The FAITHS Throughcare Program is a partnership between California State University San Bernardino and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department. FAITHS offers comprehensive assistance to all justice-involved participants, their families, and the whole of San Bernardino County utilizing an augmented “throughcare” model of rehabilitation. By addressing the needs of the offender rather than just addressing the individual offense, the goal is to reduce recidivism, improve the communities in which we all live, save taxpayer dollars through reducing correctional costs, and rupture the intergenerational cycle of trauma and incarceration. In addition to offering services to a diverse range of individuals and families, FAITHS and its partners will focus on finding solutions to assist the justice-involved veteran population, the struggles perpetuating homelessness, and racial inequity as a health crisis in San Bernardino County. For more information please visit FAITHS
The in-custody Trauma Recovery and Family Relations class is a 48-hour, attachment-based psychotherapeutic parent education course which is conducted on a monthly basis for justice-involved mothers and fathers at three of the four San Bernardino County jails. Classes are taught by clinical counseling and MSW interns who are under the supervision of clinical staff. The class is based on substantial documentation in the literature on the pivotal influence of attachment, family stability, and positive parenting practices on children’s well-being and healthy outcomes (as well as on reducing delinquency and incarceration), and the most current research on child development, which has as its centerpiece the critical importance of warm, sensitively attuned, responsive caregiving for the optimal development and well-being of children. Pre- and post-class assessments of parent knowledge and skills as well as feelings of competence and satisfaction are routinely conducted.
The TALK (Teaching and Loving Kids) program: Children aged 13 and under have the opportunity to visit their in-custody, justice-involved mothers and fathers on a weekly basis in a special evening program where volunteer student interns from CSUSB (who have participated in weekly on-campus trainings in positive child guidance and child development) set up “play stations” and assist parents and children as they read, play, and interact. Parents are encouraged to implement some of the parenting skills learned in the parenting class (e.g., active listening, validating their children’s feelings), and the supervising clinical intern uses these occasions to affirm the parents whenever they (or the student interns) observes the mothers/fathers implementing the positive parenting practices.
In the Trauma Recovery and Family Relations classes (a prerequisite for TALK), parents learn that reading aloud to children has myriad benefits. Studies show that one such benefit for children whose parents consistently read to them is that they are the most likely to perform the best, achieve the most, and reach the highest levels of education over time. Additionally, book reading also calms children by providing a warm and nurturing experience in which they receive their parent’s full attention.
Floortime is a strategy learned in the Trauma Recovery and Family Relations classes, which refers to a special period of unstructured, uninterrupted time. Floortime teaches parents to follow the child’s lead, stimulates creativity, and encourages warm, trusting, and emotionally close parent/child relationships.