THE SERVICE STATION MODEL
“You’ve been through a lot and we know you have a lot of needs right now. Come and get some of what you need.”
The Opportunity
What It Involves
The Way Forward
Establish a working team. Identify your strengths. Reach out to local parole offices and other service providers to identify contacts, establish partnerships, and learn where and how you can fit in and add value.
Congregations can build on their strengths. This model is modular (only do what you are capable of) and scalable (pick a frequency that works for you). Top needs are feeding, clothing, hygiene kits, and help with transportation.
A large number of returning citizens have practical physical needs that can be met by ordinary congregations without a large investment in time, resources, or volunteers.
If you’re a fairly typical congregation with limited resources and you want to get started in reentry, this is probably the first place to start. That’s be- cause, as a group, returning citizens tend to have a lot of tangible physical needs. During incarceration, most men and women lose many of their posses- sions. They then experience an extended period of time between their release and when they have steady income. Some are returning to an environment where their immediate basic needs are being taken care of, but many aren’t. They’re scrambling to make ends meet, and they’re looking for welcoming people and accessible places where they can find the services they need, and “grab and go.” The top four common needs met by the Service Station model are food, clothing, hygiene kits, and transportation assistance. Food assistance can take a variety of forms, depending on your circumstances. Some congrega- tions are able to stock a food pantry. Others choose to offer prepared meals. Still others pack meals and deliver them off-premises. Clothing closets can offer appropriate street clothes and/or clothing for job interviews. Hygiene kits with toiletries and/or basic medical supplies can fill an important gap.
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