The story of the Richmond Fellowship begins in England in 1959 when Elly Jansen purchased a house in Richmond, Surrey and invited former patients from Long Grove Hospital to live there. Ms Jansen believed that people with psychiatric disabilities would benefit from living in a supportive community setting and this enabled her to put her ideas into practice.

This original facility became a kind of halfway house that supported people with psychiatric disabilities and enabled them to live in the community. It was the first facility of its kind to provide preventative after care in a non-institutionalised environment. Ms Jansen went on to establish Richmond Fellowship programs and houses around the world.

Her principles of therapeutic community, peer support and psychosocial rehabilitation have been used to support individuals and groups in over 40 affiliated organisations, in countries including France, the USA, Mexico, the Caribbean, Costa Rica, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Israel, Malta, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia.

An international model of care

In 1981 Richmond Fellowship International was founded. It was originally conceived as the overseas department of the UK’s Richmond Fellowship, and became a way to ‘franchise’ overseas both the Richmond Fellowship’s name and the model of care the organisation promulgated in its country of origin.

This progressive and successful model of care was based on the establishment of halfway houses wherein staff and clients worked together to create a therapeutic environment designed to ‘re-socialise’ clients so they could begin to live independently in the community.

From 1981 to the late 1990s, Richmond Fellowship International continued to grow, although within the organisation it was becoming apparent that the model of care being franchised to developing countries was inappropriate, except in those countries where Western values and interpretations of mental illness prevailed.

A turning point is reached

In 1999 representatives of all the Richmond Fellowships met in London to discuss issues of ethnic and cultural appropriateness concerning the Richmond Fellowship model of care.

It recognised the divisions between the poorer countries that lacked the social welfare infrastructure necessary to support halfway houses, and the wealthier countries who either had such a supportive infrastructure or could charge fees to their clients sufficient to cover the costs of those institutions.

Many of the organisations that were originally part of the Richmond Fellowship International decided to look elsewhere for their model of care. Israel, Malta and the USA became completely independent, while in 2000 the Richmond Fellowships in India, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia decided to join together to create an independent ‘forum’.