It launched in early 2023 with high hopes and $300,000 in state money: a program to help formerly incarcerated Vermont women make their way back into society by providing them a job, social services and a roof over their heads.

Almost a year later, the pilot program, called Building Employment and Meaning, or BEAM, is floundering. Four of its five participants have left, and the last has been told she has until spring to find her own housing in the pricey Middlebury area. Adding to the turmoil, the person overseeing day-to-day operations has gone on leave.

The troubles have complicated the steep challenge of helping women rejoin society after serving their time in the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, Vermont's only prison for women. Locking down a job is key to successful reentry, and securing housing is sometimes a condition for being freed on parole. BEAM, which began by placing participants in dining hall jobs at Middlebury College and providing living quarters in a shared home nearby, was billed as a way to accomplish both.

The program's partners, Vermont Works for Women, the Department of Corrections and Middlebury College, attribute its early difficulties to broader statewide challenges, including an acute housing crisis and a lack of services to address mental health and addiction. Organizers say they hope to make adjustments that will allow the program to continue and perhaps expand to other parts of the state. But it is unclear what those fixes will be and whether the subsidized housing benefit will remain a central feature.

"Middlebury leadership is really fond of saying, 'We're building the plane while we're flying it,'" said Jack Dorkey, a former human resources official at the college who worked on getting BEAM under way. "That approach, I think, did a disservice to these women."

From the beginning, BEAM was meant to address systemic failings. Vermont Works for Women, a statewide nonprofit, wanted to address how difficult it is for women to find safe places to live upon release from prison. Existing programs, such as a transitional housing initiative of the Department of Corrections, don't address other challenges, such as finding employment.

In 2022, the state steered $300,000 to Vermont Works for Women in a bill designed to improve workforce training. Middlebury College was chosen as the first partner because it was willing to hire people despite their criminal history, according to Rhoni Basden, executive director of Vermont Works for Women.

In January, BEAM's first participant, Christina Colburn, began a full-time position with Middlebury's dining services. For the first few months, she seemed to thrive. Colburn's managers told Seven Days at the time that she was excelling at her job. But by October, for undisclosed reasons, she was asked to leave the program, according to Basden. Three other participants who joined BEAM not long after her had quit or been asked to leave by May, Basden said. She declined to state the reasons. The fifth participant, Samantha Partlow, began in August and still works in the dining hall at Middlebury.

While Vermont Works for Women and Middlebury College acknowledge the bumpy start, they maintain that measuring success by head count alone ignores the obstacles that come with easing participants, who often are dealing with substance-use disorder, back into society.

"This is a hard problem to solve," said Caitlin Goss, vice president for human resources and chief people officer at Middlebury who is also on the board of Vermont Works for Women. "It's a multifaceted, complex, gritty, personal and intersectional challenge, and we dreamed big."

The program's most obvious setback appears to have been in housing.

Besides the state funding to run the program, BEAM was awarded a $50,000 grant from Middlebury College which was used to lease a home for participants. After an unsuccessful search in the area, Vermont Works for Women took up a board member's offer to lease their four-bedroom Middlebury house.

Basden said the nonprofit took steps to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest, such as by having the board member, whom she declined to name, sit out any conversations regarding BEAM. The board used a market-rate calculator to determine the cost of renting the property — $3,700 a month — which maxed out the $50,000 grant from Middlebury. The board also dipped into Vermont Works for Women's independent funds to cover unexpected costs.

Efforts by Vermont Works for Women to raise new money to cover participants' housing for a second year of the three-year pilot program have so far been unsuccessful.

Dorkey said Middlebury could have done more to help the group secure funding. He said the college offered help with grant writing but never followed up.

"It's a pretty big thing to fall through the cracks," Dorkey said.

Goss, of Middlebury, said there was discussion with Vermont Works for Women about using the college's grant office, but nothing specific.

Colburn, the first participant in the program, said the confusion around her future housing was deeply unsettling. "I kept telling them, 'I can't do this not knowing where I'm going to live,'" Colburn said. "'It's breaking me down; I need help.'"

Partlow, 37, who is the only one left in the rented house, has until April to find another place to live. Partlow said that, as called for by the program, she has contributed an increasing share of her income toward rent and now pays close to half of her earnings. (She declined to disclose her income.) BEAM's eventual goal for participants is full self-reliance. Vermont Works for Women and Middlebury have been helping her search for a new place but found nothing in her price range.

"I love working at the college, and that's the hard part," Partlow said. "I really don't want to lose my job, but it's hard to find housing around here."

BEAM's troubles with housing could hinder other incarcerated women awaiting release from participating in the program. Under some parole conditions, inmates must have housing approved before they can be released.

But housing is not the only program shortcoming cited by participants. While the rented house is only 10 minutes by foot from the Middlebury campus, some participants said walking home alone late at night was less than ideal. Partlow, who is in recovery from substance-use disorder, said she was offered drugs on multiple occasions while commuting by bus.

Besides that, so-called wraparound services that Vermont Works for Women had touted never fully materialized. Basden cites long waiting lists for mental health and recovery providers. Ashley Messier, who is on leave from her job as the agency's reentry services program manager, declined to comment.

Still, Vermont Works for Women and Middlebury see some hope for the program.

"If I was to apply to Middlebury College without BEAM, I would not have been approved for a job," Partlow said. "This type of program should exist ... But I think the program would benefit by creating the right foundation to guide participants."

To date, the program has spent about $100,000, nearly half of which went to pay its sole employee, Messier. Roughly $200,000 in the original state funding remains. Vermont Works for Women is looking to spend that on bringing the program to other workplaces across the state. Middlebury officials said they plan to continue hiring formerly incarcerated women through BEAM.

"I really hope that our community will understand that there were bumps," Goss said. "Did we get it all right? Absolutely not. Are there hard lessons learned? For sure. Are there successes? Yes. But I absolutely believe it was worth every investment."

Correction, December 13, 2023: A previous version of this story failed to note that Caitlin Goss is on the board of Vermont Works for Women.

Correction, February 7, 2024: A previous version of this story overstated how much had been paid to Ashley Messier.