Programs and Services
Life Skills Program
Employment and Education Services
Permanent Housing Assistance
Medical Care, Health and Wellness
Child Enrichment
Nutrition
Aftercare Services
Partner Organizations
Life Skills Program
This is mandatory for all adults residing at Overington House. It provides women in recovery with the information and support needed to develop stronger personal, parenting, family, and interpersonal skills that will help them achieve long-term independence and stability. Facilitated by Overington House’s Managing Director two evenings per week, the program covers a range of topics including: personal development, parenting skills, basics of financial management, housing basics, home management, survival skills, workplace skills and a focus on addictions and compulsions. In addition, Overington House included an integrated financial literacy component allowing members access to individual savings accounts, more advanced financial education and Alumni mentors to help guide women in transition. Overington House also offered an Alumnae Group component, comprised of successful graduates of its transitional housing program.
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Employment and Education Services
Through case management, women are referred and linked to employment counseling, skills training, GED, job readiness, and placement services available via federal and city training programs, including the Philadelphia Workforce Development Corporation and the JEVS Northeast EARN Center.
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Permanent Housing Assistance
In addition to support provided through the Life Skills program, Overington House collaborated with a professional counselor who provided on-site housing counseling, credit repair support, and assistance with identifying and securing permanent housing for families who may not be eligible to participate in the city’s housing voucher program upon graduation. Overington House makes every effort to link graduating families with housing opportunities as they are available.
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Medical Care, Health and Wellness
Overington House and CHANCES, a program of Philadelphia Health Management Corporation, work together in an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) to serve women with severe drug and alcohol dependencies. Women attend CHANCES’s on-site group and individual counseling sessions three times a week for three hours each session. This service provided clients with the supports needed to work toward long-term sobriety, and is an important and effective strategy in preventing relapses among women in residence. One hundred percent of Overington House’s female heads of household are in active recovery from addiction.
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Friends Hospital and Frankford Hospital provide health maintenance education and primary care services to families as needed. Friends Hospital also provides domestic abuse counseling and access to support networks. Overington House ensures that all resident children have subsidized medical coverage by the time their family leaves the facility. It offers on-site education on such issues as: women’s and children’s health, first aid, nutrition, STDs, “dating” drugs, and HIV/AIDS, including free, voluntary HIV/AIDS testing. Overington House also subcontracts with a psychologist to provide professional clinical services. The psychologist, who has more than thirty years’ experience, provides weekly on-site one-on-one counseling and psychological assessment to women and children. Funded through residents’ medical insurance, the psychologist pays for the use of the space, providing the agency revenue.
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Child Enrichment
As a complement to its parent-focused programs, Overington House is working with volunteers from local colleges and universities to engage its resident children in educational and arts-based programs. These mentors provide a caring learning environment to enhance academic and behavorial skills in a strong effort to reverse the negative impact of homelessness and parents with addiction. The presence of a positive role model in a child's life is an undeniably necessary and effective way to guide a child down the path toward responsibility and productivity. Along with family participation and intensive counseling, mentors provide children at Overington House with the means to grow into strong, independent members of society.
Additionally, pre-school aged children are referred to experienced neighborhood childcare and early intervention providers to promote healthy development and support resident mothers involved in work, job training, school, or other activities. Collaborators include Special People in the Northeast, Childcare Information Services and Allegheny Child Care Service.
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Nutrition
As part of Overington House’s approach to helping women help themselves, Overington House engaged women in planning meals, shopping for food supplies, and organizing and maintaining the pantry, with the help of a part time cook. Overington House also provided nutrition workshops, which will further help women make healthy food choices for their families when they move on to independent living.
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Aftercare Services
As part of Overington House’s commitment to meet the needs of homeless families at every stage of their recovery, we continue our staff-led Aftercare program, aimed at families who have recently completed the residential program and transitioned to independent homes of their own. Case management staff maintain contact with women for up to a year and work to assure that families weather this transition successfully, by providing emotional support, household management counseling and referrals to community resources for following the move into permanent housing. Overington House staff provides home visits, check-in phone calls, service referrals, opportunities for participation in its Alumnae Group, and a bi-monthly family night to two new graduate families during FY 2009. Aftercare services are an important strategy to prevent depression, relapses and other setbacks that might affect formerly homeless families’ ability to remain self-sufficient.
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- 12 Steps Program
- Allegheny Child Care Service
- Beneficial Savings Bank
- Catholic Social Services
- Child Care Information Services
- Citizens Bank
- Cocaine Anonymous
- Department of Human Services
- Department of Public Welfare
- Eagleville Hospital
- Frankford Avenue Health Center
- Frankford Career Services, CDC-FGM
- Frankford Family Development Center
- Frankford Group Ministry
- Frankford Hospital
- Frankford Hospital School of Nursing
- Frankford Style
- Frankford United Neighbors
- Free Library of Philadelphia
- Friends Hospital
- Girard Medical Center
- Graduate Health System/Parkview Hospital
- Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition
- Holy Family School of Nursing
- Homeless Advocacy project
- Horizon House
- Jewish Employment and Vocational Services (JEVS)
- Lutheran Settlement House
- Maternity Care Coalition
- Neighborhood Parenting Program
- New Journeys in Recovery
- Northeast Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce
- Northeast Treatment Center
- Office of Emergency Shelter and Services
- Office of Vocational Rehabilitation
- People’s Emergency Center
- Public Health Management Corporation/CHANCES
- Philadelphia Housing Authority
- Port Richmond Savings Bank
- Project Safe
- Salvation Army
- School District of Philadelphia
- Special People in the Northeast
- The Art Place in Frankford
- Third Federal Savings Bank
- Traveler’s Aid Society
- Woman to Woman
- Women Against Abuse
