REACHING OUT ABOUT DEPRESSION (ROAD)

Welcome to the CHA Department of Community Affairs’ page on ROAD, a community-based program that assists women in low-income communities with depression and related issues.

Program Mission and Goals
History
Services and Activities
Program Administration and Support

Program Mission

Reaching Out About Depression (ROAD) is a community-based program created by and for neighborhood women who are suffering in low-income communities with depression and its related issues. All services are offered free-of-charge.

By creating a network of support in the community, the ROAD program helps women experiencing stress or depression understand that they are not alone, while offering strategies and resources to promote their self-empowerment and improved quality of life.

ROAD offers leadership opportunities for women who join the network so that they can become peer supports for their fellow ROAD members and change agents in their communities.

As a community-based support system for low-income women, ROAD also actively educates, trains and influences the mental health and social service provider community about the complex needs of the women ROAD serves.

Program Goals

1. Increase the knowledge and skills of low-income women so that they have greater understanding of depression and its related issues.
2. Increase the network of support felt by low-income women by building a ROAD community for peer support and help.
3. Enhance the feeling of personal empowerment of women participating in the ROAD program through peer support and leadership development.
4. Increase the access to resources needed by low-income women so that they can deal with the multiple issues in their lives related to their stress and/or depression.
5. Facilitate changes in the knowledge, attitudes and practices of traditional mental health providers to be more responsive to the needs of low-income women dealing with stress and/or depression.

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History

Founded in 2003, ROAD is a program that addresses barriers to personal and community change within low-income communities by supporting women’s efforts to organize themselves and increasing the support and resources women are able to access.

ROAD had its genesis in the Cambridge-based Kitchen Table Conversations Project (KTP) where, in the mid-90’s, low-income women gathered to discuss the effect that welfare reform had on their lives. Over time, depression was identified as a major obstacle that all the members of the KTP had in common. ROAD evolved as a tool for the KTP participants to develop positive strategies for change and take action on issues that affect their lives.

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Services and Activities

The Supportive Action Workshop Series brings an ever-expanding group of low-income women from Cambridge, Somerville and surrounding communities together to develop a mutual support network, alleviate symptoms of depression, and take action in their community.

This 12-session interactive workshop series on depression and the lives of low-income women was first developed by the original members of ROAD. The workshop series is offered several times a year.

Click here for a flyer on the workshop series that you can print and give to your patients, clients, or friends.

The Social Action Event: ROAD organizes women to bring about change for themselves and their communities through social action events. At the end of each workshop series, ROAD workshop facilitators and participants design and carry out an activity that empowers themselves, educates others, and has a positive impact on their community. This social action event allows participants to challenge the flaws in the social systems that affect them, and to better understand how these limitations are connected to their own personal struggles.

Advocacy Resource Team: In this component of the ROAD program, counseling and/or law graduate students work with ROAD facilitators and participants to help alleviate their acute crises (e.g. threatened evictions, loss of benefits, debt, layoffs, health problems, or parenting difficulties), achieve their self-defined short- and long-term goals, and support the workshops’ social action activities.

These advocates provide a critically important service to ROAD facilitators, enabling them to address their own challenges so that they are better able to lead the workshops and offer peer support to other women.

Leadership Development is integral to the philosophy and structure of the ROAD program. Women who attend a specified number of workshops have the opportunity to train to become facilitators, creating an ever-expanding ROAD support network.

ROAD has also identified continuing leadership development of facilitators as an important next step in preparing women to assume increased leadership roles in the program and in their communities. Since January, 2007 ROAD has provided monthly ongoing leadership training to facilitators.

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Program Support and Administration

ROAD is administered through Cambridge Health Alliance’s Department of Community Affairs with support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Boston Women’s Fund, and the Boston Jewish Community Women’s Fund.

A community Advisory Board is responsible for guiding program and policy development. The Advisory Board includes ROAD facilitators, community activists, mental health professionals, lawyers and academics. The Advisory Board helped to create and sustain ROAD, and is also an ongoing source of support in the form of donated work, external resources and community networking.