She Thrives: A new path to recovery & wellness for women and their children
Watch a short video about She Thrives and Jessica, a program graduate, and read about her journey in the New York Times.
The OpenDoors She Thrives program is a new, integrated women’s reentry and family reunification initiative. As part of this project, OpenDoors operates two transitional women’s houses, the Foundations House and the Women and Children’s House. Each program provides a host of supportive services to justice-involved women as they work towards wellness and recovery. Over the past two years, we have helped over 100 women in this program. Women in She Thrives can now access GLP-1 medication for addiction treatment, providing another critical tool to help them in their journey.
Too often, women struggling with addiction and mental health issues are arrested and incarcerated instead of provided with the treatment they need. The majority of women in the Rhode Island prison are themselves victims of violence, and they are also mothers striving to take care of their children. Instead of a punishment only system, the She Thrives program works with the courts and prison system to provide women facing prison time to be diverted into our program.
Jessica, a program graduate, states “I’ve gotten stronger in my recovery—I used to have a pit in my stomach when I thought about drugs. I had drug dreams. Those are gone.”
Proving that we can save families and reduce incarceration when we invest in people, not prison.
Starting soon, this project will be integrated into a recent grant from the Department of Justice’s Second Chance Act with the goal of providing our services to 300 women over three years.
As part of this project, we will be running a randomized controlled trial to measure the impact of re-entry services on recidivism. This will allow us to rigorously prove that we can end the cycle of addiction and incarceration by investing in people, not prisons (Read more about our justice reinvestment policy campaign to reduce the size of the women’s prison here).
In order to fully fund this ambitious project, we need your help.