Summit House suspends residential treatment program : News-Record.com : Greensboro & the Triad's most trusted source for local news and analysis

GREENSBORO — Summit House has suspended its residential treatment program, which provided an alternative to prison for women with children.

Residents — about a half-dozen women and their children at the Greensboro and Charlotte sites — have been moved to other programs, officials said Monday. Several others had already graduated or left the program.

The temporary suspension came after the state changed the funding process for nonprofits such as Summit House, officials said. The programs, which had been included as line items in previous budgets, have to apply for funding grants for the fiscal year that starts Friday. It’s not clear when that money would be available.

Summit House officials plan to work with the Department of Correction to determine how to retool the program to best meet the state’s needs. They hope to reopen the residential program in January.

“Our focus will still remain serving the women and their children,” said Tim Wilson, chairman of Summit House’s board of directors.

“At this point, it’s a little unclear as to what the funding vehicles will look like,” he said. “So we’ll be waiting to see what comes out of the Department of Correction.”

He doesn’t know if the number of women who can be served at one time will be pared down when Summit House reopens. Stays likely will be shortened from 18-24 months to three to six months, he said.

State funding accounts for more than 75 percent of Summit House’s budget.

Wilson said other sources, such as fundraising, will be pursued more heavily.

In the meantime, several employees involved in running the residential sites have been laid off. Some will be contracted to help create a new model of operation, Wilson said.

“The program had not been looked at in a very hard way in years, and probably it was overdue,” he said. “I see it as a great opportunity for Summit House to serve North Carolina better.”

Summit House, founded in 1987, offers counseling, life and job skills training, parenting classes and substance-abuse counseling to women convicted of nonviolent crimes.

Children also receive services, such as mental health assessments and treatment, speech and hearing assessments, developmental evaluations and tutoring.

Officials say the program saves the state money because it reduces the rate of women returned to prison for committing another offense and it keeps children out of foster care.

Contact Jennifer Fernandez at 373-7064 or jennifer.fernandez@news-record.com

Andrew Brod

June 27, 2011 - 3:25 pm EDT

Too bad. Summit House saved the state money. It's hard to understand why that wouldn't be important at a time like this.

spartan2001

June 28, 2011 - 8:22 am EDT

Typical political thinking - make decisions based on the immediate short term, with no consideration of the obvious.

June 28, 2011 - 8:37 am EDT

I would love to see how these decision-makers make financial choices for themselves and their families.
Should we assume they don't pay for auto maintenance, and instead opt to paying 5 times as much for repairs?

Mya

June 28, 2011 - 11:19 am EDT

Pernicious power politics intentionally defunded Summit House, a cowardly act by a rigid Republican majority defying their avowed stance of upholding family values and honoring personal initiative to overcome adversity.

What has the legislature wrought in cutting Summit House? Plenty of no good, in the sense of slashing programs that save money and lives, especially women and children.

In consciously defunding the tougher than prison Summit House program, the family-eroding lawmakers will burden taxpayers with greater costs for expensive incarceration and foster care.

Equally repugnant is the legislative majority’s action perpetuating instead of preserving successful ways of breaking the multigenerational cycle of crime, poverty and substance abuse. So much for law and order, huh?

The detached, callous Republican’s action could easily be characterized as anti-women and anti-children. Perhaps it is understandable that insensitive men lawmakers (there's a pattern here) voted against women and children, but the women legislators — mothers!— voting that way. No excuse.

Come the next election dear sisters and mothers, remember this when you vote.

Budget austerity is honorable, but budget stupidity is reprehensible. That’s what the Republicans confirmed negating Governor Purdue’s budget.

The female governor, whom the Republicans love to hate at all costs, kept Summit House in her budget because she cares for mothers and children. Even so, the governor noted that it was a one-year alert to Summit House to wean itself from state funding and become more self-reliant as its program.

Fair enough. But the cut-at-all costs Republicans mercilessly axed Summit House cold, forcing it to close without the time or ability to raise funds to remain viable into the next fiscal year. Punitive delight over real sensitivity. Sad, sad, sad.

Get this: And only after persistent lobbying, did the gracious lawmakers consent to providing meager transitional funding. Meanwhile, Summit House still closed, with residents’ lives needlessly disrupted — mothers and children sent packing in the midst of transforming their lives.

Dashing success and honorable personal initiative, the legislature intentionally failed to support mothers and children benefitting from tough love second chance. Hard work, courage and dedication is too squishy, soft and liberal for them tough Republicans.

The Republicans didn’t care to know that Summit House consistently kept courageous mothers with their children, as a family unit they transformed their lives into self-reliant, good citizens, in a rigorous alternative to prison for women convicted of nonviolent offenses.

Prisons are warehouses with little or no demanding and required rehabilitation, especially for women convicted of nonviolent offenses.

Comparatively, Summit House and similar programs cut from the budget intervened with demanding, structured training, treatment and transformation.

The results? Ninety percent of Summit House graduates stay out of prison compared to the prison system’s unflattering and costly reincarceration rate of nearly 40%.

Locking up nonviolent mothers and sending their children to foster care erodes families is expensive as it is emotionally, financially and spiritually unproductive. Oh, yeh, what would Jesus do? Break up families. Hardly.

Damn the facts, the Republicans said in their unconscionable budget cutting. Children of incarcerated parents are more likely to fall into the criminal justice system themselves, according to gobs of research. That means many of the kids whose parents are locked up will, well, become the criminals in just a few years from now.

The hellbent legislative majority ignored the facts to fulfill their uncaring agenda. Cutting Summit House and similar successful women's programs have become a wasteful investment that will deliver a sour dividend of higher costs to taxpayers, broken families and more crime. Cut now and pay later. What brilliance!

As a worker in the criminal justice system, I call on the legislature to repent and refund Summit House and those other women's programs. Likewise, it’s time for right-minded, compassionate individuals, foundations and the business community in North Carolina to recognized Summit House and similar women's programs as a worthy investments returning stability and honor.

countryboy

June 28, 2011 - 1:04 pm EDT

Are we reading the same article...this is temporary and the participants are still in the program, just elsewhere. Even the director said it was time for an evaluation. Ease up on the hate.

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