Services

How We Help

Helping Ourselves To Transform (HOTT) provides professional relationships for returning citizens. This collaborative relationship is strength-based and iterative, in that, we take our charges through step-by-step phases of successful community reintegration. We assist our charges by connecting them with available resources and helping to negotiate for their new role in society. We work to restore the civil/human rights of the formerly incarcerated and those affected by violence through organizing and mobilizing individuals to become advocates for social changes and personal development.

Some of the services we provide at HOTT are:

General Case Management

At HOTT, we have a collaborative process of assessment, planning, facilitation, care coordination, evaluation, and advocacy for options and services to meet the needs of returning citizens through communication and available resources to promote safety, quality of care by sending them to the right organization that will fit their tailored individual needs that are not offered at HOTT. The case manager will keep detailed notes and track with follow up with male and female returning citizens to ensure their needs are being met.

Mentoring & Life Coaching – Under our mentoring program, we offer one-on-one consulting, advice, re-entry counseling, and group sessions. Our life coaching addresses specific personal needs, business needs, general conditions, and transitions in the client’s personal life, relationships, or profession by examining what is going on right now. We help male and female returning citizens discover how to deal with what is creating obstacles or challenges in their life. We help them choose a course of action to make their life a better life by believing in the process and believing in themselves. We teach them how to justify their existence in order to create a better future.

Employment Training with Job Placement

We offer computer and IT training that is designed to increase technical skills, knowledge, efficiency, and value creation. We also offer job training that will help returning citizens to succeed and feel good in a job. These training skills become a way of life and increases the needed skill set and helps in the development of an employee as well as overall growth of decreasing the recidivism rate. To that end, we offer job placement with different organizations and unions that we are partnered with and prepared to hire the right person that comes through HOTT’s program.

Financial Literacy and Empowerment

We offer empowerment through Financial literacy education. This service brings the skills and knowledge required to make informed decisions to manage one’s finances. We help male and female returning citizens to process and focus on personal finance by primarily providing information and opportunities to increase financial literacy and by ensuring access to appropriate financial services. Financial empowerment strategies can be particularly impactful and help create a better model of financial behaviors or provide new knowledge to transfer and support around managing finances correctly.

Business Planning & Setup – We mentor male and female returning citizens who dream of starting a business. We help them research, identify and develop a product or service that they think will be successful. We assist them with research and putting a plan together that will identify what the needs of what the business will be. We also help identify the licenses, insurances, personal and business credit advice along with any financial business planning.

Preparation for Parole and Denial of Parole support

When male and female returning citizens discover in their first parole hearing that no one in the penal system will prepare them for what’s to come, they can become overwhelmed, depressed and desperate. They naively assume that the system will have their best interest, but it doesn’t. We prepare and support our charges through this process and make sure they have everything they will need to highlight their best change in order to come home. They will have a lot of reasons to not guarantee parole but we try the best we can to make them see people as human and not simply a number who found themselves in this situation. This is why we do our best to make sure our clients are prepared in this penal system of the parole process. Each person’s situation is different. We will help with new parolees as follows:

We need all program certifications or at least a list from the person’s case manager.
We will need all infractions or write-ups from all the facilities they have been to. Again the case manager should have all that.
The person should request their full file from their case manager just so they can see what is in their file and to also make sure the file is correct and updated.
Are there any victims? Is there a concern for them to request to deny parole? (This is a very important piece that will deny them parole)
We will prepare a full re-entry home plan.

1. show and confirm they will live in a stable and safe home and environment.
2. show and confirm a job would be ready for the parolee.
3. Letters from family members on the parolee’s character, remorse, and additional help if needed.
4. Programs, classes, or colleges achieved in prison with certificates or listed on the case managers report.
5. Mental health or medical files if needed.
6. Staff at the prison can also write character letters.
7. Community letters of support that the parolee is welcome back into the community with help, love, and tenacity.
8. Condition plans from organizations that offer mental health, drug addiction, domestic violence, and AA will be in writing to the parole board.
9. If the prospective parolee has been denied parole we will get them or an attorney to get the full risk assessment to break down why the parole was denied. We will then work with elected officials, communities, and organizations to set you a plan that will get you a new parole hearing if we see that the parole commission was wrong in their findings for denying the parolee.

Post-conviction

Some of us are not attorneys but we assist with supporting the male and female returning citizens with post-conviction relief. We help get a public defender to assist with bringing the case back to court with new evidence and other things that could help to get a new trial or a new consideration for release. We have a good relationship with the Baltimore Public Defender’s office that handles Maryland’s Post-conviction in a lot of cases. We also have great relationships with Attorneys in the DMV as well. We also offer participatory defense.

Advocacy

Legislation and policy to address:

Justice reform
Prison reform
Re-entry Initiatives
Child welfare reform
Stopping human trafficking

Re-entry Initiative

Most of the people in our programs leave prison with nothing but the clothing on their back and are expected to succeed. Our re-entry initiative is designed to ease the transition back into society by providing the small things that matter most, including toiletries, underwear, bedding, portfolio and pen for interviews, clothing, etc.

As members of the greater community, we have an obligation to address the causes that lead to crimes and to prevent future offenses from occurring. Our initiative helps to circumvent these issues by providing referral resources to:

Family and Child Welfare
Housing Resources (Transitional and Permanent)
Participatory Defense and Post-conviction
Food and Clothing
Healthcare
Transportation Assistance
Addiction Recovery
Mental Health Counseling
Victim-Offender Reconciliation
GED/Higher Education Programs
Literacy/ESL