professionally on what I believe to be its successes and failures. This reflection has been crucial in the design of the treatment programs and client experience at Homewood Ravensview. For many years, I was lucky to be able to help many clients and their families become firmly entrenched in the recovery process. For these experiences I will always be grateful. However, as my taking the time to honour these experiences is important, it has also been important for me to reflect on client populations that could be better served.

From my experience, I will say that those who did not pick up on recovery the most were those with trauma in their background. The most exciting aspects of Homewood Ravensview for me are the ability to lean on Homewood Health’s vast experience treating trauma and concurrent disorders, as well as the opportunity to deliver of these treatment services in Western Canada. We offer private, highly effective treatments which are tailored to the unique needs of clients suffering with trauma and concurrent disorders. Treatment includes specialty programs, carefully designed by medical experts and all provided in a gorgeous, peaceful setting.

At Homewood Ravensview we organize treatment in a patient specific manner. The combination of treating addiction and mental health while developing demographic specific programming and working with the amazing Homewood Health team has made this last year the most engaging of my career. We offer specialized inpatient programs for adults, first responders, military, veterans, professionals and young adults. Each program is unique and has been meticulously crafted to serve each of these populations. These evidence-based, medically-led programs are some of the aspects that truly make Ravensview different and I’m very excited to bring them to Western Canada.

• The Cornerstore Program for adults is for clients over the age of 26. It is our core program, based on the best available treatment evidence as well as Homewood Health’s 135 years of clinical excellence.
• The Guardians Program is designed for first responders, military and veterans. We recognize that these individuals have specific needs which may include treatment for exposure to trauma, addiction challenges, depression and/or anxiety. The program aims to lay the foundation for lasting recovery.
• The My Path Program is aimed at younger adults aged 19 years to their mid-twenties. Often these clients deal with issues including transition to adulthood, self-esteem, identity, sexuality and social dynamics. The program takes these challenges as well as anxiety and overall mental health challenges into account, while providing individualized and expert care.
• The Vanguard Program is intended for the unique needs of executives and professionals. Research has shown that these clients face a number of burdens including bearing responsibility for employees and direct reports, the pressure of being in a high-impact, decision-making position and the expectation of long, arduous work schedules. We offer individualized treatment for each client in order to deliver the very highest level of care.

In treating any psychiatric condition, including addiction, there are two unarguable factors that lead to higher success rates: a therapeutic rapport with the clinical team and feelings of trust and safety. Our ability to bring people of similar demographic backgrounds together for their “heavier processing” time will allow clients to feel safe in their treatment community and therefore share in a more therapeutically significant fashion.  Our experienced staff understands the importance of therapeutic rapport and we believe we have developed a dynamic treatment process that will serve our clients well. Homewood Ravensview is a unique and world-class treatment facility that I’m very excited to be a part of. Please reach out to us if you or someone you care about needs help. We are here for you.

Robert de Clark

General Manager, Homewood Ravensview

January 2019

Hello and welcome to the first of many blog posts from those of us at Homewood Ravensview.

First, let me introduce myself – I’m Dr. Michael Berry, the Clinical Director at Ravensview.  In this role, I develop and implement Ravensview’s clinical programming, and supervise the work of Ravensview’s many mental health professionals including: psychologists, social workers, addictions counsellors, occupational therapists, recreational therapists, and creative therapy specialists with expertise in art therapy, music therapy and even poetry therapy. I also provide leadership and support to make sure that we deliver the highest possible standard of evidence-based care to our patients.

It is a privilege to be a psychologist.  Every day, I get to know people authentically, hear their stories, and help them as they work through some of life’s biggest challenges.  At Ravensview, I am part of an amazing team—made up of psychiatrists and other medical doctors, social workers, trauma therapists and addictions counsellors, and many more.

It is also a privilege to work with a superb, in-house leadership team. Along with myself, the leadership team at Ravensview includes:

• Rob DeClark, our General Manager. Mr. DeClark is an expert in the treatment of addiction and mental health, and has led the development of our culture of care at Ravensview.  He is the exceptional individual who was first recruited to help build the foundation for Ravensview and our team.
• Lyn MacBeath, our Medical Director. Dr. MacBeath is a highly experienced psychiatrist with specialization in addiction medicine.  Dr. MacBeath leads our medical services, and supervises the work of our team of specialist medical doctors.  She is also one of the kindest and most down-to-earth care providers I have known—truly dedicated to patient care.
• Alexis Winter, our Director of Nursing. Alexis is a skilled, dynamic Registered Psychiatric Nurse, with a wealth of experience in the field of mental health and addictions. Equally motivated by patient care, she leads our hands-on nursing team, which will provide on-site care 24-hours a day, 365 days per year.

I believe every member of our team would say the same thing: it’s easy to come to work every day, knowing we’ll have the chance to do some good and help people.  Also, it doesn’t hurt that our facility is sits atop a beautiful mountain on Vancouver Island, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.

When we open our doors later in 2019, we will welcome people from all walks of life, who are in need of care for a wide range of mental health problems and addictions.  We will provide care for:

• people who struggle with trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder, including first responders and military service members
• people who struggle with the most difficult levels of addiction and require medically-supervised detox
• executives and professionals who struggle from burnout, addiction, or other mental health concerns
• young adults wrestling with addiction or mental health problems, and who may be struggling to ‘find their way’ in adult life
• adults who have depression or severe anxiety

Essentially, our doors will be open to those who struggle with mental distress and addictions.  We consider it our privilege to serve individuals and communities in need of care and support.

As my colleagues and I prepare to welcome our first guests, we are just beginning this new chapter of Homewood Ravensview and our story of providing help to individuals challenged by mental health and addiction issues.  We hope that if you or someone you care about is in need of help, you will consider making Ravensview a part of your story too.  We’re here to help.

Dr. Michael Berry

Clinical Director, Homewood Ravensview

Stay tuned for our next blog post with more information about Ravensview and an update from our general manger, Rob DeClark.