RISK REDUCTION -HIV/ AIDS SERVICES (NY)

Program Description
The Osborne Association, founded in 1931, provides a broad range of mental health, physical health, and substance abuse treatment, education, and vocational services to more than 6,500 prisoners, former prisoners, and their families. Services are provided in community sites in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and at the organization's headquarters in Long Island City (Queens); in New York City jails and New York State prisons; and in New York City courts. Staff of the Osborne Association reflect the populations they serve: more than 80 percent are people of color, and many are former prisoners, people in recovery, and people living with HIV/ AIDS.

The Osborne Association's Risk Reduction-HIV/ AIDS Services address a range of health challenges that many returning prisoners face. (According to Osborne, one in ten prisoners in the New York State prison system is HIV positive.) Prisoners can make initial contact with Osborne while in prison via the AIDS in Prison Hotline, the first such service in the nation. The hotline accepts collect phone calls in English and Spanish from every prison in New York State for peer counseling and information on treatment and prevention as well as on how HIV-positive individuals can obtain discharge planning services at their facility and in the community.

Osborne also provides discharge planning services for people living with HIV/ AIDS at four New York State prisons. These services, which include a full needs assessment, address such issues as transitional housing, substance abuse, and post-release benefits and medical care. Prisoners learn about Osborne's discharge planning services through the hotline (which is advertised within the facilities), word of mouth
from fellow prisoners, and from correctional officers. Upon release from prison, Osborne provides intensive case management services for HIV-positive individuals returning to New York City through the Risk Reduction Services Unit (RRSU). Working with a case manager/ counselor team, RRSU clients receive assistance in living with HIV/ AIDS, obtaining substance abuse treatment, finding housing, getting psychological and family counseling, receiving benefits and medical care, finding employment and training, and other issues.

Program Goals
The goal of the Risk Reduction-HIV/ AIDS Services is to provide inmates with HIV/ AIDS with linkages to discharge planning services in their facilities and connections to community-based service providers to ease the transition from prison to home.

Networking, Partnering & Collaboration
The Osborne Association operates its prison-based HIV/ AIDS services as part of the Criminal Justice Initiative of the AIDS Institute of the New York State Department of Health. This initiative was established to provide HIV/ AIDS services to prisoners and parolees throughout New York State. Each of the eleven nonprofit agencies within the consortium provides discharge planning for people living with HIV/ AIDS in New York State prisons, as well as case management for released prisoners living with HIV/ AIDS within that agency's geographic area. Osborne's AIDS in Prison Hotline serves as a statewide clearinghouse to inform prisoners whether HIV/ AIDS-related discharge planning services are available at their facilities and assist them in identifying reentry services in their community.

Outcomes
Osborne's Risk Reduction-HIV/ AIDS Services collect statistics on a number of program indicators. Eighty percent of clients of the Risk Reduction Services Unit, a program designed to last six months, remain in the program for at least four to five months. This time period allows program staff to begin addressing many of the clients' most pressing reentry needs such as accessing benefits and medical care, embarking on a job search, and enrolling in a substance abuse treatment program. An average of 75 clients annually are placed in permanent housing, and, of these, about 90 percent are still in their homes after six months. Sixty percent of clients who access Osborne's independent living skills training, which assists them in establishing stable households, complete the program.

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