Donate Online Home About Us 125th Anniversary Programs Giving Worship Calendar of Events Volunteers Doing the Most Good: Photos Employment Touching Lives Sign up to Volunteer The Salvation Army of the Syracuse Area 677 S. Salina St. Syracuse, NY 13202 Phone: 315-475-1688 Fax: 315-475-6307 Contact Us

Juvenile Justice
Our work with young people committing crime has increased so significantly that a separate department within The Salvation Army of the Syracuse Area was created in 2007. Two programs developed by our agency exemplify our response to changes in society. A cutting edge juvenile justice strategy that has received national recognition is the PRISM (Probation, Rehabilitation, Intensive Services Management) Program. PRISM is a joint effort with the Onondaga County Departments of Probation, Social Services and Mental Health aimed at providing an alternative to incarceration for adjudicated juveniles ages 10 to 16. Intensive case management is provided to youth and their families to help change destructive patterns of behavior and maintain positive family functioning within the home and the community. In addition to probation supervision and case management, families can access Functional Family Therapy (FFT), a highly acclaimed method of therapeutic intervention that has demonstrated success in responding to juvenile offenders and their families.

Since the inception of the PRISM Program, we have assisted almost 1,000 juveniles and their families. Prior to the PRISM Program, young people were sent off to an out of town detention facility, only to re-offend soon after returning home. Our track record of success in PRISM is high. More than 80% of the young people we work with are not arrested again, meaning that they are making different choices, are not committing crime, and can plan for a future than is not spent in and out of prison.

Booth House, our emergency shelter for runaway and homeless teens, was the first program of its kind to receive funding from New York State. In close to 30 years of operation, we have seen the changes in family situations in a dramatic way.

Booth House is the county’s only shelter for runaway and homeless teens, and our approach has demonstrated consistent success even as society has changed. The effectiveness of our work with young people and their families has led to a request from the County of Onondaga to expand the services at Booth House. We are currently planning a revised system of services that will include respite care for young people. Rather than waiting until a young person becomes more seriously involved in the criminal justice system, the new program at Booth House would offer law enforcement and families the option of time away from home. With appropriate counseling and intervention at an earlier stage, we believe that we can prevent further criminal behavior, prevent possible violence in a household, and help families obtain the assistance they need to solve their problems. The respite program will run in a separate part of a new Booth House facility, in order to ensure the safety of young people in our care who are not involved with law enforcement. Through Booth House and related youth services programs, we provided safe shelter, counseling, family mediation, and a path to a solution for more than 900 young people in 2006.

Building Success in Young Adults with Mental Illness
Young adults suffering from serious mental illness are often misdiagnosed, misunderstood, and disconnected. Sometimes their home is not a safe place, and many times their illness has been too much of a challenge for their family. Our Emergency Family Shelter staff noticed that we were seeing many of the same young adults in our shelter on almost a revolving basis. We had assisted them in obtaining suitable housing and a way to pay for it, and yet they kept failing and coming back to our shelter in crisis. It became clear to us that there were few options for these mentally ill young adults. We created a solution to fill the gap: State Street Apartment.

State Street Apartments is a six-bed, co-ed residential and counseling program for 16-25 year old adults with a serious and persistent diagnosis of mental illness. It provides them with safe and affordable apartments, meals, casework services, and independent living skills training. The young adults that we serve in the program get help in understanding and managing their illness, critical to their potential for future success. We then work with them to develop goals and the way to achieve them, offering the opportunity for independence.