Description Lydia Place provides a six-month transitional housing program featuring an eight-bedroom house with a large kitchen, living room, laundry room, and four bathrooms. The house is located close to the bus line, community pool, civic field and elementary school. We can serve up to eight families (18 people at a time) Each family has their own private bedroom and shares the rest of the house. There is a large fenced yard with outdoor play equipment. Lydia Place serves women and their children by offering shelter, individual and group parenting training, case management, and a program that assists them in moving from poverty to self-support and independence. There are two components to the program: Women's Residential Program:Lydia Place is designed to provide
each family the opportunity to both reorganize and restructure their lives or to "begin again". As the woman meets with the Case Manager, one of her opportunities will be to explore her situation in a safe, nonjudgmental environment and set goals for her future. The goals that each woman sets will vary according to her needs. She will monitor these goals with the support and assistance of the Case Manager. Any of all of the goals may be modified or changed as needed. Each woman will meet a minimum of one hour per week with the Case Manager. In addition, she will also meet weekly with the Family Services Coordinator to discuss parenting and other concerns about her children. The Lydia Place program includes two two-hour evening sessions per week. These sessions will focus on life skills training such as: - Parenting
- Communication skills
- Problem solving skills
- Health/safety issues
- Budgeting/finance
- Domestic violence awareness
- Community resources
- Follow-up Program
- Outreach/Prevention Program
Therapeutic Children's Program  While the women attend their evening groups and support sessions, their children participate in the Children's Program, staffed by the Family Services Coordinator and program aides. The Therapeutic Children's Program consists of two components - the parenting component specifically involving the mothers in learning parenting skills and the children's component which is designed to provide opportunity for trust building, increasing communicational skills and introducing methods of anger management. The Family Services Coordinator conducts regular parent education groups. These groups follow a classroom format introducing positive discipline techniques, and understanding of development and age appropriate behavior and methods of diffusing confrontational situations. The Coordinator also meets with each parent individually a minimum of once each week. These meetings result in personal goal setting by the parent, evaluation of parenting skills and help in accessing community resources such as counseling and other children's services. The Coordinator and her aides meet with the children in a group setting twice each week. These two-hour sessions consist of activities designed to foster interpersonal skills, communications skills, self-control, and anger management. Building self-esteem and trust are the underlying ingredients of every session. This is essential because these children have experienced fear, abuse, and loss as a result of the circumstances that have left them homeless. These two components working together help to break the cycle of violence and homelessness that have affected both the children and their mothers. |