The Sanctuary Institute, a division of ANDRUS in Yonkers, NY provides training and consultation services to the organizations that work with vulnerable adults, children and families with an aim to help an agency’s leaders reclaim a culture of hope and innovation. The Sanctuary Institute’s transformational process requires deep commitment, but rewards participants with powerful and measurable organizational change. This transformational process emerged from a collaborative effort between Dr. Sandra Bloom and ANDRUS.
ANDRUS has a longstanding history in the New York metropolitan area for excellence in a range of services to children and families. In early 2001, the campus programs became a proving ground for a trauma-informed organizational and environment-based care intervention called the Sanctuary Model. Within five years of introducing the model on campus, ANDRUS’ leadership partnered with Sanctuary founder, Dr. Sandra Bloom, and her colleagues from Philadelphia to construct a training institute that would offer the Sanctuary Model to other human service organizations. The early successes of training and coaching other agencies to use Sanctuary sparked the birth of what is now the Sanctuary Institute.
In 2004, Dr. Bloom and several ANDRUS staff lead by Brian Farragher and Sarah Yanosy collaborated to transform Dr. Bloom’s personal teachings and individual instruction process into a replicable and measurable curriculum and implementation program. By selecting a group of Sanctuary practitioners from ANDRUS to provide training and consultation that matched her vision, Dr. Bloom could make her model accessible to a larger number of agencies and a wider geographic range. The Sanctuary Institute began with a modest desire to bring Sanctuary training to a few likeminded organizations per year. The first Sanctuary Five Day Training was offered in September 2005 to five agencies who had followed Dr. Bloom’s work and hoped to replicate the positive outcomes she had seen in her own work and at ANDRUS.
As interest in trauma-informed care blossomed, so did news of the Sanctuary Model and the training program being offered by ANDRUS. Within two years of its inception, the Sanctuary Institute began to work with the NY State Office of Children and Family Services to bring Sanctuary to a small number of residential sites. This early collaboration grew to result in the decision of NYS OCFS to implement Sanctuary in all of its juvenile justice programs. Shortly after that, a partnership with the PA Department of Public Welfare ensued to train 30 residential programs across the state. The Sanctuary Institute now offers training and support to a Network of over 275 organizations around the world.
The Sanctuary Institute continues to grow and change as the needs of our constituents evolve and knowledge in the field of trauma develops. We are constantly working to adapt our programs and services to meet the growing needs of organizations who hope to transform the care they provide to their clients. The Sanctuary Institute is committed to honoring the roots of Sanctuary and the founders of the model while also nurturing and embracing new and innovative practices and applications of this essential work to change the experience of vulnerable adults, children, families and communities.