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A: Parole and probation officers and boards may refer individuals to our program. To be eligible for our program, one must meet the following requirements:
- be affected by substance abuse and/or mental illness and be under community based supervision,
- live in the 7th or 9th precinct, otherwise known as the Lower East Side, and
- have a family member willing to participate in this program with you.
A: Case Management is a mode of service delivery to an individual that identifies links, coordinates and monitors assistance from formal service providers such as home health aides, community services, to informal resources, such as local churches and schools.
Family Case Management is an innovative approach that brings together the individual needing services with their family mentor, family members, the supervision officer (police, parole, or probation, or a court officer in the case of drug courts), and treatment providers to identify and build upon the family's assets and to build a network of healthy relationships. Family cohesion increases as families use their own and outside resources to meet their own needs and to combat problems like multi-generational cycles of substance abuse, domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, and mental illness.
A: The Bodega Model an award winning, proven methodology developed by Family Justice's direct-service arm, La Bodega de la Familia in 1996. The model draws on four disciplines: family systems practices, strengths-based models, case management principles and literature on partnering and collaboration. This Bodega Model is based on the formation of a partnership between individuals under community supervision, their family members, Bodega family case managers and government partners, such as parole and probation.
A: The majority of the staff speak Spanish and English.
A: Interfamilial crime, such as theft, is high, especially amongst populations that have been affected by substance abuse or mental illness. It can often be hard for family members to see those crimes within the context of substance abuse or mental illness. So family case managers' greatest task is to facilitate a process where both the individual under supervision as well as the family have the opportunity to develop respect for each other's strengths and positive aspects of their shared history.
A: The program is designed to about last one year and involves three distinct phases:
Phase 1: families are engaged in the family case management process and family strengths and community resources are identified;
Phase 2: the family case management team develops and follows a detailed family action plan, which guides the family case management process during all, or part of, the community supervision process; and
Phase 3: builds on the benefits of the family action plan by fortifying the transition from community supervision to life in the community with leadership and peer support skills and without supervision.
A: In 1996, under the auspices of the Vera Institute of Justice, Carol Shapiro attended a ride-along with the New York Police Department, looking for a suitable home for La Bodega. On the corner of Third Street and Avenue C, in the heart of the Lower East Side, she found an abandoned bodega (grocery), the site of a recent shoot-out that left New York City Police Officer Keith Prunty paralyzed and an alleged drug dealer dead.
After working in alternatives to incarcerations and corrections field for years and seeing firsthand the potential to tap the strengths and natural support of families, Carol set out to test the proposition that engaging and supporting the families of drug users under community-based justice supervision can improve the success of outpatient drug treatment and compliance with community supervision mandates; reduce the use of incarceration to punish relapse; and reduce the intrafamilial harms often associated with substance abuse and criminal justice involvement (e.g., domestic violence, truancy, eviction, and HIV/AIDS). The idea took form in the founding of La Bodega de la Familia, a family support center, located in a Latino community on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
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