Staff Spotlight
Greg Bivens, CREST Center Provide Sobriety, Stability to New Haven Residents
Greg Bivens, MS, Program Manager, The Connection Community Reporting Engagement Support and Treatment (CREST) Center
“CREST is tailor-made for every individual – they actually care about you and your well being. If I hadn’t gone to the CREST program, I’d still be out there using drugs. I’d just be another statistic,” asserts Calvin, a graduate of The Connection’s Community Reporting Engagement Support and Treatment (CREST) Center housed on the Fellowship Place campus in New Haven. Chris, another CREST graduate, nods in agreement.
The CREST Center is a community-based program provided in partnership with Fellowship Place and the Connecticut Mental Health Center that serves individuals involved in the Criminal Justice System who suffer from mental illness or are dually diagnosed with mental illness and addictions. Case managers assist clients in getting housing, receiving appropriate clinical care and ensuring their involvement with support groups.
“Our program model focuses on a client-centered approach,” Greg Bivens, Program Manager for CREST, says. “We try to take each person where they are and work with them to get them stabilized and working toward short- and long-term goals that make sense for them." The client-centered approach is absolutely critical to the success of the program. Until they arrived at the CREST Center, Calvin and Chris lived in different worlds.
Calvin, a 48-year-old male who suffers from schizo-affective disorder, bipolar disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder due to childhood abuse, has been involved with the criminal justice system since he was 11 years old. Upon his most recent release, corrections officials referred him to the CREST Center, where he “graduated” after five and a half months.
Born and raised in New York, Chris, 42, is a college graduate who worked for many years in the computer industry. His initial recreational
use of cocaine snowballed into an addictive and harmful habit. After an attempted robbery, he was sent to prison for two and a half years,
and was discharged to the CREST Center, where he stayed for five months. Today, Chris is working as a part-time bookkeeper for a local
church and teaching computer skills to adults battling substance abuse. His goals are to maintain independent living and to find a part-
time job in the computer industry.
That the two men have become success stories – staying clean and sober and maintaining stable housing and community involvement
after suffering from acute episodes of mental illness and serving time in prison – is a testament to the work of Greg and his staff. The
challenges each faces are amplified by the fact that their criminal records make it very difficult to find stable, permanent employment. Still,
knowing that CREST is a place where each is welcome to stop by if they are in trouble helps them maintain their sobriety and stability.
“They actually care about your well being,” Calvin says. “They give advice, understand, and show compassion. They’re really concerned
about me and my life outside of CREST, and knowing that helps me focus on taking my medications and doing, or not doing, whatever’s
necessary to say out of prison. The CREST program is practice for real life – practicing patience, and staying clean and sober.”
CREST Program Manager Greg Bivens grew up in New Haven, knows the community well, and is committed to living and working here.
He grew up in a New Haven housing project because his mother, a single parent, was struggling to make ends meet. But she valued education and instilled this value in Greg and his sister – sending them to parochial schools through the sixth grade, when she was able to move to another part of the city.
“Early influences were important in shaping my perspective,” Greg says. “Mother always taught my sister and me to be ‘our own people…do the best you can do… just because you’re in the projects doesn’t mean you have to stay there.’” It helped, too, that Greg was academically gifted. “When I was 15, I won a scholarship that took me to France for a summer. I saw that the world was much larger than Brookside, or New Haven.”
Greg graduated salutatorian of the Hillhouse High School class of 1996, received a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Connecticut, and earned his master’s degree in psychology from Southern Connecticut State University. He began working at New Haven-based APT Foundation in 2001, in several research positions, and later with Yale Department of Psychiatry as a training coordinator.
While at the APT Foundation, he conducted research on substance use and abuse, performed psychosocial assessments, and facilitated therapeutic groups. He was also a part-time consultant with the Non-Violence Alliance (NOVA), working with male domestic violence offenders.
When the grant funding ended in the spring of 2007, Greg found himself on the job market. A colleague with whom he’d worked while at NOVA, was on staff at The Connection. She suggested he apply for a position with the newly funded CREST program, and was subsequently hired to be program manager.
The qualities that Greg brings to his position: genuine interest in people, compassion, passion for his job, his program, and the agency, and a fine intelligence to which people respond enthusiastically, were the core values that made him ideal for his recent appointment as Agency Representative for The Connection where he serves as liaison between the agency and the New Haven community.
“I like to take advantage of opportunities,” Greg says. “And I try to be open to different things so that when opportunities present themselves, I’m prepared to do my best.”
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Calvin, 48
CREST Grad
