Transitional Living Programs

Polaris and Vega Transitional Living Programs (TLP)
Polaris and Vega Transitional Living Program’s mission is to provide Boulder County’s transition age at-risk youth the opportunity and support necessary to lead healthy, independent, fulfilling and sustainable lifestyles when aging out of the traditional community support systems, such as adolescent group homes, foster care, age limited Medicaid and other juvenile justice services. Our goal is to prevent homelessness, recidivism, and adult system dependence by providing the three core elements essential for a successful transition to adulthood:

- Safe, Supportive & Affordable Housing
- Educational Opportunity, Support & Achievement
- Vocational Opportunity, Support & Achievement.

TLP integrates these three fundamentals for each participant. Providing oversight, opportunity, support, and accountability, TLP’s case management services provide an integrated bridge of support to adulthood for many young adults who are at risk of homelessness, involvement in the adult justice system, and a continued struggle with substance abuse and mental health issues. Although the majority of at-risk youth are successful when their lives are managed by artificial structures imposed by institutions like the juvenile justice system or department of social services, once they age out of the system they are rarely prepared for the challenges independently functioning adults face and often end up in the adult system for that reason. TLP focuses on helping young adults capitalize on the achievements they made prior to aging out of such support systems to become independent adults and contributing members of the community. TLP is broken down into a female track and a male track with various transition stages over a four year period. We plan to work with each young adult involved in our programs for 4 years because we want to create the intermediate step towards adulthood for marginalized adolescents that college often plays for young adults with more readily available resources. For further information describing the male track visit Polaris Transitional Living Program and for the female track visit Vega Transitional Living Program.

Our Ultimate Goal with the our Transitional Living Programs is to assess every youth in boulder county aging out of the foster care system, department of social services or juvenile justice services. Although we do not expect every youth to participate in the Vega or Polaris Transitional Living Programs, we hope to play a role in setting them up with other transition programs that best fit their needs. We also hope to track youth uninterested in seeking out follow up services to conduct empirical studies on this demographic with the intention of discovering what works best for supporting this population.