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>>Now Available! How Health Care Reform will Affect Individuals with Psychiatric Disabilities. This paper examines the health reform bills and their impact on opportunities for community integration for people with psychiatric disabilities. [more...]	>>NEW REPORT! Five Years of Innovative Research on Community Participation: 2003-2008 This report provides an overview of each of the nine research projects completed by the UPenn Collaborative in its first five years of activity. [more...]
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The UPENN COLLABORATIVE ON COMMUNITY INTEGRATION is the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (RRTC) devoted to promoting community integration for individuals with psychiatric disabilities.

Funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research and directed by Mark Salzer, Ph.D. of the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Psychiatry, the UPENN COLLABORATIVE is based at the University of Pennsylvania. It is conducted in partnership with The Clearinghouse at the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania and Horizon House, Inc.

Community Integration is the opportunity to live in the community and be valued for one's uniqueness and abilities, like everyone else. (Salzer, 2006) *.

Community integration is a right of all people and encompasses housing, employment, education, leisure/recreation, social roles, peer support, health status, citizenship, self-determination, and religion/spirituality. Community integration (or, the opportunity to live like everyone else) should result in community presence and participation of people with psychiatric disabilities similar to that of others without a disability. (Salzer, 2006).

To ensure that rights become reality, the Collaborative seeks to lead the mental health field in identifying and eliminating barriers to community integration and to provide supports which bring about meaningful changes in the lives of people with psychiatric disabilities.

*Salzer, M.S. (2006). Introduction. In M.S. Salzer (ed.), Psychiatric Rehabilitation Skills in Practice: A CPRP Preparation and Skills Workbook. Columbia, MD.: United States Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association.

For more information about the UPenn Collaborative on Community Integration, please click here or contact the Center Coordinator at:

katykap@mail.med.upenn.edu
Phone: 215-746-6713
Fax: 215-349-8715

Mailing Address:
Katy Kaplan, M.S.Ed.
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
3535 Market Street, 3rd Floor -- CMHPSR
Philadelphia, PA 19104