Connection- How do the branches of G58 connect?
Garden 58 aims to prevent trauma through Pinwheel Tutoring, preserve safe homes through More than Enough, and provide second chances to previously incarcerated women through Revolving Door.
Let’s take a look at how these branches connect.
Every woman in jail was once a child in elementary school. Many of them were once in foster care & have now lost their own children to a foster care or family placement.
There are many children in the school system with an incarcerated parent- both groups needing someone to come along and offer support.
Most parents who lose a child to foster care were once in foster care themselves, and all of them were once children in the school system.
Multiple traumatic events lead to children ending up in foster care & women ending up in jail. This is called complex trauma & it often leads to substance abuse, unhealthy relationships, chronic unemployment & far too often, incarceration. To prevent traumas that lead to foster care or incarceration down the road, we believe early involvement with children can make all the difference!
Whatever the final straw may be that separates children from their homes & families, whatever crime finally lands someone in jail, there is much neglect & abuse up-river that could be prevented through practical support & caring relationships. And when prevention does not occur, we believe God holds hope & healing in abundance, and we desire to carry that hope & healing into the foster & jail communities.
Parent Support
Parenting is hard. Most families that get involved with Pinwheel Tutoring are in no current danger of situations of neglect or abuse, but some are, and others could be if left without support. Foster parents, too, face many stressors unfamiliar to biological parents & need strategic support.
It is a privilege to be able to enter the picture early on- before a situation gets so stressful that relationships fray, a parent’s mental health suffers, or abuse or neglect begins.
Pinwheel & More Than Enough aim to build supportive relationships with parents. By surrounding parents with a network of support, we hope to strengthen homes & families against potential trauma.
Life Skills & Mentoring Relationships
One of Pinwheel’s goals is to help prevent trauma in the lives of kids by providing school support,
spiritual support,
and even basic life skills.
We teach self-worth, how to treat others, how to identify & use your gifts to help others, the value of work, how to manage money, communicate well & how to set boundaries. Ladies we have met in jail have shared that these life skills are difficult to learn as adults.
Really, it is through the ladies we have met in jail & from parents who have had their kids placed in foster care that we have been made aware of many of the life skills we need to be teaching the kids.
We believe teaching these life skills can support parents in preparing their kids for a healthy adolescence & adult life.
And the benefits of mentoring relationships? The odds of how many kids will descend into substance abuse,
drop out of school,
how many end up chronically unemployed,
incarcerated or in abusive relationships…
these odds all drop when a child is consistently invested in by a caring adult!
Read more in Connection Part 2!