A Chelsea-based anti-violence program that works to re-engage young men who have been in the juvenile or adult justice system and move them toward education and employment has opened a new site in Boston.
Roca, founded in 1988, describes itself as an “outcomes-driven” organization with a mission to move disengaged young people out of violence, poverty and incarceration and into a positive life trajectory. Spanish for “rock,” Roca targets the 17-24 year-old men who are most at risk for re-incarceration or violence and pursues them doggedly to bring them into a four-year cognitive-behavioral program.
“Our model is built off people who don’t want to deal with us at the start,” said John Ward, senior associate for development and policy at Roca. “We have to go after them over and over and over. We follow them around until they trust us.”
The program begins with outreach on the streets by youth workers and the slow process of forging relationships. These early stages may involve aiding the young men in small and practical ways such as providing needed clothing and supplies, as most are unemployed with few supports, and some homeless. The middle stage includes pre-vocational and life skills training, GED and ESL training, and transitional employment along with intensive support to help change behaviors. With expected failures, starts and stops and relapses, participants move toward sustained, non-subsidized employment.
In all, the program includes two years of intensive programming and two years of follow-up to reinforce and sustain the behavioral and life changes.
Besides its Boston site, which opened last month on Albany Street near the South Bay House of Correction, Roca has Boston-area sites in Chelsea, Revere, Everett and East Boston, and one in Springfield, Mass.
The expansion of Roca’s operation into Boston coincides with its selection as the sole service provider for Massachusetts’ first “pay-for-success” contract, announced in January, 2014. Under such a contract, also known as a social impact bond, the state expends no funds for a social program until it meets specific benchmarks over an agreed-upon span of time. Instead, funding is put up in advance by foundations and private investors. A third-party evaluator measures progress toward the benchmarks, and the state pays the investors back when the program is successful.
“It’s a win-win when it comes to investment,” Ward said. “Investors are putting money in, and if Roca does its job, they’re getting their money back.”
Most social impact bond programs have goals that can be measured in terms of government money saved. In this case, Roca promises that its work will result in fewer jail-bed nights. Roca projects that in five years, its work with some 900 high-risk teens and men in Massachusetts will prevent 248 incarcerations, a 45 percent reduction compared to what would happen without Roca’s intervention.
A host of funders have contributed $18 million in private financing for the project: $9 million from the Goldman Sachs Social Impact Fund; $1.5 million from The Kresge Foundation; $1.5 million from Living Cities, and $6 million total in grants from Laura and John Arnold Foundation, New Profit, and The Boston Foundation. Starting in year three, the Commonwealth will release funds to pay back investors if various benchmarks are met, primarily non-incarceration of a Roca high-risk client for two full years.
If the pilot phase is ultimately proven successful, the U.S. Dept. of Labor will throw in an additional $11.7 million for an extension of the project.
The evaluation will be led by Dr. Lisa Sanbonmatsu, a Cambridge policy researcher. Her organization Sibalytics will track the outcomes of men in Roca’s program compared to a control group of other high-risk men. Cambridge-based Third Sector Capital functions as the intermediary for this initiative and several others around the nation.
According to a case study prepared by Third Sector, Roca had helped more than 17,000 young people transform their lives over two decades and had worked to refine and measure its intervention model. In the years leading up to its selection for the pay-for-success project, Roca “engaged in a systemic cycle of research, design, action, tracking data, and use of data for continuous improvement,” defined its target population clearly and showed an ability to scale up and replicate its programs beyond the initial Chelsea site.
The initiative will allow Roca to serve an additional 927 individuals in Massachusetts — including about 300 in its Boston site — and is projected to reduce the number of incarcerations among that group to 180 from 540 that would be expected. Third Sector estimates a net savings to the state government of at least $9.4 million after reimbursing the pay-for-service investors.
In Roca’s Chelsea-area work, about 70 percent of participants are Latino, Ward estimated, while the Boston site will serve roughly a 50-50 mix of African American and Latino men.
Roca joins a host of other organizations already working in Boston to keep or move teens away from violence and toward success.
District 7 City Councilor Tito Jackson said he sees Roca as having an additive effect rather than diminishing any existing effort.
“The work is immense. Truly engaging young men and putting them on a path to success is a critical goal of Roca and a lot of other organizations,” he said. “The goal should not be successful organizations, but successful outcomes for the people they serve.”
Jackson recently spearheaded the creation of a multi-agency city commission on the status of black and Latino boys and men in Boston. He noted that 60 percent of Boston’s males under age 19 are black and Latino, and that most are not in gangs. True success, in his view, is not about getting out of gangs, but getting a positive start.
“It’s about success from cradle to career, thinking about education and career tracks and also health and wellness and the ability to take care of a family,” Jackson said. “We know the achievement gap starts at age 1. It is critical that children are in safe and stable homes and getting early education and mentorship and support.”
Roca staff said they have met with Boston nonprofits, religious leaders and local elected officials when planning for the Boston site opening, both to learn about resources other organizations offer and learn about the Boston landscape.
“When you go into a new location, people are concerned with being able to maintain the services they’ve been providing,” Ward said. “But we’ve been really pleased with the reception we’ve gotten.”
Roca Boston Assistant Director Tha Thai said these conversations also helped Roca staff learn about the community, including what locations were “neutral territory” for city youth from different neighborhoods and housing developments.
Travis McCready, vice president of programs at The Boston Foundation, said that while TBF’s funding of the Roca pilot, $300,000 over three years, is not to the exclusion of other anti-violence initiatives, Roca’s model is a very important one, as is StreetSafe Boston, TBF’s own anti-violence program.
“There are a lot of organizations in this [anti-violence] space,” McCready said. “What makes Roca and StreetSafe very different is they are not attempting to intervene in violence generally — they look to identify the young men at greatest risk. Very few organizations are trained or have the desire to work with this group.
“Roca is the premiere not-for-profit organization operating in this space,” he added. “They have a very robust data-driven, time-tested and stress-tested intervention for helping our young men not return to prison and obtain gainful employment. They are known across the nation for their intervention.”
The Roca initiative is the state’s first foray into the pay-for-success model, and plans are in the works for at least one more, focusing on chronic homelessness.
McCready, for one, is eager to see the pay-for-success model expand.
“It’s an interesting model for doing what we in philanthropy attempt to do, but simply don’t have the capital to do — to scale up those organizations that are working,” he said.
