BBBS of Central Maryland Forges Relationship with DOC

The relationship between Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) of Central Maryland in Baltimore and the Maryland Corrections Institute for Women (MCIW) looks quite different from what was originally established nearly two years ago. In April 2005 BBBS earned its entrée into Maryland prisons through a relationship that one of their board members had with Mary Ann Saar, former Secretary of Public Safety & Correctional Services for the state of Maryland.

“We made the decision to do whatever it took to form the partnership,” says Shirley Crawford-Gantt, outreach coordinator for Amachi Outreach at BBBS of Central Maryland. Remaining steadfast to this commitment even meant sometimes “going to a prison and sitting for eight hours just to talk to 50 inmates” for three to 10 minutes, and sometimes only receiving five or 10 child referrals, she adds.

Access to the prisons had been granted via the Project Restart program, a collaborative of social service agencies that provide pre-release services to inmates. However, this was not ideal. During the prison visits, each social service agency gave a ten-minute speech and then inmates decided which programs they wanted to approach for further information. Since the inmates who participated in Project Restart were scheduled for release within 90 days, most were more focused on their own survival needs after incarceration than on acquiring mentors for their children.

“But it was a commitment that we thought was important,” says Crawford-Gantt, “and to let the Department know that we really were committed to the idea because a lot of times when you get into partnerships with government agencies, you say you’re going to do something and then if you don’t follow through, people stop believing you and stop believing in what you’re doing.. We were committed to the partnership and we wanted to be there and do everything that we said that we were going to do. And I think that’s why [the partnership] became so successful.”

After six months of participating in Project Restart, BBBS approached Warden Brenda Shell of MCIW to request Amachi-specific sessions with the inmates. Crawford-Gantt explained the commitment that Secretary Saar had to mentoring children of prisoners, as well as the agency’s own 53-year history of serving children in Maryland. “That’s when Warden Shell was very open to the idea of us coming in as often as we needed to just to talk to all the women within the facility to make sure that they got a chance to see us.”.

As a next step, copies of the BBBS Amachi DVD were shown during movie night and Amachi brochures were placed in the visiting waiting area. Then every Saturday for six months, BBBS staff visited MCIW until they had eventually met with all 1,500 women. The warden required that every inmate hear the BBBS presentation on Amachi. Now BBBS goes to MCIW on Fridays to meet with new inmates only.

In June 2006 BBBS did a similar program with the men’s prison, Maryland Corrections Institute of Jessup (MCIJ). They ended up presenting to 750 of its 1,000 inmates. However, the men were not as responsive as the women and BBBS did not receive as many child referrals.

In addition to gaining the trust of Warden Shell, over the years BBBS has become a dependable presence to the inmates as well. Shirley Crawford-Gantt is now a familiar face to many of them. “It actually got to the point where you walk in the door [and] people knew exactly who I was and what I was there for,” she says. “So not only was I getting referrals from people who I was just going in and speaking to, I was actually getting referrals from people who had time to think about it and who came back and said ‘I really want to do this for my child’.”

Spring 2007