Last Stop

 Program Description

Last Stop provides services for youthful offenders, ages 16-19+. We offer a treatment focused learning environment that fosters personal growth through education and life skills. We teach non-violent communication and confrontation skills. The name Last Stop reflects our primary goal, which is to make a client’s present offense, which caused them to be sent to this program, their last criminal offense.

Last Stop is located at the Durham County’s Criminal Justice Resource Center, 326 E. Main Street, in downtown Durham. Our services are structured into 12-14 week cycles, with most clients attending the entire cycle. GED classes are Monday through Friday 9:00am –12:00pm. Life Skills classes are offered in the afternoons. Bus Tickets are provided.

Referrals are accepted all year round. Most clients start to attend classes within 5 days of referral. Referrals to Last Stop are accepted through Probation Officers, TASC, Pretrial Services, and Juvenile Court Counselors. For more information, please contact Amy Elliott (aelliott@co.durham.nc.us, 560-0550) or Jerome Allen (jallen@co.durham.nc.us, 560-0509).

Life Skills classes provided to Last Stop clients:

• Cognitive Behavior Intervention: Learn how feelings, thoughts, and behaviors form the basis for our decisions, weather made in a split-second or deliberated for hours. Learn and practice skills that lead to better decisions. Our life outcomes are the sum total of our decisions.
• Vocational Education + Job Search: Employment is the next step in adolescent social development towards independence. This class encourages success by discussing the importance of setting goals, time management, communication, and budgeting money.
• Healthy Sexual Relations: Interactive, engaging, and frank discussion about how to protect yourself from STD's. Includes family planning, resources for pregnancy & fathers to be, and resources for youth with infants and young children.  
• Art Therapy: This group uses art and verbal interaction to explore personal and group issues.
• Street Law: Laws for housing, employment, civil and domestic issues.
• Substance Abuse Education class and individual sessions: Treatment provided for youth who use cannabis, other illegal drugs, alcohol, and prescription drugs.
• Family Counseling and Relational Healing: This class teaches four steps towards emotional healing that focuses’ on the youth’s relationship with their mom and dad.

1.     Assess past and current family relationships and develop a basic understanding of intimacy, parental discipline styles, and generational behavior patterns.

2.     Tell and write your life story.

3.     Learn how to give and take healthy confrontation so that resentments do not build up or bottle up.

4.     Learn to use forgiveness as a way to let go and release hurts and pain.

AFTER SCHOOL SERVICES ALSO AVAILABLE           

We provide after school sessions two days a week for students that continue to remain enrolled in high school addressing the relationship between the youth offender and his parents. These sessions involve writing and discussion. Each session is 50 minutes and a cycle lasts approximately 12 weeks.