For women who have been incarcerated, finding a job and stable housing may appear to be unreachable goals. That’s why agencies like Project Place have been working hard to help women transition to life beyond the prison walls.
The Boston agency, which has been providing services to homeless people for nearly four decades, partnered with the Suffolk County House of Correction and the South End Community Health Center last April to establish a program to reach women prior to their release from prison.
With the help of a grant from The Boston Foundation last year, Project Place was able to hire a staff member to run its Comprehensive Homelessness Intervention Program, a program that develops discharge plans for imprisoned women and connects them with services – from job training to mental health counseling – they will need once they are released.
This year, the organization was one of 18 to receive a total of $1 million in grants from The Boston Foundation, Tufts Health Plan, the Massachusetts Medical Society and Alliance Charitable Foundation to prevent homelessness in this state.
The goal of the Comprehensive Homelessness Intervention Program is to serve at least 50 women, said Suzanne Kenney, executive director of Project Place.
Kenney said the program was started after Project Place noticed that 60 percent of the homeless women that the agency served had been in prison at some point. Since the recidivism rate for young women is high, Project Place wanted to develop a program and hire someone who could coordinate services for women inside and outside of the prison system, explained Kenney.
“It’s a tough population. They have incredible barriers that they’re faced with and more often than not they’re going to repeat the cycle until they’re old. Age is the one factor that reduces the recidivism rate,” Kenney said.
“We looked at our data and realized more than half of the women who we work with have post-traumatic stress disorder, and we wanted to address those issues while they were in prison and make them aware of the community resources that existed and support their transition to a healthy, productive life outside of the walls of prison,” said Kenney.
With the $60,000 grant from The Boston Foundation and other groups, Project Place will help pay the salary of the director of client services, who was hired last year to coordinate services for these women.
According to Kenney, 82 percent of the women served through the Comprehensive Homelessness Intervention Program last year obtained stable housing. But Kenney questioned whether these women actually secured “stable” housing because many of them returned to a housing situation that existed before they went to prison. “It’s either a bad situation or a temporary situation,” she said.
Parents Program
In West Newton, a local community health center is trying to prevent another vulnerable population from becoming homeless: pregnant teen-agers. The Newton Community Service Center is using a $55,000 grant from the foundations to pay part of the salary of a tri-lingual staff person to work with immigrants and non-English speaking families that are part of the Parents Program for Pregnant/Parenting Teens.
The center established the Parents Program 20 years ago. Program Director Nancy Johnson said the project started out as a basic support group and has grown over the years into a comprehensive program that offers support to about 80 families a year.
“We’re different from a lot of other programs because [we take] a multidimensional and multigenerational approach,” said Johnson.
Young pregnant and parenting women in Waltham, Newton, Needham and the surrounding towns can access clinical counseling and a variety of other services through the program. The goal is to prevent them from becoming homeless.
The program also manages five affordable apartments at the Kayla Rosenberg House in Newton. The property provides transitional housing for young women with children who are working to becoming financially and emotionally self-sufficient.
In addition, grandparents, who often struggle with the adjustment of having a daughter and grandchild living under the same roof with them, can get support through the program.
Many of the pregnant teens are referred to the program by Waltham High School. Today, about one-third of the pregnant teens and their families are from Central and South America, or Puerto Rico and Mexico, and many of the grandparents don’t speak English, said Johnson. To help this population, the center recently hired a staff person who speaks Spanish, Portuguese and English.
Building Bridges
Another program serving at-risk youth that received a grant was the Transitional Day Program at Bridge Over Troubled Waters. The Boston agency founded the program in 1997 to reach out to young people who were living on the streets or temporarily staying with friends or family members and were having a difficult time transitioning into the agency’s counseling program.
“We wanted to come up with a low-barrier way for them to access basic needs, like food, shelter, clothing, and build a relationship to move to long-term counseling,” said Karen Perella, coordinator of the Transitional Day Program. “It was our first step for kids who are chronically homeless or couch surfing.”
The $45,000 grant is going to be used to provide case management to youths that are dependent on friends or acquaintances for housing and facing barriers to obtaining more permanent housing. Through the program, which serves about 100 new clients a year, youths are individually assessed and either placed in a transitional living program or in an apartment on their own or with roommates. Youths may also go through job training.
This is the second year that The Boston Foundation, Tufts, Massachusetts Medical Society and the Alliance Charitable Foundation have awarded funding through the Homelessness Prevention Initiative.
The grants were distributed to programs that offer discharge planning and placement for those being released from care and custody, supportive housing services, mental health support and substance abuse counseling.
Other groups that received funding include: Advocates Inc., which will provide legal support and assist Metrowest families with finding affordable housing through its Housing Advocacy Services Program; Caritas Communities, a Braintree-based nonprofit group that will grant rental assistance and locate housing for low-income individuals; and Family to Family, which will offer direct financial assistance and stabilization services to families in the Boston area through a collaborative of six agencies.
