“How far back do you wish me to start the story?” Aisha Elliott asked me.
I told her to begin with whatever she felt was best.
“Well, I got here into contact with Hour Children while I used to be incarcerated, serving 25 years to life for a second-degree murder charge,” she began.
Ms. Elliott’s voice sounded firm and self-assured. She was calling me from Cleveland, Ohio, where she moved in 2020 to depart Latest York, the state of her upbringing and her incarceration. She had spent 21 years within the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, two within the Albion Correctional Facility and two within the Taconic Correctional Facility.
Ms. Elliott entered prison as a 20-year-old in 1992, and like greater than 60 percent of incarcerated women in America today, she was a mother of youngsters under age 18. On the time, she had no idea if or how she would see her toddlers, then 1 and three years old, again.
The statistics weren’t in her favor: A 2020 report from the Department of Justice found that incarcerated women lose parental custody at among the highest rates of any parents—including parents whom courts have found abusive or neglectful. Children with moms in prison are significantly more prone to face jail time and homelessness across their lifespan.
Children with moms in prison are significantly more prone to face jail time and homelessness across their lifespan.
But Ms. Elliott managed to beat these odds, with the assistance of a corporation that enrolled her in parenting classes during her sentence, provided her housing when she got here home on June 2, 2016, arranged for her first job out of prison and trained her for her second. That organization known as Hour Children, and Ms. Elliott said that without it her family could be in pieces.
“My kids are my best possible friends. Now we’ve the best, coolest relationship, and there’s no way that I can attribute that to anybody apart from the parenting center and the courses I took,” she said.
Since 1992, Hour Children has helped a whole lot of girls like Ms. Elliott reintegrate not only into society but into their family lives. The Queens-based nonprofit applies a uniquely holistic approach to helping incarcerated women, with a presence inside women’s prisons in Latest York State and within the lives of inmates after release in Latest York City. Their initiatives aim to arrange women during their sentence for re-entry into society after which provide support after it ends.
This mission informs all the pieces about Hour Children, including its name, which is a reference to a few crucial times for an incarcerated mother’s relationship together with her child: the hour of her arrest, the hour of their visit while incarcerated and the hour of their reunification upon release.
This yr marks the thirtieth anniversary of Hour Children, which has grown from an unassuming but adamant voice of advocacy for imprisoned women to an important presence in several of Latest York State’s female correctional facilities.
Since 1992, Hour Children has helped a whole lot of girls like Ms. Elliott reintegrate not only into society but into their family lives.
Everyone I spoke to, from current employees to alumnae of this system, credited the nonprofit’s success to 1 woman: its founder, Teresa Fitzgerald, C.S.J., known affectionately as Sister Tesa. It was her vision three a long time ago that launched Hour Children out of a run-down convent constructing within the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City.
An Unplanned Ministry
Sister Tesa retired as the manager director of Hour Children in July 2021 to start her tenure as president of her religious order, the Sisters of St. Joseph. She joined the order immediately out of highschool in 1964. Her parents, each Irish immigrants, had raised her within the hamlet of Hewlett, N.Y., on Long Island.
She encountered the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph while in Catholic school, just as she was discovering her own interest in education. By the point she graduated, she had discovered her vocation. “They were wonderful role models and good people, completely happy people. That’s why I selected to do it. I never regretted one second,” Sister Tesa told me.
She began her profession as an educator, teaching and serving as a principal in several Catholic schools on Long Island. She loved working with children and had no plans to vary her ministry.
But her work took an unexpected turn in 1979, when one other Sister of St. Joseph, Elaine Roulet, invited members of the congregation to affix her in helping incarcerated women. Sister Elaine had been working with moms on the Bedford Hills facility in Westchester County, N.Y., since 1970, advocating for a playroom and a nursery contained in the prison. Now she desired to help inmates rebuild their families upon their release.
Sister Tesa joined Sister Elaine to begin Windfall House, initially founded as a spot for girls to live once they got here home from prison, hoping to attach with their children. Soon after, Sister Tesa began searching for a everlasting place where children could stay and visit their moms during their prison sentences.
In 1986, as she was pursuing this concept, she realized a convent constructing could provide an appropriate location for the brand new service. Her religious order had a presence in St. Rita’s Catholic School in Long Island City, and a few of those sisters told her that the pastor at St. Rita’s could be willing to sell the old convent round the corner.
Sister Tesa began searching for a everlasting place where children could stay and visit their moms during their prison sentences.
“We met one night, the dark of night, and he was just very open and supportive of all of it,” Sister Tesa said. “We negotiated all the pieces on the sidewalk.”
