Survey: Prospective Guest

Who we are
Eli's Place is a non-profit residential mental health program in Ontario, a working farm where clinical care, meaningful work and community are part of everyday life, and where young adults living with serious mental illness build a life worth living.

Why we are asking
Eli's Place is preparing to open in Ontario, Canada this fall. Before we do, we want to understand the people we hope to serve, what you are looking for, what would make this workable, and what would stand in the way. Your answers will shape how we describe the program, how we plan, and what we learn about the need for programs like this.

This is not an application
Nothing here places you or anyone else in an admissions process. Completing this survey does not hold a place or create a file. When admissions open, that will be a separate process you choose to start.

This survey is anonymous
We do not ask for your name or contact details anywhere in this survey. Please do not include names, contact details or clinical specifics in the written answers. Responses are held securely and will only ever be reported in summary. After you submit the survey, you will be redirected to a separate, optional form where you can choose to sign up for Eli's Place updates. Any contact information you provide there will not be linked to your survey responses.

You can skip anything
The survey takes approximately 25 minutes to complete, and it would be very helpful to us if you could afford the time to complete the full survey.

However, you can skip any question and most offer "Prefer not to say" as an option. An incomplete response is still useful to us.

If you need support now
Some of these questions ask about difficult things, and you can skip any of them. If you are in crisis or thinking about suicide, you can call or text 9-8-8 any time, free, in Canada and the US, or contact your local emergency services. This survey is anonymous and no one monitors your answers, so please don't use it to ask for help in the moment.

Note you must click "Submit Survey" at the very end of the survey for the process to be complete.

If you have questions about this survey, you can contact us at https://elisplace.org/contact/

By continuing, you are agreeing that you have read and understood the description above. 

This survey is for a young adult who is thinking about Eli's Place for themselves. From here on the questions are about you. If you are a family member or support person helping someone else look, or a clinician, there is a separate survey for each of you on our website.

We want to understand how you have gone about looking for support, and how a decision like this would get made.

These questions help us understand who is looking at Eli's Place. We ask them in broad categories so that no answer identifies anyone. Skip anything you would rather not answer.

Here's a short description of Eli's Place, the same one on our website. The rest of this survey assumes you've read it, so please take a moment now before continuing.

Recovery isn't simply a clinical event. It's a life we lead.

Eli's Place is a working farm north of Guelph, Ontario, where every part of life is designed to support recovery. It is not a hospital and not a crisis service. It is the recovery that comes after, for people ready to take it up. For young adults living with serious mental illness, it will be the first long-term therapeutic community in Canada to bring clinical care, meaningful work and belonging together in one place.

Guests will live here for around six months. There is real work to do on the land, clinical care alongside it, and the ordinary business of a life shared with other people. What makes it work is the combination and the time. Support from Eli's Place continues past the stay itself, through each Guest's move on to housing, education and work.

Eli's Place is for young adults between 18 and 35 living with serious mental illness.

Coming here will be a choice. Guests will arrive voluntarily and will be free to withdraw from the program at any time. The program will ask a great deal of the people in it: turning up to work, living closely with others, taking part in the life of the community day after day. It will suit someone past the acute stage of their illness and ready to use a long stretch of time to build something, rather than someone in immediate crisis. Where substance use is part of the picture, it will need to be settled rather than active.

Loyola House will be a home, not a hospital ward. Guests will look after themselves day to day, managing the ordinary business of daily living independently. Around that, Eli's Place will provide what makes it possible: a room of one's own, meals shared with the community, clinical care on site, and staff who take part in the life of the community alongside Guests.

No one will do this alone. Every Guest will have at least one family member or other committed support person who takes part in their treatment and in planning for what comes next. This is not a formality. Recovery has to hold after the stay ends, and it holds better when the people closest to a Guest have been part of building it.

Eli's Place suits some situations more than others. We're asking these questions to understand how our program potentially matches up with real circumstances, not to admit or screen anyone. There are no wrong answers, and it isn't part of any admissions process.

How well does each of these describe you?

Most Guests stay around six months, though each Guest's stay is guided by their own goals rather than a fixed term. The week has a rhythm to it. Each weekday brings together real work on the land, clinical care alongside it, and a community where people eat together and share tasks. Support continues after the stay, through the transition to housing, education or work.

How much of an obstacle would each of these be for you?

Eli's Place asks that every Guest have at least one family member or support person who can take part in your treatment and in planning what comes next. We are still working out exactly what that involvement will look like. These questions help us shape it.

Eli's Place is modelled on Gould Farm, a residential program in Massachusetts that has been running for over a century. A study published in 2019 followed Gould Farm Guests over fifteen years and found improvement across clinical and quality of life measures from admission to discharge.

How much do you agree with each of the following?

Eli's Place sits on a 600-acre farm and conservation property north of Guelph, in southwestern Ontario. It is about an hour and a half from Toronto by car. 

Eli's Place is a private, non-profit facility that relies on user-pay. This means payment is required for each Guest's stay and continued transitional support. Government funding is not currently available for a program like ours, and we are not yet in a position to offer subsidies or reduced rates. That may change in time, but it is where we stand today.

Guests live at Eli's Place for around six months, then continue with clinical support and coordination for about another eight months as they re-establish themselves in the community.

Across the whole engagement, the cost may fall in the range of $100,000 to $120,000, depending on how long a Guest stays.

This is what the program costs to run. We are a non-profit, so the fees are set to sustain the program and nothing more. There are no owners and no shareholders, and anything left over goes back into the program. We know this is a great deal of money. We need a realistic picture of who could pay it, so please answer as things actually are rather than as you might wish them to be. Telling us plainly is more useful to us than anything else in this survey.

How much do you agree with each of the following?

Every Guest has a private room. However, only some of those rooms have an ensuite bathroom, and those rooms cost more. Others use a shared bathroom.

How much do you agree with each of the following?

Thank you for taking the time. These answers will shape how we describe Eli's Place, how we plan for our first year, and what we learn about the need for programs like this in Canada.

Once you click "Submit Survey", you will be redirected to an optional signup form for targeted mailing lists.