Nicole Sullivan, Leading THRIVE's Partnership with the North Carolina Department of Public Safety
To transform the lives of people impacted by the criminal justice system, we need everyone. When College & Community Fellowship launched its national technical assistance program, THRIVE, we wanted to reach CJ-impacted people before reentry. That’s why we work closely with the North Carolina Department of Public Safety (NCDPS). Since 2016, THRIVE has trained hundreds of staff members, including case managers, probation officers, legal resource counselors, and more.
Nicole Sullivan is the Director of Reentry Programs and Services in NCDPS’ Division of Adult Correction and Juvenile Justice. As a graduate student studying policy at Duke University in the 1990s, Nicole had the chance to work at a Federal prison in Butner, North Carolina. From that point on, Nicole dedicated her life to prison work, with the goal of providing rehabilitative services to incarcerated individuals. She has worked at the North Carolina Department of Public Safety for 28 years now. In 2017, she became the point person organizing THRIVE trainings at NCDPS.
“NCDPS is unique. We’ve been very intentional about structure so that staff across the whole agency are using the same tools and providing the same resources and messages to people going home,” Nicole says. “Most corrections agencies have a lot of communication silos, but we’re trying to bridge the gap between prison and the community.”
But change isn’t easy for large institutions like state corrections agencies. When Nicole heard about THRIVE in 2016, “the stars aligned. We already wanted to do more with case managers and probation officers, and we wanted to enhance education in prison and post-prison too.” NCDPS already had a strong education program component. It was one of three states working with the Vera Institute for Justice’s Pathways from Prison to Postsecondary Education Project and it had been collaborating with both community colleges and the University of North Carolina for decades.
“We have had education programs consistently despite the fluctuations with Pell,” Nicole says, “and we have been expanding over the last 15 years. So student support was very exciting to me. We wanted to be pushing education, supporting students as they got out,and we wanted to be able to provide support and counseling and have the correct information to share about how impactful higher education can be. We wanted to keep moving on postsecondary education initiatives and helping students transition into the community.”
For Nicole, THRIVE was a no-brainer. “Most of the professional development we provide to our officers is about what not to do, or about what they’ve done wrong. THRIVE was a totally different curriculum that was eye-opening for staff and offered new opportunities and practices. The trauma module has really helped develop better relationships between staff and the folks they’re meant to help. A lot of [the modules] are hot topics that we need to address, but many staff haven’t been exposed to before. THRIVE is a chance to work through these ideas as one cohesive agency.”
At NCDPS’ first-ever THRIVE training in 2017, about 20 staff from just Buncombe County attended. Since then, Nicole has worked hard to keep the training going: she’s found grants and other funding to bring THRIVE back in year after year.
“Within NCDPS, we’re using a lot of the tools provided by THRIVE, like financial literacy worksheets, the scripts for opening conversations about higher education, and the comprehensive booklet on reentry resources in the state. Our staff are learning to adapt their own communication to better support the people in custody. A lot of the staff have told me that this is one of the best training they’ve been to. They’re finding that they’re better able to communicate with different people who have different needs.”
But Nicole doesn’t plan to stop here. “What are the points of contact for people, and how can we improve them?” Nicole asks.