Victory Programs, Inc.

Victory Programs strives to meet the needs of disadvantaged homeless families and individuals in underserved communities throughout Boston. The majority of our programs are located in or serve urban Boston communities of Dorchester, Mattapan, Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain. We have permanent supported housing programs for men, women, and/or families with HIV/AIDS or other disabilities in Mattapan, Boston's Fenway area, the South End, and Topsfield.

(1) Victory Programs successfully renewed contracts of our residential recovery programs, which included for our newest recovery home, New Victories for Women, which serves 14 women at a time in Dorchester, and our "to be launched" New Joelyn's Recovery Program in Roxbury, which will serve 24 women at a time. Another notable achievement was the expansion of our Shepherd House Recovery Home by 22% (7 beds), and obtaining approval and funding for accepting up to six women with infants into the program for the first time ever, removing a major impediment for mothers seeking recovery services.

2) One of Victory Programs signature programs, Joelyn's Family Home, was closed suddenly and permanently in late 2014 due to the bridge to Boston Harbor's Long Island being deemed unsafe by the City of Boston. Victory Programs' leadership and staff responded to this tragedy by (1) Raising more than 2 million dollars from private sources; (2) Successfully identifying and securing a new facility in Roxbury. This element included advocating with many different parties of the need to gain financial support for its purchase, which led to a grant from an anonymous donor for the entire purchase price.

The New Joelyn's Residential Recovery program was officially opened in May of 2017. This opening, combined with the previous New Victories for Women opening and 2016 and expansion of our Shepherd House program recaptures 46% of the beds lost when our Joelyn's Family Home closed in late 2014.

(3) Victory Programs hired a key person of our Executive Team in May of 2017, adding Cheri Epps as the Senior Director of Programs. In her role she is responsible for the overall agency program operations and clinical treatment. She works with a team of dedicated professions to advance Standards of Care and Excellence throughout the agency. She serves as the agency designated HIPPA and Compliance Officer and is supervised by and reports to the Vice/President/Chief Operating Officer. Prior to joining Victory Programs, she was a Division Director at the Boston Public Health Commission. In the Homeless Service Bureau. She worked for BPHC for over 22 years provided services and supports to the homeless, managing Transitional Housing Programs, Permanent Housing, and Community Housing programs. At BPHC she specialized in human rights as a certified MCAD investigator and Official Grievance Officer, HIV services, and substance abuse services. In addition, her role was to advance organizational change as a leader of the BPHC Racial Justice Health Equity strategic initiative. She also served on the Accreditation and Quality Improvement team to advance an organization-wide culture of quality improvement, performance management. Cheri's work's focus is on the health and well-being for vulnerable populations. She received her Masters in Social Work degree from Simmons College.

We earned our reputation as trailblazers in the 1970's: as the first to accept individuals diagnosed with both mental illness and addiction; the first to open our doors to Vietnam veterans combating the ravages of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; the first to offer services to LGBTQ individuals long before concerns about LGBTQ equal rights hit the national stage.

We earned our reputation of serving the hardest to place individuals and families in the 1980's: as the first Massachusetts agency to open a women's section 35 residential home as an alternative to incarceration; the first agency to actively open all our services individuals with HIV and symptomatic AIDS; the first to offer permanent housing for those in addiction recovery also living with HIV and we launched the first statewide mobile AIDS resource team .

We earned our reputation as leaders in the 1990's: as the first to open all our residential programs to those on medication assisted treatment, thus ensuring medically managed methadone maintenance was no longer a barrier to accessing residential services.

In the new century, the 2000's, we earned our reputation for expanding to meet emerging community needs when we opened our low threshold housing first site in Roxbury; when we built Revision Urban Farm to bring healthy nutritious food to our community and then again when we rewrote our philosophy of care to promote evidence-based, substance use treatment services centered on a harm reduction model.

We earned our reputations as an agency willing to fight for vital resources again in the 2010's when we merged with the Boston Living Center to help them keep the doors open and when we overcame the catastrophic loss of our major women's treatment program on Boston Harbor's Long Island when the bridge that served as the only access point was closed. We rose to the challenge, forging ahead until we acquired two alternative sites in Dorchester and Roxbury to rebuild with new state-of-the-art women's treatment programs.

Today, we still push new boundaries and we still earn our reputation. Last year we established our new Mobile Prevention Team which works in the community to address sexual health risk factors, living with HIV, drug user health education and advocacy around access to treatment for Hepatitis C.

Throughout our history we have successfully faced down adversity, unpredictable losses, capricious political environments and fluctuating economic uncertainties to rise above challenges. Many have remarked:

“If anyone can make it, Victory Programs can."

We earn our reputation one day at a time because we are always working to keep our original promise. We say Victory is on the move because, no matter what the emerging issue is, all people deserve treatment and care.

Since Victory Programs opened its doors in 1975, we have served more than 33,000 people. We have grown from one program in a single facility serving 20 men into a multi-service agency with 19 health, housing, and prevention programs in 35 facilities, providing residential services from acute treatment to permanent housing in Boston, Cambridge and Topsfield, serving nearly 3,200 individuals and families each year. Our Boston Living Center programming provides nutritional, wellness, education and prevention services to nearly 1,000 people living with HIV/AIDS every year.

Victory Programs' experience and accomplishments are widely recognized in the service provider community. Just a few of these include: The 2008 Excellence in Best Practices Award from the Association for Behavioral Health in the field of substance use disorder, which recognized our creative and influential care plans based on evidence-based practices: The Cornerstone Award in 2010 from the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance (MHSA), in recognition of our role in creating housing opportunities for people in need; A $100,000 “Out of the Blue" grant from The Boston Foundation in 2010 (these awards, given to only a few organizations every year, are in recognition of “exemplary organizations that have an impressive history of achievement and demonstrate effective and collaborative community leadership, and the Nonprofit of the Year award in 2013 from the Greater Boston Business Council for our work with LGBT populations.