Our Approach
VISION
Rock Creek Foundation envisions a diverse world where individuals of all abilities are empowered to unlock their full potential.
MISSION
To create, support, and champion opportunities that empower individuals to shape their own destinies.
VALUES
Our Values:
- We embrace and honor the inherent worth and dignity of every individual at Rock Creek.
- We believe in the freedom of choice, allowing each person the dignity to take risks and learn from both success and failure.
- We foster a culture of mutual respect and appreciation, recognizing that participating in activities valued by ourselves contributes to our sense of self-worth.
- We reject the notion of defining ourselves or others solely by limitations, instead striving to celebrate our strengths and unlock our fullest potential.
Choose to Let Your Life Speak
At The Rock Creek Foundation, we believe that having a disability and/or a mental illness should not prevent anyone from having the opportunity to participate in everyday life. That’s why we have been pioneering the field of behavioral health services for the dually diagnosed: people living with developmental disabilities as well as severe and persistent mental illness. We want to ensure that each person we serve can develop the skills they need to live as independently as possible, in their own communities and is able to realize his or her potential in ways that they could not do so before.
Disability is Not the Problem
Having a disability is part of the human experience – about 1 in 4, or 61 million American adults, now report having some form of a disability and nearly 20 percent of US adults suffer from a mental illness. However, people with disabilities often experience significant disadvantages when it comes to the way they function or how they participate in society, compared to people without a disability.
Consider, for example,
- The rate of mental illness among individuals with developmental disabilities can be as high as 40 percent, depending on the population.
- Nearly one-tenth (6.8 percent) of people with a disability have an independent living disability with difficulty doing errands alone.
- Adults living with multiple disabilities are more likely to suffer from depression, obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, compared to adults without a disability.
At The Rock Creek Foundation, we value the dignity of each person, and we believe it’s not the disability that causes a problem – it’s a lack of adequate services or resources that prevent people with disabilities from benefiting from opportunities to participate in everyday life. That’s why, for more than four decades, we have sought the most innovative ways to provide the support, the structure, and the stability to allow people with disabilities to grow and achieve an independent life of their own.
The Right to Achieve
Our success is made possible by a number of factors. We believe in the dignity of risk: that people with any disability have the right to make the choices they want, even if they risk failure. We also believe that individuals have the right to embrace, achieve and live out their socially valued roles – like becoming a parent, a spouse, a student, an employee, etc. These beliefs guide us in all we do, from maximizing the use of the latest techniques and technologies relevant to an individual’s disability, to recruiting and retaining mental health professionals who have a genuine passion for cutting-edge behavioral health work and who want to provide the best care possible. Our clinical teams are highly trained and nationally recognized experts who seek to make a true impact every day.
We believe that it’s not enough to offer comprehensive, customized mental health and developmental disabilities services, supported by committed and competent professional staff. Our ideal aim is for an enlightened community that ensures that people with multiple disabilities have access to as many opportunities as possible, and are treated with understanding, dignity, and respect. We also strive to ensure that our individuals and staff are dedicated and committed to improving the quality of the communities in which they live and serve.
What we do
Through the combination of therapeutic and rehabilitative services, the Foundation allows individuals with severe and profound mental illness to remain or integrate back into their community of choice. Our services are steeped in the fundamental belief that every individual has the right to live in the community of their choice utilizing non-professional and professional supports. Supported employment, residential rehabilitation, and psychiatric rehabilitation services are used in tandem to offer individuals a comprehensive array of treatment options. Our program is built upon the individual strengths of each person recognizing that personal achievement is fostered through positive reinforcement.