Osborne Buffalo

Osborne’s programming in Buffalo serves two aims: building community with children and families affected by incarceration, and strengthening the capacity of local organizations and agencies to support them. We opened our offices in 2019 at the Community Health Center of Buffalo, which was created out of the civil rights movement and where families receiving primary care can easily access our enrichment, leadership, and relationship-building programs.

For young people:

• Youth Experience Success (YES!) offers after-school and summer activities for youth ages 13–15. YES! provides a supportive peer community in which young people gain essential life skills, receive emotional support, and participate in enriching experiences.
• Buffalo Leaders is a college and career readiness program for young people navigating the challenge of having a currently or recently incarcerated parent. Participants go on college visits and develop skills at workforce development centers as they prepare to graduate from high school.
• Strengthening Community offers one-on-one mentoring to children of incarcerated parents, ages 6-17, who live in Erie and Niagara counties. This partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Erie, Niagara and the Southern Tier includes monthly activities, opportunities for caregiver and family engagement, and wraparound services to increase community connectedness.

For families:

• Osborne’s free Video Visiting program allows children and family members to have monthly virtual visits with incarcerated loved ones from Osborne’s Buffalo site to eleven New York State prisons.
• Loved Ones Link is a free transportation program offering round-trip travel from Buffalo to state correctional facilities so families can visit their loved ones.
• Other programs for families include recreational activities during summer and holiday months, support and service links for caregivers of incarcerated loved ones, and monthly healing circles for justice-impacted families.

For organizations and law enforcement:

• Osborne’s New York Initiative for Children of Incarcerated Parents (NYCIP) offers education, training, and support for organizations to adopt best practices in supporting children with family experience of incarceration. People in a range of supportive and decision making roles have benefited from our expertise, including parole board commissioners, family court judges, and staff at district attorneys's offices, as well as mental health practitioners, early childhood experts, teachers, and school social workers.
• In Buffalo, Osborne has led Safeguarding Children of Arrested Parents, an innovative partnership to transform what police do and say when they arrest an adult in the presence of a minor child. With our support, the Buffalo Police Department (BPD) has developed and implemented trauma-informed policies and procedures designed to minimize the harm done to children when parents are arrested. As of 2022, 76% of BDP officers have received training, and this work continues twice a year at the police academy. Community residents have served on an advisory board and participated in listening circles with police as part of the project, and the University at Buffalo’s Institute on Trauma & Trauma Informed Care helped design our instruction materials.