Summer Cookout & Continued Care

As the sun beamed over a Broadway parking lot Saturday afternoon, Parents’ Foundation for Transitional Living (PFTL) Executive Director Tahnesha Bonner was in her zone on the grill. 

While she’s usually in charge of logistics for the downtown nonprofit that provides residential care for adults struggling with mental illness, this day was different. Instead, she served smiles and cooked burgers and hot dogs for residents and family members to enjoy.

That was the scene Saturday at PFTL’s summer cookout at 100 Broadway. 

The nonprofit has three residential programs that vary in their intensity of care depending on the severity of a client’s diagnosis and an individual’s level of autonomy: a residential living center or group home, a supervised apartment program, and an independent care program, colloquially known as ​“off-Broadway.”

There are certain qualifications for those being admitted, said Roseann Pandolfi, PFTL’s former director of residential services. Residents must be substance-free for a minimum of six months, have some level of autonomy, and be safe within the New Haven community. Residents at PFTL usually come from inpatient psychiatric settings, and the goal is to reach for psychiatric stability. 

Everyone admitted to the program goes directly into the group home so that staff members can see how people interact and gauge their level of need. Medications in the group home are supervised and meals are provided to residents, said Program Manager Yvonne Elung.

Once they have shown progress in the group homes, residents can be moved to a supervised apartment program where they are encouraged to learn life skills and practice self-sufficiency such as cooking, personal hygiene, and tidiness, Elung explained.

The final stage is the off-Broadway program, where residents can move out into the community nearby and live independently, while still receiving services from PFTL until they feel fully ready to live on their own. These services could include medication, participating in group exercises, and appointments with their case manager, Pandolfi added. 

“We are a non-clinical residential, so folks can live here and get back out into the community, maintain their stability, and have fulfilling lives,” said Kyleigh Marrero, director of admissions and outreach. 

Pandolfi, who has been at PFTL for 20 years, worked her way up before receiving her last title as director of residential services. Now retired, she serves as a flight attendant for Avelo Airlines. While that chapter is now behind her, Pandolfi still holds PFTL close to her heart, explaining the nonprofit’s initiatives.

Residents interact in the community, from attending concerts and sporting events to attending school and taking classes at Gateway Community College and Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU).

“Because we’re in this wonderful environment here in New Haven, they’re able to go out and volunteer and get part time jobs, which is crucial for psychiatric stability,” she said. ​“Whatever their interests are, we really try to hone in on those interests and let them be able to go explore those things.”

With a shortage of state-funded psychiatric facilities and mental health providers, families are often faced with difficulties finding mental health support for their loved ones. One family at Saturday’s cookout, who chose to remain anonymous, learned about PFTL four years ago from a referral from their friend and enrolled their son, and moved from New York to Connecticut to be closer to him. 

Now, their son is doing better, and in the independent living program in the Novella Apartments on Chapel Street. The family credited the National Alliance on Mental Illness for helping them narrow their search to residential facilities. 

“I wanted somewhere he had a lot of independence to make his own choices and decisions. It was really important that he felt that he had agency,” the mother said. 

“We’re hoping, and we’ve heard that since there’s been a lot of strides to improve, but it’s still light years away,” the father said, when asked about the availability of mental health resources. ​“We were really delighted to find a place like this. There needs to be more of them.

For Elung, working for PFTL wasn’t originally a part of her post-grad plans. After graduating from SCSU with a degree in political science in 2015, Elung, 37, had long thought she would be a diplomat for the United Nations and work in political advocacy. Still, she applied to health aid jobs and got a call back for a residential assistant at PFTL in 2017. 

“Even though I’m not at the United Nations, this is still some kind of advocacy that I could do and it just made sense,” she said. 

Now having been at the organization for seven years, PFTL has become a second home for her. She’s worked her way up from working overnight shifts as a residential assistant to becoming a program specialist and running recovery and enrichment groups, before assuming her current role as program manager. 

Like Elung, Marrero also gravitated towards resident care, wanting to spread awareness about mental health. 

“The stigma with mental health gets really difficult because people are human beings, and everybody has their struggle, so we really want to make sure that people have a safe place and have the support that’s needed to be successful and thrive in the world,” she said.

As people went in and out to get food, they also had a chance to sit, relax, and rest in PFTL’s newly renovated courtyard. The courtyard was built to honor Alix Lawrence, a past resident at PFTL, whose family donations funded the project. Marrero said that the plans to build the courtyard dated back to the spring. Renovations were finished in May, and construction lasted only a week. 

“There’s been people who have lived here since we opened back in ​‘92, there’s people who will use this as a forever home or as a transition home… so we wanted to make sure that we had a comfortable outdoor space for people to enjoy and relax,” Marrero said.