OPERATION EMANCIPATION

  • MENTAL HEALTH & JOB READINESS

Operation Emancipation, RightWay’s core program, begins with our 32-hour trauma-informed and healing-centered employment readiness workshop, which integrates mental health services with employment services and financial literacy. Youth learn how to recognize and regulate their trauma responses and triggers, learn executive functioning skills, and begin to build self-awareness. Core competencies include stress management, communication skills, and problem-solving in their personal and professional lives. 

Upon completion of Operation Emancipation, youth have access to one-on-one therapy, housing navigation, case management, job coaching, employment opportunities, workplace mentoring, vocational training, financial capability coaching, and community.

For thirteen years, RightWay has served as a lifeline for system-impacted youth in Los Angeles County.

“If foster youth are supported with housing and given the opportunity to become financially stable, a large source of homelessness will be stopped.”

- Franco Vega Founder / CEO


OPERATION HOUSING FIRST

  • Supportive, dedicated housinG 

RightWay provides safely-located, well-appointed apartments and shared housing for homeless transition-age youth. We supply the security deposit and subsidize half of each month’s rent for one year while we support youth in building financial and emotional stability.

  • Financial Capability & Money Management 

Each youth in our housing program meets one-on-one with a financial coach to create short and long term financial plans.

“In dedicated housing, our youth can focus on their mental health and well-being, enter the workforce, and build toward a stable life.”

- De’jah Goodwin-Taylor Housing Navigator

“Housing is health!”

- Douglas BYRD jr Housing Navigator


OPERATION SECOND CHANCE

Operation Second Chance is our mental health and job readiness program for justice-impacted, probation youth.  The program provides extra resources tailored to re-entry youth.

“By empowering system-impacted youth with career development, educational pathways, and financial literacy, we can break the cycle of poverty.”

- Frank Curiel Job Developer


OPERATION PURSUIT

  • CAREER BUILDING & LONG TERM WELL-BEING

RightWay’s Operation Pursuit program partners with former foster youth to strive confidently toward sustaining careers and break through barriers to emotionally and financially fulfilling adult lives. For young adults in our programs who have reached an initial level of stability, Operation Pursuit provides intensive financial capability training, career counseling and career-focused trainings/opportunities, connections to apprenticeships, navigation of enrolling in higher education, professional mentorship, life-skills workshops, and healthy pastime-building activities to robustly support our RightWay young adults in building a sense of purpose and long-lasting stability.

OPERATION POSITIVE PARENTING

Operation Positive Parenting provides trauma-informed support for young parents to end the cycle of trauma that sees over half of foster youth who become parents lose their children to the very system that failed them. The program empowers young parents to connect with their children through empathy and to build a nurturing environment. Parents learn positive parenting techniques for each developmental stage and how their personal traumas can affect parenting. 


OPERATION GUIDE

  • Mentorships Matter

Operation Guide is a mentorship program in which RightWay partners with Faith Foster Family Network to provide community members to mentor transition-age RightWay youth. In return, RightWay youth mentor younger teenage foster youth from our partner organization, Dangerfield Institute of Urban Problems. The program is a one year commitment with the aim to create lifelong bonds.


Foster Care Transition-Age Youth (TAY) and Re-entry Youth deserve to transition to safe, comfortable self-sufficiency when they exit from the foster care system or justice system.


Last fiscal year (July 1, 2023 - June 30, 2024), RightWay supported 180 young adults in Los Angeles County with employment readiness, mental health, financial literacy, college enrollment assistance, case management, and housing support, and:

  • 94% of young adults report an increase in social support and a decrease in social isolation

  • 76% of young adults obtained a job, internship, or paid work experience

  • 73% maintained employment for at least 6 months

  • 82% report improved mental health and emotional well-being

  • 85% of young adults receiving mental health services report a decrease in symptoms and behaviors

  • 80% return for supportive services

  • 30% enrolled in college