Urban Triage will host an open house for its first Emerging Adults Transitional Home on Thursday, Feb. 27, 3-6 p.m.
The home is tailored for young adults 18-21 years old transitioning out of health care. Urban Triage is working in partnership with Dane County Human Services to provide stable temporary housing with programs to help young adults find pathways to success. The project recently opened up applications earlier this month and is currently reviewing them with hopes of placing young adults within the transitional home ideally in March.
Urban Triage does not own the home, rather it has been contracted out by Dane County to provide support services, supervision, building and designing the home. While residents of the home can live in it for two years, Urban Triage’s objective is to have them out into their own permanent housing within nine months.
“We have youth who are in systems or aging out of foster care, and a lot of them don’t have the support they need,” said Brandi Grayson, founder and CEO of Urban Triage. “The biggest challenge with folks aging out of foster care is not having support and access to resources.”
Grayson relates to the difficulties and unrealized difficulties within foster care. She went through the system herself and knows the tumultuous nature of trying to foster relationships and navigate life post-foster care.
Largely, she points to the trauma that surmounts in the experience and negative outcomes often felt by those in foster care.
“For most of our youth, there is no one to call. My kids are 30, 29 and 24 and they still call me [and say], ‘What do I do with this, mom? How do I do this? What do I do next? How do I —,’” Grayson said. “I want to watch my adultism language here, but there’s so much that they don’t know how to do.”
Programs in the transitional housing aim to fill those gaps. Programming includes navigating housing, trauma recovery, mental health support, obtaining birth certificates and social security cards, education, personal finance and job readiness workshops. Programs are offered every day of the week for residents of the home.
Support also comes from outside of Urban Triage. Madison College is one of its partners and plans to be a direct access point to some of its free education for careers as a certified nurse assistant and phlebotomist.
A unique component Grayson wants to highlight is that Urban Triage will work to provide the young adults with furnishing that they can take with them when they leave the home. It plans to either provide them with new or replacements of simple items like a couch, table or TV that they can keep.
The open house for the Emerging Adults Transitional Home will be held Thursday, Feb. 27, 3-6 p.m. at 1738 Roth St. Registration is required.
