CHANGING LIVES, REBUILDING COMMUNITIES,
HELPING FAMILIES
AFFECTED BY INCARCERATION
CARING CONNECTIONS YOUTH & FAMILY
The Entire Family is Impacted by Incarceration
FailSafe-ERA Caring Connections promotes family reunification and provides supportive services to prevent generations of incarceration.
FailSafe-ERA Aspiring to Develop and Empower Sons (FADES) and Women Inspiring GirlS (WIGS) for youth ages 12-18, is designed to promote positive behaviors, confidence, and mindsets that resist criminal activities and thoughts, to include gang intervention. Participants learn practical tips and exercises to help them overcome obstacles and recover from life-altering decisions. They are challenged to examine how their behavior and choices are caused by their emotions, thoughts, and beliefs. They not only explore problems resulting in bad behavior, but also learn how to make good decisions. In addition to the youth intervention curriculum there are planned group and community service activities.
Equipping Children with Incarcerated Parents (ECHIPS) is a program designed for elementary aged children, to reduce the trauma and related challenges that children of incarcerated parents and loved ones often face. They learn social and emotional strategies where they can better cope with the challenges brought on by the situation that they are experiencing. The specific trauma informed interventions include psychoeducation about trauma, strategies for identifying distressing and irrational thinking and behavior, relaxation techniques, cognitive reframing, and emotion regulation skills.
Support Group
Failsafe Caring Connections offers a group counseling program for families affected by incarceration to promote healthy communication and positive relationships.
Individuals learn, in a supportive and non-judgmental environment, the techniques to properly grieve the loss of their incarcerated loved ones and how to survive the incarceration process, the most common being the shame associated with admitting that incarceration has touched their lives.
Through our family support group, we have given family members that were ashamed a voice. They learn how to manage expectations and how not to become an enabler once the loved one returns home.