Monday mornings, yoga instructors help the clients relax. On Friday afternoons, the center fosters discussions following a documentary screening. Twice a week, the staff and clients gather for group lunch. On Monday nights, the center holds peer counseling. Span’s Adolf Grant Center aims at helping clients cope socially. “When you come out, you’re trying to do the right thing.”
When you’re going to jail, you’re leaving a lot of messed up situations behind,” Robbins says. Like the clients’ struggles, Span’s services are not strictly technical. The staff also offers HIV counseling and substance abuse therapy for its clients. Approximately 61% of its clients are homeless. Located between Downtown and Chinatown, Span offers case management services to help ex-offenders find affordable housing, healthcare, and employment. “So they can put a name to a face, so we’re not just a faceless office building.” “We try to connect with people while they’re still inside,” Robbins says. With funding from the state and an increased awareness of ex-offenders’ needs, she says the staff is now 30 people. Robbins started working at Span 18 years ago, a time when people still smoked in their offices and the staff was seven people, she says. without money? How do you get a job without an I.D.?” April Robbins, Director of Administrative Operations, says these are a few initial challenges her clients face. has guided ex-offenders through the socialization of post-incarceration. You might start longing for that cold concrete cell, that monotonous regime, but you quickly reassure yourself, “This is freedom.”įor many ex-offenders, leaving prison is only the beginning of a journey of assimilating back into society. Coffee breath and incoherent chatter violates your personal space. With every ring of the bells and swoosh of the doors, more bodies pile in. on a Monday morning heading towards Park Street.
Suddenly, you’re on the Green Line B train, 8:00 a.m.
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