![]() Holmes said she was only able to get attendance figures from Next STEPS service providers, when she was looking for clear, measurable outcomes of the program, like helping participants achieve an educational milestone, secure employment, or stay out of gangs.īut providers said that they were never told what data Holmes was looking for. ![]() “Commissioner Holmes failed to provide a clear, credible, or even rational explanation for the abrupt termination of the Next STEPS program,” Councilmember Lincoln Restler told AmNews. ![]() They also pointed to a 2018 evaluation that demonstrated Arches was successful in reducing recidivism as evidence that Next STEPS should be considered an effective program as well. They argued that the credible messenger-led nature of the program set it apart from other mentoring programs and made it uniquely equipped to engage hard-to-reach youth. Living Redemption’s Deputy Project Director Dorin Hammond (center) with Next STEPS program participants Keonna Bishop (left) and Isieni Bermudez (right) at Living Redemption’s offices in Harlem (Photo by Shannon Chaffers)īoth council members and service providers at the meeting rejected Holmes’s justifications for cutting Next STEPS. “It was just thrust, you know, in my face,” she said.Īfter providing her testimony and taking questions from council members, Holmes left the meeting before representatives of service providers gave their testimonies. Holmes attributed the short notice of cancellation to the fact that she was only made aware of the program a few weeks before the contract was set to expire. “Unfortunately, Next STEPS was cut because they couldn’t support the metrics I was looking for,” she said. Holmes doubled down on these cuts in a call with service providers on September 6, and continued to defend her decision at a September 29 meeting of the City Council’s Committee on Criminal Justice.Īt the council meeting, Holmes asserted that Next STEPS was redundant to other city-run mentoring programs, and that its service providers had failed to provide her with evidence demonstrating it was successful in reducing recidivism. “They gave us a notice and two weeks later, they took the program out.” Tee Haywood, the lead mentor for the Osborne Association-the Next STEPS provider for Bronx NYCHA developments-told the Amsterdam News about the abrupt nature of the program cuts. Service providers expressed their astonishment and disappointment in a letter addressed to Holmes. The message included a directive to cease operations by August 31. On August 24, the 17 service providers contracted with DOP to operate the program received an unexpected email, advising them that the department would no longer provide funding. According to Hammond, many service providers were told in May that the program would be extended until June 2025, but in late August, the DOP went back on that decision. Next STEPS had an annual budget of $2.5 million. “ Next STEPS, we were able to get before they became justice involved,” said Dorin Hammond, deputy project director at the Living Redemption Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit that operated both programs for residents of Harlem’s St. But unlike Arches, Next STEPS was open to all youth, regardless of probation status. It was modeled on Arches, a program started under the Bloomberg administration that targeted 16- to 24-year–olds on probation.īoth Arches and Next STEPS employ credible messengers-those who have experience with the criminal justice system-to engage youth in a cognitive behavioral therapy-based curriculum designed to steer them away from violence. The program began in 2014 as part of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety, which was designed to address disproportionate levels of violence at the selected NYCHA developments. These organizations offered individual and group mentoring to more than 200 young people in 14 NYCHA developments who had experienced serious violence. Next STEPS (Striving Towards Engagement and Peaceful Solutions) was a violence prevention program operated through 17 service providers that contracted with DOP. The move has left the program’s proponents shocked and has prompted larger concerns about the direction of the DOP under new Commissioner Juanita Holmes, who was appointed in March. The Department of Probation (DOP) has come under fire in the past few months after abruptly cutting funding this past August for NextSTEPS, a popular and effective mentorship program that served young residents in the city’s public housing developments.
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