Bridge Builders engages trained community members to reach out and help their neighbors, linking those in need to valuable services and resources. The project works closely with the Highbridge Community Life Center in the Bronx community. Bridge Builders CPI has a long tradition of social activism in the community, and is administered by the Fund for Social Change. In addition to the support received from the NYC Administration for Children Services, the project is strongly supported by a donors’ collaborative, which, in turn, is funded by private foundations.

For more information about the Bridge Builders Community Partnership Initiative please go to:

http://www.bridgebuilderscpi.org/

Our Goals:

· Early Childhood Committee

Knowledge is power. But many families are not aware of the available Child Care and Head Start services that can provide help to them or of the various preventive services available to them that exist in the community. Bridge Builders connects families to the resources they need and provides Cultural Competence Training to professionals who work in the Highbridge Community.

· Foster Care Recruitment

Bridge Builders actively recruits foster parents for children in the Highbridge community who are in need of foster care. The recruitment committee works closely with local churches, which host foster parent recruitment events. Adults who are interested in becoming foster parents can attend informational recruitment forums and trainings.

Bridge Builders also provides parenting circles for birth-parents whose children are in foster care. These parenting circles are currently facilitated by Clinical Social Workers and run for twelve-week sessions.

· Family Conferences

Bridge Builders holds conferences to help keep families in care within their community of family, friends, neighbors, and community partners. A trained “community representative"can attend these conferences to support the parents and the children with approval of the family. We believe it is important to support and advocate for parents as well as children, in order to keep children safe within the community.

Bridge Builders also supports families in the Highbridge community by offering Case Consultations and Community Advisory Panels. Case Consultations help families utilize the various available agencies and access a wide range of resources. The Community Advisory Panel is a question and answer forum for families to ask questions about the services and resources available to them in the community. These forums have proven very popular; at a recent event, seventy people attended.

 · Visitation

Bridge Builders has a “Babies and Me” program. This is a new pilot program that Highbridge CPI offers to families with children under the age of three. Its purpose is to help parents develop the skills they need to care for young children. Topics include health, development, diet, and positive interaction.

Highbridge also provides a Therapeutic Visiting Program for families with children in care. The mission of the Therapeutic Visiting Program is for children to be permanently re-unified with their birth parents. Highbridge takes a holistic view to visiting and has utilized recent data to create and structure this innovative program. This program engages the participation of Visiting Coaches and Visiting Liaisons. The Visiting Coaches, MSW and psychology students from NYC colleges who have received specialized training provided by the NYC Administration for Children Services, act as the Visiting Coaches for families. The role of the Visiting Liaison includes supervising visits on the weekends and in the evenings at various community-based locations.