Off the Streets® — Cincinnati Union Bethel

Helen Mulcahy, Summer 2016

This summer, I had the pleasure of working at Off the Streets. OTS is an organization under Cincinnati Union Bethel that takes in women who are struggling with prostitution and substance abuse and houses them. They also receive in-house case facilitation. They are connected with a case facilitator who then connects them to resources they may need to get their lives back on track, including food stamps, healthcare, legal help, and addiction/ emotional counseling. The women transition through three phases of recovery while they are staying at OTS. These three phases are safety, recovery and empowerment and getting through all three can take up to two years. I got to see a lot of great successes as the women transitioned to working jobs and looking for their own apartments, but I also got to see a few failures. Some women left the program suddenly to continue using and did not return. Relapse and disappointment is sadly often the reality of addiction and of the type of agencies that fight addiction. My role was to act as a case facilitator in many ways. I helped the women get to appointments, talked to them about their past experiences and also taught a class on mindfulness to relieve stress. The women really seemed to benefit from the class because in the past their only response to stress had been to use drugs. We did meditations to start each class and then I would teach a tool they could use to alleviate stress. We did things like art therapy, movement meditation and writing a letter to an emotion. I had a really wonderful experience interacting with the women in this class. I also got to see a lot of the administrative side of managing a non-profit social service agency by shadowing my boss. She let me sit in on all of her meetings with various members of the community such as counselors, PhD students, the CEO, and housing intake coordinators to name a few. I am so happy that I decided to get involved with Cincinnati community this summer so I can better serve the people that live here.