Dinner, peer support and conversation with Haven
We will provide youth support groups: building community, support and skills by cooking and eating together. Each group will be facilitated by professional staff.
Leader
Amy Albert
Location
to be announced Jersey City, NJ 07304
About the project
We, a team of parents, community advocates, social workers, public safety professionals, educators, and public defenders are working to create the first adolescent respite center here in Jersey City. The center will provide teens and families experiencing intra family conflict with both community based services when safe and appropriate and short term voluntary residential stays when necessary as an alternative to homelessness and criminal justice involvement.
Haven Adolescent Community Respite Center is designed to support adolescents and their families during times of domestic conflict. We provide counseling, positive opportunities for youth development, and peer support for adolescents and their families without stigma and without assigning blame in an effort to keep youth at home when possible and safe. We provide a short term residential alternative to incarceration or homelessness when necessary. We create a partnership with existing community organizations and a family’s own social network to provide young people and their families with long term solutions to family conflicts which adolescence, poverty, social and political pressures and mental health and drug addiction intensify.
This is our second funding phase. We hope to fund an initial community based program, provided by the staff of the respite center which will open next year both to address the immediate needs of the teens and families we serve and as a means of building the trust and community connection necessary for a successful respite center once it opens.
The Steps
Beginning JANUARY 20! , groups of 10 teens, 14-18, experiencing family conflict will come together to cook and eat dinner with support from a Haven Youth Advocate. A Haven social worker will be present to facilitate discussion over the meal.
A local church, St. Paul's, has donated space. An amazing group of neighbors and community members have already provided more than three thousand dollars to support the project. The City provided the pots, pans and plates. Many of our community advisory board members will host a group of youth from their communities in the upcoming weeks - stretching to the many communities of Jersey City. We would love your help too. 250 funds a dinner. 10 dollars funds a seat at the table. We appreciate it all.
Why we‘re doing it
We as parents, community members, and youth service providers are thrilled to provide a new alternative for youth and their families when conflicts intensified by stress, poverty, racism, etc., get too intense. We hope we can divert young people from long term homelessness and criminal justice involvement and be contributors to a strong and vibrant community support structure for Jersey City families with teens. We are looking forward to building a strong relationship with young people in Jersey City which acknowledges and instrumentalizes the incredible community resources that already exist. We hope that by beginning with positive skill building, food and conversation, we can establish the trust we will need to be a true resource for youth and their families.