Coffee Connection

(Life Listening Resources)

681 South Avenue
Rochester, NY 14620
Joy Bergfalk, Executive Director
585-315-7826
joybergfalk@gmail.com

Catherine Leahy Scott

Inspector General
Office of the Welfare Inspector General
Empire State Plaza
Agency Bldg. 2, 16th Floor
Albany, New York 12223
August 10, 2016
RE: OWIG 0729-318-2016
Dear Inspector Leahy Scott:
We just received a copy of a letter dated August 2, 2016 to Corinda Crossdale which reports
findings of your investigation of Coffee Connection (Life Listening Resources). We were never
contacted in the course of the investigation and given an opportunity to answer allegations.
When DHS staff finally responded to our repeated requests for a meeting, the investigation
seem to have been concluded. Since we do not believe we were ever out of compliance with the
written Agreement signed in 2012 and were never informed of requirements now stipulated to
be in place prior to the investigation, we want this letter to be our formal statement of record to
the allegations.
We have agreed to abide by existing requirements for the Work Experience Program and
sponsor agencies which have now been communicated to us verbally and in writing. We have
submitted a Corrective Action Plan and are waiting for DHS to respond. We do not, however,
consider the findings of this investigation to be fair or accurate, and we want to be on record
about that.
We have communicated to DHS verbally and in writing the following responses to allegations:
1. We never used WEP participants to staff our locations in lieu of paid employees. For
12 years, the Coffee Connection program included sober support and advocacy for
women in recovery from addiction and employment training for those women. Many of

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the women were assigned as WEP workers. There were no employees other than the
executive director for those dozen years. Since we assumed management in November
of 2011, we created paid jobs for over 20 women (most of them coming to us as WEP
participants). They were able to move from WEP assignments to being employed
through the On-the-Job Training program (OJT), which helped make it financially
possible for us to create these new paid jobs. We continued the job training program for
women as well and were able to work with as many as 35 women at one time, when
there were only five women as job trainees at the time we took over in 2011.
DHS and Rochester Works were always aware of what we thought was a successful
program to help women get off of social services and into paid employment. At no time
before this investigation were we informed that WEP participants could not be part of a
job training program. We still consider this a good model for empowering women, both
in their recovery and in their desire to move toward economic self-sufficiency and to
provide an economic benefit to the county and state as well. But we will abide by
restrictions imposed on us.
As we grew from one shop to three shops and expanded the wholesale business a
business which provides 70% of the income to operate this program of empowering
women we continued to create new jobs (not replace old jobs), and we gave
opportunity to WEP participants and other women to learn job and life skills which
would empower them to be good employees, whether with us or at another job. At no
time did we use WEP participants simply to keep from having to pay employees. In fact,
we did our best to hire as many of them as possible at least by the end of their
assignments.
2. We did not violate our written Agreement by paying WEP participants for hours
worked. We inherited from the previous nonprofit agency a practice of giving small
charitable gifts (stipends) to help women provide for themselves and their families
beyond what their minimal social services allotment would allow. It is never enough to
cover living expenses. We assumed this was an allowed practice and were never told
otherwise until two months ago, at which time we immediately suspended the practice.
Our CPA firm who does our audits never questioned it, nor did Rochester Works or
DHS ever tell us it was not allowed until now.
We have acknowledged one exception to the above statement. A woman in our program
who had been promoted to general manager in the fall of 2015 had made decisions on
her own, without the knowledge of our executive director, to pay much larger stipends
and to tie them to hours worked. When we discovered this in early February, we
immediately stopped that. Our intention was never to circumvent labor laws, including
paying a minimum wage. In fact, when we hire employees we always start them above
the minimum wage. These stipends were always intended to be charitable gifts to help
the women in their daily lives and not to be considered payment for hours worked. We
no longer engage in this practice at all, having been informed that it is not allowed.

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The Agency Agreement nowhere requires us to document that kind of income. We

did not know until now that DHS would expect us to report any stipends, charitable
or otherwise. So we immediately ended the stipend program.
3. At no time did we require a WEP participant to work more than her required hours.
We are a nonprofit program empowering women in recovery from addiction to achieve
sustainable recovery. Our program is highly respected and has won both local and
national awards. Our women often are so committed to the success of the program that
they have volunteered to work additional hours beyond what was required by DHS, but
we never required them to work more hours. Nothing in the agreement says they cannot
choose to volunteer for additional work.
The Agency Agreement requires us to report the persons name, hours worked, and time
period for the report. We always did that. We engaged in mutual conversations with
Rochester Works whenever there was a problem or question about any participants
work. If more documentation was expected, that was not communicated to us. We
would have been happy to provide whatever documentation was asked for beyond
what the Agreement required. We always did that.
If any WEP participants who worked at the Coffee Connection were sanctioned for
failing to meet requirements, we were not aware of that and would have fully
cooperated with any remedial action required of us or requested information about
what happened.
The Coffee Connection is both a program and a business. In fact, the program operates fully in
the context of the safe, supportive work environment of the business. The business does not
operate solely to provide funding for the program, but it gives the women daily opportunity to
consistently practice the life skills taught in the program as part of running the business. That is
what makes our paradigm different, and it is part of what has gained recognition and respect
for our success. The executive director is the only person on staff with no history of substance
abuse. The women in the program run the business, and this empowers them. Many of our
employees all but one hired after coming to us through WEP want to stay with us the rest of
their lives. That is their level of commitment to what we do.
What appears to be at the heart of the allegations is that we are running a business and using
WEP participants to reduce business costs by not having to hire paid employees. The opposite is
true. We have created more than 20 jobs, with 13 of those women still employed by us, and we
operate a job training program for other women in the program as part of the success of this
program. It empowers them in their sustainable recovery. When we calculate the number of
women who do not return to prison or to residential treatment programs, and add that to the
savings to the community for women who are no longer on social services and now have
paying jobs, we estimate an economic benefit to the larger community of as much of one million
dollars a year. We thought this was a laudable goal.
We are especially concerned that having been denied any role in the investigation or
opportunity to respond to allegations, the Coffee Connection (Life Listening Resources) is now

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being reported to the Department of Labor and the Charities Bureau for alleged violations we
were never informed of until recently and practices which we immediately stopped when
notified.
Please make this written response available to the other NYS offices indicated on your report.
We will, of course, make it available to Corinda Crossdale, with whom our executive director is
meeting at the end of August.
Thank you for your consideration of our response.
Joy Bergfalk, Executive Director of Coffee Connection
and Co-director of Life Listening Resources

______________________________________
(Signature)

Jimmy Reader, Co-director of

Life Listening Resources

__________________________________
(Signature)

Cc: Corinda Crossdale

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