She called that facility My Mother’s House, and it stays a part of the Hour Children network today. For nine years, the ministry that will develop into Hour Children operated out of that convent. Sister Tesa said that each one the sisters trained as foster parents, and a gaggle of youngsters lived with them during their moms’ sentences; the sisters regularly drove the youngsters 45 miles north to Bedford Hills for visits.
Before long, Sister Tesa expanded the work of the organization to help formerly incarcerated moms beyond just caring for his or her children. She incorporated and officially named the organization in 1992. Her tenet when she founded Hour Children remained the identical throughout her tenure as head of the organization: “Take heed to the people you serve.”
“You don’t put your personal expectations on the market, your personal vision,” Sister Tesa said. “You take heed to their stories, and also you take heed to the stepping stones they needed to actually move forward with their life.”
This principle developed into Hour Children’s current model of providing tools for achievement during prison in addition to housing and job resources after release. Sister Tesa began increase Hour Children’s offerings in Long Island City, purchasing recent buildings to accommodate more women during their re-entry, while she built up services available inside prisons.
Those in-prison programs included parenting classes, Ms. Elliott’s early introduction to Hour Children in 1995. She said she took classes entitled “Parenting From a Distance” and “Parenting Through Movies.” Slowly, she became more involved with Hour Children and commenced working within the parenting center herself.
“Take heed to the people you serve. You don’t put your personal expectations on the market, your personal vision.”
Ms. Elliott said she initially gravitated toward Hour Children because Sister Tesa was eyeing recent housing opportunities for girls without young children, and her own daughters could be adults by the point she left prison. She knew she would wish somewhere to go when that day got here.
During her 20-year involvement, Ms. Elliott developed a relationship with and deep affection for Sister Tesa, the slight, smiling Irishwoman wearing a gold crucifix who seemed concurrently comfy and in charge while working at Bedford Hills.
Upon her release, Ms. Elliott moved into an Hour Children house. By that point, Sister Tesa had built a system for re-entry that provided women a big selection of tools they may must succeed after incarceration, each as residents and as moms.
Sister Tesa had listened to the post-incarceration struggles of her clients and responded to them. She had expanded housing offerings, profession paths and child care services to deal with a variety of her clients’ needs. Hour Children has develop into a national model for assisting re-entry, earning Sister Tesa recognition from the Obama administration, CNN, Irish America magazine and others.
As she begins a recent phase of her vocation, Sister Tesa said that she is going to lead the Sisters of St. Joseph with the identical principles of affection and mercy that guided her at Hour Children. She is very keen on a maxim often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel. When vital, use words.”
“That’s an important piece of the Gospel message for me, that we have a look at people and accept people for who they’re, and don’t use labels,” she said. “Every human being is admittedly necessary in God’s eyes. There’s no such thing as a castout, ever.”
Houses and Homes
On a weekday afternoon, the block of twelfth Street between thirty sixth and thirty seventh Avenues in Long Island City echoes with the laughter of youngsters. Among the many low, discolored brick buildings and chain link fences are several schools—public, charter and Catholic, all inside a three-block radius—together with a library and playground nearby. When recess starts, everyone knows it.
It’s a fitting neighborhood to accommodate Hour Children.
Rubernette Chavis, the director of mental health initiatives, walked me across the block and took me into the Hour Children buildings. On the way in which, we passed a hair salon founded and run by one in every of Hour Children’s former clients. Ms. Chavis identified businesses that donate food or services to the charity.
“I do know, each time I get pizza, to go to that pizza parlor because they assist us out,” she said, pointing to a storefront across the road that gives coupons and gift certificates for Hour Children events and fundraisers.
The array of services now provided by Hour Children reflects the complex and infrequently interrelated needs of girls caught within the justice system.
We headed into My Mother’s House, that first housing facility purchased by Sister Tesa greater than 30 years ago. It was immediately clear that this was a convent, with its wide communal dining room and kitchen.
Hour Children has made the space its own since then. No two partitions are painted the identical shade of vibrant green or purple or blue. The basement has been converted right into a day care center.
Lots has modified within the organization since its founding. The array of services now provided by Hour Children reflects the complex and infrequently interrelated needs of girls caught within the justice system. Programs within the prison facilities and in Queens work in close relationship to provide clients one of the best shot at successful reintegration.
In Bedford Hills prison, “everybody knows Hour Children,” said Christina Illenberg, an executive assistant. She spent 25 years incarcerated, most of it in Bedford Hills, and she or he said that she spent about 4 of those years working for Hour Children before her release in 2020.
