Services

Building Bridges Inc. provide services to women who have been incarcerated for one year or more. Our assessment services will start 1 to 3 months prior to release date.

Our children's services are materials that are developmentally appropriate and culturally sensitive. Providing balance to the family unit which is essential in assisting with successful transition for our participants and their families.

Building Bridges Inc. services are established to help women through re-entry challenges, to strengthen their reunification with their families and the community. This is done through a collaboration of services:

Housing referrals
Relational-treatment approach
Individualized Gender-specific assessment and re-entry planning
Individual and group therapy
Family counseling
Case Management
Financial counseling
Job readiness skills training
Educational (GED) training

Goals

Building Bridges Inc. is a program dedicated to offering the following components to all program participants:

To facilitate individual change dealing addiction and destructive relationships, this may contribute to their problems or solutions.
To facilitate individual training & implement a barrier removal plan.
To initiate a positive training program using the talents of the participant.
To assist in the development of individual life goals & career opportunity planning.
To give aid to stopping the retention process, which includes reunification into the family/community & the prevention of intergenerational crime

Component One:

Screening, assessment and intake: Each woman will meet with an intake specialist to help design a program that will bring stability to her re-entry into the community and family life.

Component Two:

Training class consist of job readiness, life skills, job retention, and money management topics. The program utilizes a technique that continues a one-on-one management and training approach throughout the process. The children’s addiction education program is a part of this component as well.

The Children’s Program: Supportive Education for Children of Addicted Parents

The work of intervening with children of addicted parents is guided by a core set of values and philosophical orientation. This is a philosophy built by consensus among children’s program developers, prevention researchers, developmental psychologists, and managers of existing children’s programs. The program rests on four basic cornerstones:

Children deserve the right to their own recovery and healing
Children deserve to be treated with dignity, respect, value and worth
Children deserve to be listened to and heard
Children deserve the opportunity to be kids

The materials are developmentally appropriate and culturally sensitive.

Evaluations will be completed at the end of the training. This will give the program indicators of success or needed changes.

Component Three:

Participants meet with job placement specialists who will help to develop employment and life goals, complete a job reference sheet. To help them assess abilities, and career opportunities. Work on developing employment planning short and long-term goals.

Component Four:

Retention specialists track participants and family members who participated for 30, 60, 90 and 180 days and document success milestones. These milestones include removal of family barriers, meeting goals on the job, completion of training of life skills, job readiness, measure program success as well as housing and financial literacy education. The number of successful completions for all four components is reviewed by the director of the program and reported monthly. The database that tracks the number of people who complete the four components provides an overall measurement of program effectiveness.