Restoration Community Outreach

Restore, Renew, Recreate Life Skills Program

Restoration Community Outreach (RCO) has been working to establish wraparound services to meet the need of the population it serves, with the help of our community partners in Saginaw County. RCO has seen the impact that financial literacy courses, GED prep, mental health services, and physical health services has had with their client’s ability to move forward in their lives. With the encouragement and support of its programs, RCO has watched clients continue to gain access to housing opportunities, gainful employment, even start self-employment careers as the result of the program.

RCO will expand the Restore, Renew, Recreate Life Skills program to add even more services for men in the community with the 2022 SCF CII $25,000 grant. They hope to expand and include services like trauma informed care training, additional substance abuse training and services, as well as additional courses on self-motivation and improvement coaching. There is no consistent existing program for men in our community. These courses provide the ability for men in the community to have a centralized place to commune and address some of their immediate needs.

RCO is one of two organizations that serves homeless men in the Saginaw County area. They are the only organization that have no parameters on who they serve, and whether they provide services because of background or criminal history. Often RCO’s clients are coming directly from institutions needing reentry help back into the community. According to the American Psychological Association, over 600,000 individuals are released from prison annually, and three-quarters of them are rearrested within five years of their releases. Often men and women released from incarceration receive minimal preparation to renter back into society, through in adequate assistance and resources making reentry challenging.

RCO serves over 150 men in our community each year. Over 80% of those men have criminal records and struggle to find gainful employment, access to community resources for mental health and physical health services, or necessary life-skills courses to help them think of themselves differently.

The goals of the Restore, Renew, Recreate Program include:

RESTORE

• Increase the participants ability to process and handle past trauma and to communicate triggers to help.

• Connect participants to consistent mental health services, as well as physical health services in the community.

• Encourage participants to actively participate in daily peer group support session lead by community partners, or in-house substance abuse groups.

• Restore broken family ties, through counseling and family mediation sessions.

RENEW

• Connect clients with community organization to increase volunteering connections.

• Promote community-based projects for our client to participate in helping serve and support community efforts.

RECREATE

• Prepare clients to access housing programs like Rapid Re-housing, Permanent Supportive Housing programs if needed.

• Providing participants with materials to critically think about past financial mistakes, begin to create new and health habits. While establishing personal financial structures (i.e., savings account, checking accounts, etc.).

• Work with participants on goal setting techniques to reach their personal short- and long-term goals.

Objectives of the Restore, Renew, Recreate Program include:

Short-term

• Eliminate barriers between men and community mental health and physical health services.

• Provide training to trauma informed care for 90 men.

• Provide online training opportunities to 25 men for GED classes, and community college courses.

• Increase access to community resources such as housing, job training, and financial literacy.

• Provide 20 men with weekly access to counseling and personal therapy services through Solutions Behavioral Health.

• Provide 90 men with access to counseling resources in Saginaw County area.

• Increase employment by 15% amongst participants.

Long-Term

• Breakdown stereotypes against mental health services for men.

• Increase the recurring visits to primary care physicians for homeless men.

• Decrease homelessness amongst men by 10% at RCO.

• Decrease RCO recidivism rates by 20%, well below the state average.

Learn more about Restoration Community Outreach at rcoshelter.org.