Progressive Life Center, Inc.

It is Progressive Life Center’s goal to reach more children, youth and families and help make connections to community and family supports that provide opportunities to live happy and fulfilling lives. We seek to ensure that the children we serve have a secure and loving home to heal, grow and thrive, often in a temporary placement, but with the goal of family reunification or another permanent home.

Through our intensive, in-home intervention model, when appropriate, we seek to avert at-risk children being placed in foster care by providing families in crisis with therapeutic services that protect the children while supporting, strengthening and stabilizing the family.

Through after-school and summer programming for foster youth and other youth at-risk, we seek to offer academic, cultural and career enrichment with a therapeutic approach that focuses on harm reduction, reducing high-risk behaviors and promoting pro-social behavior and general mental, spiritual and physical health.

For more than three decades, PLC has delivered positive outcomes for children and youth who are the most vulnerable: those in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, and others facing economic insecurity, housing instability, and mental health/behavioral challenges. PLC weaves its clinical and administrative capacities to offer outstanding and proven services and strategies in the communities we serve.

Through our foster care programming, PLC recruits and rigorously screens and trains foster parents to ensure a safe and loving home. Each member of the foster family is extensively screened and must complete a comprehensive training program. After successful completion, we assign a multi-disciplinary treatment team to the foster family. Teamwork and community collaboration are integral to our specialized foster care model.

Building on our success in foster care programming, and in providing auxiliary supports to foster youth through programs like ICAN, the Adolescent Clubhouse and the Illumination Project, initially planned to open in 2020 but placed on hold due to COVID-related issues, PLC will soon launch the Prince George’s County Educational and Cultural Enrichment Center to augment children’s public education and expand high-quality learning experiences to improve academic, personal and social skills. After school and summer programming will focus on academic, career and cultural enrichment, and will provide youth with individual and group counseling to address the unique needs of foster and at-risk youth.

As mentioned, PLC’s clinical and administrative infrastructure serve as a vehicle for ongoing success and for growth. For instance, since the early 2000s, PLC has earned renewing contracts to serve as the Administrative Partner for the District of Columbia’s Department of Youth Rehabilitative Services’ Community Programming Initiative. In this role, PLC coordinates a continuum of community-based service providers who support court-involved youth and their families. This serves as one of many examples of PLC’s experience and understanding of human services systems and infrastructure that secures our position for continued success and expansion in any of the seven regions we serve.

PLC’s maintains strong and invested board of directors and senior leadership team with proven and extensive expertise in nonprofit oversight and growth. Each of the seven PLC locations provides administrative support, but under the umbrella of PLC’s Headquarters’ Team that boast a capable finance, human resources and administrative staff of 15, ensuring the health and growth potential of the organization.

Through the provision of effective and well-managed programs, PLC has earned the respect of the various human services agencies with which it has garnered program grants and contracts. Over the years, PLC has consistently earned extended and re-awarded grants and contracts from our county and state partners.

Since our founding in 1983, through our pre-adjudication programming, PLC has helped divert hundreds of youth from the juvenile justice system by providing in-home family therapy in both the District of Columbia and in Maryland. In the mid-1980s, PLC improved individual and community health through a contract with the DC office of Aids Administration to provide counseling to HIV-positive African Americans. Over the years, PLC has certified hundreds of foster parents in DC, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware, helping to provide safe, loving and nurturing homes for thousands of children and adolescents. Family preservation in our Maryland territories has helped keep children in place by providing families with comprehensive services including counseling and community connections. In the District, Maryland and in Delaware, PLC has supported youth in and aging out of foster care, and other at-risk youth to achieve greater independence through counseling and life skills training. In Maryland, PLC has provides youth with substance abuse prevention programming. Much of the aforementioned good work continues throughout the District, and in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware. And there is much more ahead for PLC.
Of significant note in the Prince George's County Education and Cultural Enrichment Center (The Center). The Center will augment children’s public education and expand high-quality learning experiences to improve academic, personal and social skills. Importantly, The Center will address any special education needs to confirm both the identification and the appropriate instruction and support required for these children. Center programs will focus on enhancing analytical thinking and academic skills with an emphasis on reading and STEM. In addition, students will be exposed to a range of career options through guest speakers, workplace site visits and Career Days. Students will also participate in field trips designed to ignite their curiosity and imagination and align their thinking towards seeing themselves as worthy, confident and contributing members of our community.

Educators widely recognize the middle grade years as a critical period of adolescent development. According to the U.S. Department of Education, high-quality middle grade schooling is essential for getting young people ready for high school, college, and careers. In high-poverty schools in particular, the middle grades can “either put students on a path to college and careers—or it can steer them to dropping out and the unemployment line.” The DOE emphasizes that early intervention is easier and more cost-effective than waiting until high school. For this reason, PLC’s Center will initially target students in grades 6-9 and will expand to serve the K-12 continuum over time.