Journey House A O. Smith Foundation

Table Of Content

• House Approves $95 Billion Aid Bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan
• Meet the homeless L.A. immigrants who built a DIY home in gentrifying Highland Park
• COMMUNITY
• Los Angeles is not designed for anyone in their 80s; some days are an endurance test
• Long Beach weighs new hiring process as almost a quarter of jobs sit vacant
• Treatment Center
• Corporate Travel

Journey Out also provides this important information to parents, schools, and other social service providers through workshops and trainings. Your donation helps bring thousands into recovery, housing, jobs, and a better life. Advocate for state-wide policies to create resources that support older former foster youth. The current Transition Age Youth (TAY) policy framework sets the expectation that former foster youth must become self-sufficient by the age of 24.

House Approves $95 Billion Aid Bill for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan

Today, Journey House provides services for former foster youth as they emancipate from the foster care system and transition into adulthood. DID YOU KNOW that a child in the foster care or probation state system, who cannot be reunified with his family or become adopted, remains in foster care until he or she ages out at 18 years old with the option to stay in foster care up to age 21? On the day of their “emancipation”, they are expected to be able to provide their own food, shelter, clothing, transportation, medical care, and college expenses with little additional assistance. With two years of planning, organizing, and proposal writing by members of the prison ministries, consultants, and colleagues, Brother Tim opened Journey House in March of 1983, as a six-bed group home for boys on probation and in foster care.

Meet the homeless L.A. immigrants who built a DIY home in gentrifying Highland Park

Her mother, Cynthia “Mama Cat” Trahan, was taken from her mom at age 5 and placed in foster care. Mckenzie and Cat were homeless on and off during her childhood, and Mckenzie was also put in foster care. The same month, a confidential call came in to the child protection hotline alleging that Mckenzie was neglecting Ann. Drugs — the caller suspected meth — were discovered in a folded dollar bill in the bathroom, the social worker wrote. A new consultant switched her application to a Shelter Plus Care voucher for chronically homeless people with mental health or substance abuse issues.

COMMUNITY

“I don’t think when it comes to these really specific specialty services, like mental health and substance abuse, that there is adequate funding,” Hark Dietz said. Mckenzie’s services team was made up of staff from three of L.A.’s top homelessness agencies. Her case manager, Kerr, was with The People Concern; Step Up provided a drug counselor, housing navigator and therapist; and PATH assigned her an employment specialist, another case manager and a housing coordinator. Mckenzie talks freely about dope dealing in the past to support her meth habit, about people she‘s beaten up and others she‘s protected since she landed on the streets of Hollywood at age 13. That’s how she survived; that and the support of her friends — mainly homeless teens from the foster care or juvenile justice systems, scarred by economic marginalization, and some by racism as well.

Los Angeles is not designed for anyone in their 80s; some days are an endurance test

A case plan called for Mckenzie to enter a six-month drug treatment program, undergo weekly random drug testing, and a psychiatric and psychological evaluation and take all prescribed psychotropic medications. She was also required to receive individual counseling from a licensed therapist on keeping a home safe and healthy. “Dedikated Soldiers” and “Dedikated Queens” popped up in her social media postings; she said she would always be dedicated to the homeless people of Hollywood. Mckenzie said she wasn’t sure whether the social workers who came to her hospital bedside knew about her older children. They expressed concern over Eddie’s HIV-positive status and her past drug use. Mckenzie connected with a new partner, Anthony, and graduated from smoking meth to injecting or “slamming” it.

Ten days later, Kerr and Mckenzie screeched past a sign reading, “Don’t abandon your baby,” and into the parking lot for White Memorial’s labor and delivery center. Back at the Denny’s parking lot, Mckenzie turned the conversation to her childhood — “more of a homeless runaround,” she called it, a blurry flip-book of motel rooms, shelters and the inside of the van where she and her mother often stayed. Journey Out recognizes that change is difficult and fraught with many dangers for those who are being sexually exploited.

Long Beach weighs new hiring process as almost a quarter of jobs sit vacant

Mckenzie’s parental rights were terminated in September 2021, under California law a near-irrevocable cutoff that ended her contact with Ann. Weeping, Mckenzie tore pictures of her daughter off her apartment walls, but later put them back up. Mckenzie pleaded no contest in 2020 in the Bellflower case to driving without a license and misdemeanor meth possession, although she said she was unaware the contraband was in the friend’s car. Gramercy “exited” her from the program, bagged up her things and barred her from the building, except by appointment to pick up her stuff. At a storage unit in Hollywood in December, Mckenzie buried her face in Ann’s blanket, breathing in the baby scent. Cat said the substance in the rolled-up bill was powdered aspirin she had given Mckenzie for a toothache.

'This country is built for dreams': New citizens celebrate long journey home at Rockford ceremony - Rock River Current

'This country is built for dreams': New citizens celebrate long journey home at Rockford ceremony.

Posted: Mon, 22 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Lead by a strong team of women who work and walk alongside guests in this brave mission towards a life that is productive and fulfilling. Also located in Westlake Village in a spacious 13 bedroom home on a 1.5 acre property. We serve young people experiencing or at risk of homelessness or human trafficking with absolute respect and unconditional love. Our ultimate goal is to help each young person move on with their life in positive ways with counseling, education, stable employment, and secure housing.

Journey Out provides education to the public about issues of sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation, as well as specialized training for law enforcement and social service providers. We educate healthcare providers, legislators, businesses, religious institutions, transit and travel industry professionals, students, and the general community through workshops and forums around the country. Journey Out provides prevention information to children who are at risk of being victimized by human sex trafficking. We provide vital information on social media and how traffickers take advantage of vulnerable children utilizing apps such as Instagram, Tik Toc and others. This important information can save a child from the horrors of sex trafficking and a long recovery process that can sometimes take a lifetime.

Mckenzie planned to move in with Bojorquez if her friend got an apartment before the birth. “I ain’t never been a prostitute in my life, and never will be,” she said. At age 11, Mckenzie ran away, started using drugs and landed in juvenile hall in Nevada. The next year, she and Cat moved to Ventura for a fresh start, but the suburban beach culture was a tough fit for a girl from a poor, semirural Southern background, who by her own description dressed like a little boy. Mckenzie sat on the curb outside Denny’s as the afternoon light died away. In the half-empty parking lot behind her, a man worked out with a jump rope; a truck’s headlights played across her high cheekbones.

Cowboys riding the range on horseback in the 1800s to measure a blaze isn’t quite the same as measuring by satellite the acres burned. “I’m going to allow an opportunity for every single member of the House to vote their conscience and their will,” he had said. And it raised questions about whether the political turmoil that has roiled the United States had effectively destroyed what has long been a strong bipartisan consensus in favor of projecting American values around the world.

Although Mckenzie had been addicted to meth for a decade, she was not in a full-fledged substance use disorder recovery program, but met weekly with her drug counselor. Kerr, who is herself in recovery after decades of meth addiction, said Mckenzie needed intensive drug abuse treatment. Eddie was staying in other homeless housing a couple of miles away. Mckenzie and Eddie would meet halfway and walk hand in hand down Washington Boulevard. Mckenzie daydreamed about moving into one of the shabby but stately foursquare houses around Gramercy. Eddie had a master gardener certificate from another program for homeless people; maybe he could be a groundskeeper.