REGION: Prison ministry funds running out

Welcome Home lays off staffers as federal grant ends

By TERI FIGUEROA - Staff Writer | Friday, December 5, 2008 11:21 PM PST ∞

OCEANSIDE ---- A nondenominational ministry that keeps hundreds of women from returning to prison says it is running out of money. Staffers have been laid off and prison visits have stopped.

Still, officials from Oceanside-based Welcome Home Ministries said closing their doors is not an option.

"This ministry was God's idea," said founder and Executive Director Carmen Warner-Robbins. "This (fiscal emergency) is like pruning rose bushes. They look like they are dead, and then these rich flowers will come forth."

Three of the eight staffers at Welcome Home Ministries were laid off last month. The remaining five agreed to drop to part-time positions, said Warner-Robbins, who also said she is now working without pay.

That's because payments from a $1.4 million federal grant to Welcome Home, won in 2004, ended in September.

Ministry officials say they have been on the hunt for another grant. But there are very few grants, if any, available for the services Welcome Home offers ---- services such as encouragement and support and the ability to help clients find housing.

"That's why we don't have the money," Warner-Robbins said. "Now we have to look at private funders or somebody in the community."

The faith-based group provides counseling, and acts as a broker to steer hundreds of women fresh from jail or prison to education, job training and housing, even clothing and bus passes. By its own estimation, Welcome Home has worked with about 6,000 women since the organization's 1996 founding.

They help the women gain self-esteem at a time when they need it the most: when they are starting over.

Welcome Home's success rate is stunning, with only about 7 percent of participants finding themselves back behind bars, according to their internal data tracking. This, in a state parole system that sees 70 percent of all offenders returning to prison within three years.

Re-entry programs are at a premium, especially as a federal court is threatening the early release of thousands of inmates to ease prison overcrowding.

"Without them, I'd be locked up ---- or getting high in Esco," said 20-year-old Natalie Mejia, a documented Escondido gang member who is a few months removed from a stint behind bars. "They believed in me when nobody else has."

Warner-Robbins, an ordained minister, said her group is currently working with about 220 women, including those at the Vista Detention Facility, Las Colinas Detention Facility in Santee, and the California Institution for Women, or CIW, in Corona in Riverside County.

But with the money drying up, it had to stop the program at CIW two months ago. The closest women's prison to Oceanside, CIW houses many female inmates from San Diego County.

Welcome Home helps women in custody plan for a successful re-entry into the community upon their release. Staffers even pick up participants at the prison gates and drive them back home to San Diego County.

The ministry's Barnes Street office, which serves clients from North County, is an aging portable building, cramped with boxes of papers and stacks of books, including Bibles. In one room hangs donated used clothing for the women, many of whom need extra-large items.

It is to this tiny site that women come for help: for counseling, for support.

The people who work here get it ---- nearly all of the staffers are ex-cons.

"We'll continue to do what we do, limping along, but it is going to be limited," said Karla Lomiglio, one of the staffers laid off three weeks ago. Lomiglio has served six separate stints in prison. Now, she is part of the heartbeat of this tiny place.

Lomiglio interrupted the conversation to speak with Lynda Niebur, a program participant who showed up for a counseling session. Lomiglio had to break the news: Niebur's counselor had been laid off.

"That hit me hard," Niebur said, adding that she had mental health issues. "I don't do well with change."

Lomiglio promised they wouldn't leave her hanging. The counseling will continue, probably with volunteers.

"If we lose the ability to have intense communication, they will relapse," Lomiglio said. "Those budget line items are actual lives."

Ex-inmate Mejia said she has been "getting high and gang-banging since I was 13 years old." But now, she proudly declared, with the help of Welcome Home, she has been out of custody for five months.

"I feel so blessed," Mejia said. "Without them, I am by myself."

Many of the program participants are felons. Many also are victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

The last time Welcome Home Ministries faced such dire fiscal straits was 2004, just before it won the federal grant that just ended.

Right now, few funding sources are available. Warner-Robbins said she plans to personally foot any bills that she can, including office rent, through her outside consulting work.

The women of Welcome Home encourage their clients to never give up. And now, they plan to take their own advice

"In three months, talk to us, and you'll see our rose bushes blossom big-time," Warner-Robbins said. "I just know it. That is part of being faith-based. When you do this work, God is not going to abandon you."

For more information, contact Welcome Home Ministries at (760) 439-1351 or online at www.welcomehomeint.org.

Contact staff writer Teri Figueroa at (760) 740-5442 or tfigueroa@nctimes.com.