Victory Starts Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n“Jail is not a mental institution,” said Viktoriya Stinson, the nonprofit’s CEO. “Jail is not a hospital. Jail isn’t a place where you treat people’s mental health symptoms.”<\/p>\n
When she worked with public defenders, Stinson witnessed a revolving door of people with mental health challenges landing back in jail.<\/p>\n
“What we started thinking at Victory Starts Now is, ‘What happens when people get out of jail?’ There are not enough people asking that question,” she said.<\/p>\n
Stinson developed answers.<\/p>\n
Her team built nurturing group homes staffed with mental health professionals. Volunteers also engage clients in healing therapies such as gardening, fitness and woodwork.<\/p>\n
“We try to get them back into living life, figuring out what they like to do, figuring out what helps them be successful,” said Melissa Johnson, a mental health counselor with Victory Starts Now.<\/p>\n
Once clients learn how to manage their conditions, the nonprofit then offers job training.<\/p>\n
“There’s a lot of really big companies that hire our folks and it’s really, really nice to see them now contributing positively to the community,” said Stinson.<\/p>\n
Victory Starts Now started in 2015 with one location and has since expanded to 22 locations and 500 beds.<\/p>\n
For Miranda, it’s more than just a lifeline, it’s an opportunity to find work and his own place to live.<\/p>\n
“They offer all their energy, they throw all their time to provide the members with an assurance that they can make it out of their situation,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many people who are unhoused end up in an endless cycle of incarceration and living on the streets…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":411416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,193456,2961,193457,224,5337,517,15966,193459,193458],"class_list":{"0":"post-411415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-gabriel-miranda","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-living-on-the-streets","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-losangeles","15":"tag-mental-health","16":"tag-mental-health-counselor","17":"tag-mental-institution","18":"tag-viktoriya-stinson"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115629447387082370","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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