On a Thursday afternoon in March, a group of about a dozen women – female residents at the Forsyth County Law Enforcement Detention Center (FCLEDC) in North Carolina – accepted certificates of completion from a weeks-long course of mental-health treatment and counseling. As they read aloud personal statements on what the experience had meant to them, an audience made up of roughly fifty of their peers, plus a smaller group of facility staff and community members, cheered them on from the rows of chairs.
“One of the big signs of success,” Dr. Parrott says, “has been our participation levels, which are so high that we maintain a wait list of women who want to join the program. The patients tell us themselves: ‘It’s working. It’s making a difference. Our lives are better here, and it gives me hope that my life can be better outside.’”
The occasion – a graduation ceremony for the Women’s Intervention Program (WIP), a program administered by NaphCare through its partnership with the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office. The WIP utilizes regular Monday-through-Friday sessions of group therapy and guided discussion, led by NaphCare’s team of licensed Mental Health Professionals, to address acute mental health needs among the detention center’s female population. The program began in 2023 and was developed in large part by Dr. Caroline Parrott, NaphCare’s Vice President of Forensic Mental Health Programs.
WIP is a prime example of NaphCare’s mission – to improve and save lives – in action. It exemplifies NaphCare’s philosophy that, as Dr. Parrott puts it, “Those who are detained are people first, not inmates. They are our patients, and we treat them from a holistic, person-focused perspective.”
Celebrating a Transformation
McKeisha Washington, NaphCare’s Corporate Mental Health Professional and Interim Mental Health Director at the FCLEDC, led the ceremony. “We are gathered here today to celebrate a transformation that many people on the outside might think is impossible,” said Washington. “But looking at the women sitting in this room, I see the living proof.”
Washington described the burdens the women brought to WIP – mental-health struggles, the cycles of addiction, abuse, and the path of pain. She also described the change: “You have put in hard work every day, and I am standing here to tell you that I see a profound difference. You are no longer defined by your mistakes or your environment. For a long time, those experiences may have defined your world, but today they no longer define your future.”
Teaching Skills and Building Trust
The person handing out the graduate certificates that day was Cambrea Borders, a licensed Mental Health Professional with NaphCare and one of the most hands-on team members at WIP. She routinely visits patients in their cells when they are not well enough to attend group. Several of the graduates mentioned in their speeches how much they valued and trusted her. One patient said, “I think every woman should have the opportunity to have strong, influential women to hold up in her life, like Miss Borders.”
“When I think of Borders,” Dr. Parrott said, “I think of how steady she is. A steady, positive presence in these women’s lives, which is something they haven’t had – someone who shows up no matter what day it is. It motivates them to work on themselves and realize for the first time that it’s possible to do this work.”
Borders’ parents were both community social workers, and her father worked in corrections as a program manager. She has been around this kind of work all her life. When asked to describe the treatment that she and her NaphCare colleagues in the WIP unit provide, she emphasized the importance of “skills,” a word that often popped up in the statements read by the women graduating that day.
“We're teaching them skills to help them manage their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors,” Borders said. “Patients have trouble self-monitoring, and a lot of times people find themselves in this situation to begin with, of being incarcerated, due to not knowing how to manage those things.”
By practicing these skills in an environment as trying and triggering as jail—and getting that daily support and feedback in group in real-time to adjust and learn from it—the WIP jump starts these healthy habits and skills where they are now. The result is it being easier to keep it up on the outside.
Trust – while hard to come by in many of the WIP participants’ lives, both in and outside of jail – is key to building insight and coping skills. Because of this, NaphCare uses research-informed and gender-responsive therapeutic approaches to create a trusting, safe WIP environment.
Care and Community
Borders estimates that about 70% of the women who enter the FCLEDC are dealing with mental health challenges.
“One of the big signs of success,” Dr. Parrott says, “has been our participation levels, which are so high that we maintain a wait list of women who want to join the program. The patients tell us themselves: ‘It’s working. It’s making a difference. Our lives are better here, and it gives me hope that my life can be better outside.’”
Borders sees more tangible evidence of the WIP program’s effectiveness in her everyday experience at the jail. After four years of working there, she has specifically seen a decrease in incidents of violence among the female population. “That has decreased a lot since the group work has been going on here,” she says. “I think it's because the women are learning to empathize with each other, just by being in group and hearing people's stories. They are working on their communication.”
“We’ve learned to turn bitter into better,” another of the graduates said when it was her turn to speak.
As the ceremony ended, a patient approached the small group of visiting NaphCare employees. She said she struggled with anxiety, PTSD, and bipolar disorder. Upon arrival at the facility, she applied for the WIP program right away. “I’m learning coping skills,” she said, “and how to be around people. It’s good for me just to be around people.”
Stories like hers are a reminder of the importance of the group work that happens in WIP. “For a lot of these females,” Dr. Parrott said, “this is the first pro-social community that they’ve had in years. We’re modeling a pro-social female community for them in this group context. Many of them have never experienced any kind of therapy in their lives. They really connect to each other and carry that forward.”
A Sense of Possibility
As the chairs emptied and the applause faded, what lingered in the room was something far more enduring than a ceremony: a sense of possibility. The Women’s Intervention Program is not just a series of sessions or a milestone marked by certificates – it is a starting point. For these women, it represents the first steps toward understanding themselves, rebuilding trust, and imagining a life beyond the cycles that once defined them. Through consistent care, practical skills, and a community rooted in empathy, WIP is helping to reshape not only individual futures, but the culture within the facility itself. And for every woman who walks out of that room carrying a little more hope and self-understanding than she had before, the program fulfills its purpose in the most meaningful way possible.