Hour Children runs the nursery there for girls who give birth while in prison. Due to the efforts of Sisters Elaine and Tesa a long time ago, working in tandem with dedicated and driven women inside, moms can live with their child for as much as 18 months after birth. That point is crucial, not just for the emotional wellbeing of mother and child but in addition to permit the mother to work out what comes next. Some women are released in time to go home with their babies. Others must start planning and heartbreaking decisions about custody for the kid.
Due to the efforts of Sisters Elaine and Tesa a long time ago, working in tandem with dedicated and driven women inside, moms can live with their child for as much as 18 months after birth.
Judy Clark didn’t give birth in prison, but her daughter was only one yr old when she was arrested in 1981. Ms. Clark was a key player in constructing Hour Children’s initiatives in Bedford Hills during her 38-year sentence. She said that she began working with Sister Tesa from her earliest years inside.
“The youngsters’s center was a serious a part of the experience inside,” she said. “It was a community by which we built the programs to handle the problems we experienced.”
Ms. Clark remembers the event of the curriculum for the classes that Ms. Elliott took, focused on tips on how to parent from prison. She said that girls would write letters and record bedtime stories on tape to send to their children. Similar methods are still taught within the Hour Children parenting centers.
Ms. Clark said that Hour Children’s growth was spurred by the changing needs of the ladies involved. When it began, she said, most of their clients were young moms. But when that modified, the choices needed to expand.
“As our kids grew, we saw recent needs. As our kids became teens, we knew that the children of their teen years needed different experiences with one another and with us,” she said.
“It was a community by which we built the programs to handle the problems we experienced.”
One thing that didn’t change, nevertheless, was the organization’s deal with physical visits. The visitation program has retained the identical mission and basic format because the Nineteen Seventies, transporting children to reunite with their moms inside, whilst its capabilities have grown. On the maximum-security Bedford Hills prison, Hour Children provides a week-long overnight experience in partnership with local host families. This past summer, 35 children stayed in nearby homes and made use of each minute of the prison’s seven-hour visiting time every day.
In consequence, children can come from all around the state as a substitute of just nearby Latest York City. Once that program began, Ms. Elliott’s children visited her from Utica during her time in Bedford Hills—a 220 mile journey only made possible by a bunch family.
Post-Prison Success
The last word goal of all of those in-prison initiatives is to set women up for achievement upon their release. Many ladies searching for to develop into clients of Hour Children undergo an intake process and interview while still incarcerated. Ms. Clark spoke a few “mutual commitment” made between the 2 parties.
That’s because Hour Children means greater than just reasonably priced apartments, as Ms. Chavis explained to me. It’s a comprehensive program. Women who qualify to live in My Mother’s House fall in Population G of Latest York’s supportive housing laws; they either have a disabling medical condition or a substance use disorder. Other houses offered by the organization serve other at-risk populations.
Most ladies in this system will move through communal housing and into everlasting housing, but all undergo at their very own pace. When Ms. Elliott left prison in 2016, she got here to the Hour Children house in Richmond Hill, a neighborhood to the southeast of Long Island City. Hour Children allowed her to tour all the facilities, including the more independent housing that she would move into later. Ms. Elliott said that one apartment in Flushing called to her.
“When it’s my turn to live independently, that is where I would like to live,” she recalled pondering. “Now that I’m in a whole house, it was only a room. But once you’re coming from a cell, that room looked really big.”
“Now that I’m in a whole house, it was only a room. But once you’re coming from a cell, that room looked really big.”
Not every room at Hour Children houses moms and their children together. At My Mother’s House, for instance, only five of nine apartments host families with young children. Ms. Elliott said that she determined during her exit interview with Sister Tesa that it could be a nasty idea to try to maneuver back in together with her family in Utica. Widespread substance abuse and a scarcity of job opportunities would likely have landed her back in prison. But she also needed her own space to regulate to the realities of 25 lost years.
“Even once they’re 30 and 32, they’re still 1 and three in your mind. You may’t go home to grown folks and be mommy. It just destroys relationships,” she said.
The employment-focused Hour Children program, called Hour Working Women, can be based in Long Island City. It currently provides education and job trainings for 36 clients. Recent offerings have ranged from electrocardiogram and medical assistant training to culinary classes. Hour Children works one-on-one with women to search out job opportunities, providing footholds that allow them to begin being profitable and paying bills.
In essentially the most recent cohort of 12 women who accomplished certified medical assistant training, 10 have been placed in paid internships, and eight are negotiating job contracts for after their internships end.
Programs within the prison facilities and in Queens work in close relationship to provide clients one of the best shot at successful reintegration.
Ms. Elliott trained as an electrician and joined a neighborhood union, working on the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, amongst other projects. She enjoyed the work, though she didn’t ultimately remain in that job.
