After incarceration, the process of rebuilding one’s life can be difficult and overwhelming. Returning to life unprepared for its realities can lead to the swinging door effect, where individuals become inmates again and again and families fall victim to the generational effect of incarceration.
The Next Door programs are an effort to provide intensive counseling, workforce development and case management activities to give women in crisis a good start for going back into their communities, reestablishing their lives and being productive citizens, says Chattanooga Program Director Regina Surber.
The residential six-month program of The Next Door began in Nashville in 2004. Also started here was a second program for both women and their children. This program offers a continuation of the same kind of services as the residential program, but is more family-oriented so that children live with their mother, participate in family counseling, and moms are given help to re-establish the family unit.
Last year, The Next Door started an outpatient treatment program in Nashville and opened a residential program in Knoxville and Chattanooga. With a capacity of 16 women, this local program begins from the moment women arrive with assessments of their needs, jobs skills, and history and information to begin helping them find a job.
Surber says, “We talk a lot about a job versus a career. You need that first job and then you can focus on what would you like your career to be. While you are working at this job, and it’s helping pay your bills, you can focus on more skills training for your career.”
The residential program also provides counseling for women through their issues, including dealing with substance abuse addictions and providing recovery-oriented classes. Women in this program learn financial and time management skills and other specific needs within their case management.
Surber has been involved with The Next Door since their beginning in Nashville. She was part of the group that did the planning before the facility actually opened, and started out as volunteer in overnight staff and other activities with women. She then went full-time with The Next Door and managed the women and children apartment complex for them in Nashville. In January of this year, she was sent to Chattanooga to open the new correctional release center program.
This program, the first of its kind in the state, is for women who are technically still incarcerated at the East Tennessee Correctional Facility. They spend their last 90 or 120 days in The Next Door community based setting doing all the things the residential program offers at a faster pace to give them a head start on moving back home.
“Many times we have found that women came up on that expiration date of their sentence and didn’t have a good solid plan in place. All they knew was to go back home, back to the old environments that got them in trouble in the first place,” Surber says. “[This program is] trying to give them an environment to think through if this is the best place for them to go back to.”
Through all of The Next Door’s programs, the staff works to decrease the rates of women returning to prison.
“For a lot of our women, jail or prison has become a swinging door. We are trying to stop that for them, also working with them and helping work with their children so we stop that generational trend of incarceration and addiction,” Surber says.
Volunteers are welcome and sought to assist The Next Door. From coming in to do one-day events to teaching classes on basic computer skills, cooking, crafting, or other areas, volunteers are important, because the women of The Next Door cannot always leave the facility. The Next Door welcomes donations such as clothing, especially interview appropriate attire.
As a faith-based organization, The Next Door doesn’t require anyone to be of a certain faith to be a participant in the program, but rather they offer different faith based activities such as Bible studies, faith and praise music, and Sunday morning services which are always in need of more volunteers for implementation.
“We see the women as worthy of a second chance,” Surber says. “Many of our women have never had that, and many of our women have always been told…you’re never going to do anything with your life.
“We are starting almost from the very beginning when they first arrive by building their self esteem, helping them understand they are worthy of respect,” she says. “To hear some of their stories and see them willing to try again is amazing. ”