WPA’s Targeted Assistance includes:

• Housing Placement and Retention Assistance
• Employment Readiness, Placement and Retention Assistance
• Mentoring
• Supportive Counseling for Women with HIV
• HIV Counseling and Testing

Additionally, assistance with child custody is provided through the Incarcerated Mothers Law Project.

Housing Placement and Retention Assistance includes workshops and individual assistance. Workshops focus on housing searches and development of independent living skills that will help women retain their housing. Budgeting, home maintenance, cleaning, and minor repairs, as well as tips on being a good neighbor and tenant are covered. Staff advisors work with women individually to review their housing histories and explore the client’s housing goals and the options available to her. Staff assist each woman with completing housing applications and assembling required accompanying documentation. Most women who have criminal convictions are initially rejected when they apply for New York City Housing Authority or Section 8 housing, so staff work with women to prepare an appeal of the initial finding.

Advisors work with realtors throughout the City and with other agencies that provide supported housing. WPA’s strong linkages with mental health and drug treatment organizations often result in priority placement for WPA clients who are appropriate for their available housing slots. After a woman is housed, staff continue to work with her to reinforce budgeting strategies and home care in an effort to improve the woman’s chances of retaining her community housing.

Employment Readiness, Placement and Retention Assistance includes group workshops and individual assistance. Clients can participate in job readiness, job search clinic, and mock interviewing sessions, and also work individually with staff advisors who help them focus and follow through with personal job search strategies. Clients can also learn computer skills, prepare their resumes, and get help finding and enrolling in vocational training.

Clients are coached on how to provide truthful and appropriate responses to questions about their criminal background. Advisors help women decide how to pursue job opportunities that restrict employment of people with criminal convictions and work toward removing barriers when possible.

Staff advisors work with a range of employers who are open to hiring people with criminal convictions and host job fairs a few times each year. Staff also maintain listings of jobs, job fairs, and job training opportunities and make them available to staff and clients throughout the agency. After a client is employed, staff continue to work with her to support her success in her job. Regular phone calls and visits to find out how a woman is faring in her job, an ongoing assessment, and planning for long-term career goals are part of the employment assistance available to our clients.

Mentoring relationships enhance the lives of women who are returning to the community after prison. A staff member reviews a woman’s interests and goals and matches her with a trained mentor who makes a commitment to serve as a resource and support for 10 months. The mentor is a consistent, reliable presence in the recently-incarcerated woman’s life, someone who provides encouragement and helps her activate resources in the community.

In prison, a woman is not entrusted with making decisions. In the community, she is expected to make and follow through on decisions regarding all aspects of life, from the most mundane choice about which brand of milk to buy to decisions about where to live or whether to attempt contact with estranged family members.

WPA recruits inmates who are getting ready to leave prison and matches them with mentors who have completed orientation and participate in regularly scheduled activities for mentors. WPA helps the woman develop goals and a case plan, and facilitates the introduction to her mentor. Ideally, the mentor and woman meet at the prison to initiate the relationship that will be a source of ongoing support without requiring that a woman revert into the role of client whenever she wants advice or assistance. Rather, the relationship is between two adults in the community who can help each other understand new points of view while improving the former prisoner’s self-esteem and ability to make good choices.

To find out how you can volunteer as a WomenCare mentor, click here.

Individual and group Supportive Counseling is offered for women who are living with HIV. At the Reentry Unit and at sites throughout the city, WPA staff facilitate support groups that address topics related to living with HIV. Family members and others who are important in the life of a person living with HIV are invited to attend sessions that address the affected and infected individuals’ feelings and foster development of constructive coping mechanisms. During individual counseling sessions, clients have opportunities to express and process their feelings about living with HIV, their lives, and the role they can play in stopping further spread of the disease. Through the counseling relationship, many women recognize that they could benefit from the ongoing support of a mental health professional, and, possibly, from medication. WPA counselors and case managers work together to connect a woman with a community-based mental health provider who can help her assess and address her psychological needs.

Many clients who are living with HIV seek assistance with disclosing their HIV infection to others. Supportive counselors work individually with women to plan, strategize, and role-play the disclosure conversation. Women often request that the counselor participate in the session. For some women, the counselor’s presence is a crucial source of strength that helps her share this important information. By sharing her HIV status, a woman can liberate herself from a need to keep it secret while reinforcing the message that everyone is at risk and can take steps to protect herself or himself from infection and prevent the spread of HIV.  

Anonymous HIV Counseling and Testing is offered by WPA at two women’s prisons, Bedford Hills and Taconic Correctional Facilities. This service complements the HIV education that WPA provides to new inmates, providing an immediate opportunity for women to learn if they have HIV so they can make decisions about treatment and disclosure. WPA encourages women who learn that they have HIV to share the information with prison medical staff who can initiate treatment and monitor their health.