Getting Ahead classes start again at GCDC
After a two-year hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic, Cooperative Christian Ministries and Clinic has restarted its Getting Ahead While Getting Out classes at the Garland County Detention Center.
The classes, which restarted in July, meet for 90 minutes twice a week for seven weeks, and there are 15 in the new men’s class and 10 in the new women’s class.
“Since 2015, there have been 37 Getting Ahead While Getting Out classes at the detention center, and there have been 296 inmate graduates from the detention center program,” CCMC Community Relations Director Sallie Culbreath said.
“And the detention center, they do an amazing job of providing opportunities for inmates to better their lives before they get out. And so that’s where Getting Ahead fit in. Getting Ahead While Getting Out just fit like a glove with their focus of providing inmates with opportunities to improve and, when they are released, have opportunities to, you know, become productive citizens again,” she said.
The clinic was “seeing thousands of patients” prior to the Affordable Care Act, but the need for that decreased with the passing of the law, Culbreath said.
“The common theme with everybody who came to the clinic was poverty obviously,” she said. “And so we recognized that our focus needed to broaden to look at how we can work to disrupt poverty. So we looked at several models that are going on around the country, and we adopted the Bridges Out of Poverty/Getting Ahead initiative in 2015.”
The Getting Ahead While Getting Out program grew out of CCMC’s Bridges out of Poverty initiative that began in
2015. The organization started the Getting Ahead classes, a 14-week program that is part of its poverty disruption program, and they started a similar program at the Garland County Detention Center the same year, which includes “an additional emphasis on creating a stability plan for the first 72 hours after the inmate is released,” a news release said.
Both programs help participants learn what keeps them in unstable circumstances and helps them develop plans to create a more sustainable future.
The stability plan is key to helping inmates who are getting out of jail succeed. CCMC’s advocacy services help the program’s graduates find housing and transportation, secure identification or other documents needed to fulfill release requirements, receive medical and mental health treatment, and more.
GCDC Director of Operations Capt. Belinda Cosgrove sees the program as a great partnership for the detention center and inmates who are getting out.
“It has certainly had a positive, measurable impact because the key to transitioning back into the community — which is the hardest thing for inmates — is that support system that CCMC provides,” she said in the release. “They have a safety plan for when they get out because once they’re out, they’re kind of on their own and sometimes go back to what they know best.”
Cosgrove said recidivism among graduates of the program is 21%, compared to a state recidivism rate of 48%.
“The positive, measurable impact is that if we provide skills and resources so inmates can go out and be productive citizens, we are reducing crime, we’re going to have less victims, and that is what law enforcement is about and that is certainly what Sheriff (Mike) McCormick and Chief (Deputy of Corrections Steven) Elrod are about,” she said.
The Getting Ahead program was able to continue throughout the pandemic, and there have been 637 graduates out of the 80 classes. Classes are offered by New Life Church, First Baptist Church, Garage Church, Hot Springs First United Methodist Church and Malvern First United Methodist Church.
The classes were put on hold for one day due to the spike in COVID-19 cases in Garland County, but Culbreath said those classes are expected to resume this week.
“They just put it on hold, on pause, out of caution for COVID,” she said. “But our understanding is they’re going to resume, and I think (this) week.”
Cosgrove said the break was not due to an outbreak at the detention center.
“It was a precaution we took,” she said.
For more information about the Getting Ahead classes, training or CCMC’s other poverty disruption efforts, call 501-3181153, extension 303 or email sbleifus@ccmchs.org.