As she moved through her re-entry, Ms. Elliott found essentially the most independence and self-reliance that she experienced since 1992. When it got here time for her to depart Richmond Hill and have her first personal, private space in 25 years, the room she had yearned for in Flushing was available.
Ms. Elliott was ecstatic.
The Hours to Come
The executive offices of Hour Children occupy the basement floor of one in every of their residential houses; its employees work in the identical constructing where its clients live.
Dr. Alethea Taylor began her tenure as executive director of Hour Children in January of this yr, taking up for Sister Tesa. She was previously a distinguished lecturer on education and counseling at Hunter College, a task she enjoyed, she said, but that was not as fulfilling.
“I wasn’t living my purpose. And my purpose is to serve women who’re formerly incarcerated or justice-impacted, to assist them and guide them towards alternative and having a voice,” she said.
“My purpose is to serve women who’re formerly incarcerated or justice-impacted, to assist them and guide them towards alternative and having a voice.”
Dr. Taylor has never been incarcerated but grew up with members of the family who were out and in of prison. She saw how individuals who were left on their very own after incarceration were arrange for failure when applying for jobs or housing. She witnessed the various injustices of the American justice system. In her recent role, she said that she hopes to grow Hour Children’s advocacy work and prevention services while still providing its core offerings.
“Hour Children really must be a voice locally and be a voice within the political realm concerning the issues,” she said.
For now, this job falls primarily to Ms. Clark, who works as Hour Children’s first-ever community justice advocate. Ms. Clark works with city and state government to take motion on the needs of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people.
One gaping hole within the justice system, Ms. Clark said, is that conversations about life after incarceration are likely to start far too late into everybody’s sentence, leaving people scrambling and unprepared to return to their lives. “We want a system that appears at re-entry not at the top of your sentence but in the beginning of your sentence,” Ms. Clark said.
Ms. Clark and Dr. Taylor hope Hour Children might help change policy, addressing the basis causes of post-prison homelessness and unemployment in addition to treating their symptoms. Ms. Clark is currently fighting for the Fair Probability for Housing Act in Latest York City, which might outlaw discrimination by landlords against individuals with conviction records.
Ms. Clark is currently fighting for the Fair Probability for Housing Act in Latest York City, which might outlaw discrimination by landlords against individuals with conviction records.
Dr. Taylor said she hopes to broaden the scope of Hour Children re-entry services. She desires to expand family therapy, allowing the broken bonds between a mother and her partner or a mother and her own parents to heal. The first focus has all the time been on re-establishing the mother-child relationship. Dr. Taylor wants women to have the choice to increase that to other members of the family who might hold onto resentment.
Dr. Taylor also emphasized the work that is still to be done inside Hour Children itself. When she arrived, she said that staff had brought concerns to her about diversity and inclusion throughout the organization. “We’re a corporation that’s predominantly serving people of color, but our staff don’t necessarily match our clientele. In order that’s something that we might be working on,” she said.
Dr. Taylor doesn’t imagine in filling anyone’s shoes (“Everyone walks their very own journey,” she said), but she does hope to proceed Sister Tesa’s core mission.
“Because the founding father of this organization…she thought so succinctly about every aspect of a lady’s need, and built that into the organization,” Dr. Taylor said. “That’s someone that’s really fascinated by the house and the entire person.”
Hour Children will proceed to pry open doors that society has closed on incarcerated women.
Hour Children will proceed to pry open doors that society has closed on incarcerated women. So far as Ms. Elliott in Cleveland is anxious, their model for re-entry support is unmatched.
Ms. Elliott got here into prison as a high-school dropout, but quickly earned her G.E.D. and started taking university courses through a Mercy College program inside Bedford Hills. When President Clinton’s 1994 crime bill threatened access to those classes by denying Pell Grants for incarcerated women, she and Ms. Clark fought along with others to construct their very own program with Marymount Manhattan College. She left Bedford Hills a school graduate.
Now she works remotely for Columbia University’s Justice Lab, conducting research on mass incarceration across the country. Her work currently focuses on conditions within the state of Oklahoma.
On the day she left prison, Ms. Elliott remembers, she was released directly into the responsibility of Hour Children. They’d met together with her as she prepared for release, helping with tasks as fundamental as securing a state ID and as small as learning to make use of an iPhone. Now someone from the organization could be there waiting for her to take her to Queens for onboarding.
A minimum of that was the plan. But Sister Tesa made an exception for Ms. Elliott, one she is going to “without end appreciate.”
Her daughters picked her up as a substitute.
Christopher Parker is a Joseph A. O’Hare fellow at America Media. His work has been featured in Notre Dame Magazine, Arches Magazine, the Los Angeles Times and the Berkshire Eagle.