Goals
  • To provide clients with basic services that foster stability and daily functioning.
  • To support clients' pro-social community relationships through linkages to educational and employment opportunities and skill-building mentoring.
  • To improve clients' behavioral and physical wellbeing in order to support productivity. 

Approach
  • UCSD RELINK provides a comprehensive needs assessment to identify and prioritize needs with the client, collaboratively. 
  • The program offers individualized service navigation, including linkages and warm handoffs to community resources and services, in-house skill-building mentorship, and strengths-based case management to address clients' needs and make progress towards their personal goals
  • Our personalized referrals connect clients with services and resources provided by trusted community partners

​Rationale
  • The cycle of incarceration and reentry exacerbates health disparities because it disrupts continuity of care, access to medication, and social support networks.
  • Racial and ethnic disparities in health are often driven by the same social determinants (e.g., structural racism, low socioeconomic status, low educational attainment) as racial and ethnic disparities in incarceration.​
  • Service navigation and strengths-based case management is tied to greater service utilization, improved outcomes, and client satisfaction. Warm-handoff referrals amplify these outcomes by: increasing clients’ self-efficacy, reducing stigma, addressing barriers to use of health and social services, re-establishing positive community engagement, and building client-provider trust and rapport. 
  • The program's person-centered approach to assessment and service planning incorporates client choice, experiences, values, goals, and engages clients as partners in their service planning; this is a best practice and critical component of high-quality care.
  • By contributing to the prevention of repeated exposure to criminal justice and the improvement of health outcomes, UCSD RELINK seeks to reduce health disparities and recidivism of formerly incarcerated adults in the Central, South, and East San Diego region.