Corrections_Today_Fall_2024_Vol.86_No.3

CORRECTIONAL CHAPLAIN PERSPECTIVES

righting wrongs, being restored and living in harmony with others. As part of a broader federal ini tiative to reduce criminal recidivism, the federal government has con tracted with The Nehemiah Project (TNP) to provide reentry transition al housing in Washington, D.C. for adult men that have been released from federal penal institutions. TNP utilizes the therapeutic com munity model as part of its housing approach. TNP also provides supported employment services to assist with the resident’s upward mobility and overall plan to acquire and maintain permanent housing. According to the American Medi cal Association (AMA), housing qualifies as healthcare treatment. 3 Employment is recognized as a critical social determinant of health. 4 Residential monitors, managers and specialists are the front-line ser vice providers in recovery, reentry, and transitional housing programs. TNP re-imagined the contemporary thinking around operating reentry or recovery homes and developed a new working model for the residen tial staff: safety, security, surveillance, service, and swift sanctions . Safety involves addressing any condition or situation that poses significant risk of causing property damage, loss, or physical harm to residents, staff, visitors, neighbors, and the public or community. Secu rity refers to all of the measures and countermeasures taken to protect the people, program, and property, and to ensure that only authorized people enter and leave the prem ises. Surveillance involves open and not-so-obvious observation of the residents to detect and discover

recidivist behaviors as early as pos sible and to deploy interventions to mitigate any increased risk posed by the residents. Service refers to the general and direct, person centered services provided by all of the staff to the residents. In order for these services to be effective and efficient, the services should be intentional, specific, measurable, relevant, and timely. Swift sanctions involves the expeditious application of positive and negative conse quences for good and bad behaviors exhibited by the residents. The new working model for TNP’s residential monitors became an essential feature in organizing how services are provided to the res idents. However, the working model was not as useful to the other staff that are not residential monitors. TNP reimagined and conceptual ized another model that could be utilized more broadly by the other interdisciplinary staff: conciliation, coaching, counseling, consultation, and care management. Conciliation refers to removing barriers to service, establishing links and connections to services, iden tifying and addressing compassion fatigue, resolving complaints and re storing relationships, and settling all intrapersonal issues that interfere with the resident’s ability to mean ingfully and measurably negotiate his challenges. Coaching involves as sisting the residents with decisions to improve life and health through empowerment by using the schema/ habituation model, stages of change, and stages of recovery. Counsel ing refers to using information, education, and research on bio-psy cho-social-spiritual health to help

residents improve decision-making in those domains. Consultation involves providing insight into the nature and progress of bio-psycho social-spiritual conditions so that residents can choose better options toward recovery and rehabilita tion, resilience, improved quality of life, and community integration. Care management refers to assisting residents with making measurable progress toward self-care and utiliz ing lower forms of care. A critical feature of care management involves providing continuous surveillance to ensure that the determinants of health are addressed in the resi dent’s case. “TNP reimagined and conceptualized another model that could be utilized more broadly by the other interdisciplinary staff: conciliation, coaching, counseling, consultation, and care management.” This emerging model can assist a broad range of crafts and trades within the helping professions that serve correctional and forensic populations. The features within the model resonate well with the salient components of salutogenesis and are similarly found inside the scopes of practice for board certified chaplains and neurotheologians,

Fall 2024 | Corrections Today

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