Janet Silvera, Senior Gleaner Writer
Nurse Joy Crooks
Today we feature another of this year's nominees for the coveted Gleaner Honour Award. We shine the spotlight on the nominee in the category: Community Service.
WESTERN BUREAU:
Western Jamaica's mental health ambassador, nurse Joy Crooks, was bolted from the blue 17 years ago with the sight that greeted her in the so-called 'Psychiatric Department' at Montego Bay's Cornwall Regional Hospital.
"All that was there was one mental health officer and a social worker, no resident psychiatrist, while the 10th floor (mental health ward) looked derelict and was not equipped to manage. The staff was at a disadvantage," she recalls.
Five minutes away from the hospital, on the streets of downtown Montego Bay, lived several mentally challenged people and none of them saw a light at the end of the tunnel. "That was what gave me spirit to say, 'God I have to do this'."
This meant giving her life to, not just the birth of the Committee for the Upliftment of the Mentally Ill (CUMI), but the success of an organisation that has become world renowned. Her stewardship as nurse administrator and board member with the CUMI Rehabilitation Day Centre and Night Shelter started on August 1, 1990.
Along with foundation treasurer and chairman, the late Elizabeth Hall, the St. James Parish Council, Rotarians, Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Dr. Doris Channer-Watson and several citizens, she was moved to make a difference.
Scoured the streets
Nurse Crooks (right) plays a game of dominoes with Frederick Kelly, a mentally challenged client of CUMI. - Photos by Janet Silvera
But approaching the mentally handicapped is not the easiest of tasks so, in order to get a real feel of the situation, nurse Crooks and the CUMI team scoured the streets, mornings, afternoons and evenings for three months gathering first-hand knowledge. "Our strategy was to get the street people to trust us, so we started with a soup kitchen. We would cook the food and take it to feed them downtown."
The feeding programme moved from an initial 20 to 35 persons to 60.
In those days, it took nothing out of her to transport the cooked food in a taxi, because that was her only means of transportation. This continued for quite a few months until the clients became familiar with her and the team.
At the end of the research period, they had raised $60,000 in donations and a derelict building, merely a shell with four walls on Rectory Drive, Brandon Hill, to be used as a day home for the street people.
Sixteen years later, the comfortable facility houses rehabilitation services which are based on daily living skills, offering clinical and psychological services for the mentally ill, with special focus on street people. There is also a revolutionary children's programme for abandoned or neglected offsprings of the clients and other citizens affected by the scourge in the society.
Since opening in 1991, some 1,500 clients have been empowered, notes nurse Crooks. Of that figure, some 230 clients who were sick and down and out on the streets, without either mental or physical health care, were "placed back into the community and have never returned as relapse clients," the CUMI administrator said with a twinkle of joy in her eyes.
She describes the same people tagged as 'mad people' by many in the society as 'clients'.
"In the hospital, they are referred to as patients, when they get to us they are clients involved in a partnership that allows them to take care of their problems."
Accordingly, her job is to give support, taking those in her care to a level that gives them the coping skills to get the best recovery.
"Part of the partnership is to rehabilitate. We can only share with our clients the tools, and they in turn have to use the tools."
Since the clients started getting better, she said she noticed that their survival on the streets became even more difficult. "Even so-called normal people used to attack them."
As she reminisced on some of the blood-churning episodes, including one of her clients being set afire with petrol and another having a building block thrown on his head while sleeping, she paused to regain composure.
"That really eats out my heart, makes me hurt. Unfortunately, some of the emotions that you don't wish to express sometimes come out from the anger and pain that I feel for these persons."
It was atrocities like these that drove CUMI to start a night shelter, she stated.
Joy Crooks has overseen a programme that has reaped immense success. One of the things that brings her great joy is being part of the team that has watched the trust fund, set up years ago, reach a current balance of J$10 million. "Our target is $15 million, because the average cost to run the home monthly is $3 million, so we hope to use the interest from the targeted amount to continue our thrust."
Today, 25 regular clients are on the clinic. They go there in the mornings for breakfast, then go to work. Some are there specifically for rehabilitation purposes only, and, "They go out to places such as Blossom Gardens Children's Home where they give of their service, while some do day's work elsewhere."
No other home
Nurse Joy Crooks (centre) and her team (from left) Donnette Johnson, administrative nurse; Nouritia Gordon, assistant; Pearl Johnson, cook; and Rupert Walker, male assistant.
She added that some of the people come in for the entire day, because they have no other home.
But Joy Crook's passion has spread much further, and with the help of the late Joan Duncan of Jamaica Money Market Brokers, she was able to establish a project specifically for the children whose parents were mentally challenged.
More than 17 children have been placed in foster homes which are managed by CUMI.
Joy Crooks was born in Mt. Salem, Montego Bay. She migrated to England with her family in the 1960s, where she received general and psychiatric nursing training. She did her post-graduate degree in administration, and later worked as a nurse practitioner, both in medicine and psychiatry, before returning to Jamaica in November 1988.
On her return to Jamaica, she worked at HEART Trust, Montego Bay, as a counselor.
As nurse administrator for CUMI, she has had the privilege of being involved with this community-based programme since its inception.
CUMI has grown from a street-people feeding programme to a recognised rehabilitation day centre, providing services to all categories of citizens in need of clinical, psychological rehabilitation and children programme assistance.
Over 2,000 citizens have benefited in different ways from CUMI. Successful candidates have been rehabilitated and returned as productive individuals to their communities. Her work has been recognised both locally and internationally.
