Mott Haven Link has increased the quality of services available to the community, especially those engaged with the child welfare system. It wants to improve the availability of those services, and also to involve more community members. Mott Haven wants to create solutions for the many problems that lead to family separations, as well as those that delay or prevent re-unification.

For the past seven years, Mott Haven Link has worked together to provide better services to the community. Despite the adversities that Mott Haven families face today, there is a strong sense of family unity and resiliency. What makes Mott Haven stand out as a community is that the families who reside here have such an ability to thrive, despite the challenges faced.

Our goals:

• Connecting Child Care/Head Start to Preventive Services

Mott Haven Links seeks to promote a strong collaboration between Child Care/Head Start, preventive agencies and community member services to make these services accessible to families in need. Mott Haven holds community events for families in the Mott Haven community, with the purpose of reaching out to the community and informing them of the available resources where they live. The goal is to dispel the myth about preventive services in the community.

• Foster Care Recruitment

Mott Haven recognizes the importance of considering cultural differences in the recruitment of foster families for youth in care. We are organizing trainings, fundraising workshops, and social events to better meet the needs of our community. Among these services are trainings for foster parents including crisis intervention workshops.

• Family Conferences

The Mott Haven Link’s Family Team Conferencing Subcommittee was created to develop a protocol for holding conferences that actually meet family needs. Mott Haven trains representatives from the community who will be able to participate in the Team Conferences for Mott Haven families.

• Visitation

The Visiting Subcommittee was created with the goal of transforming visits into more holistic, family-centered interactions by holding them in environments that are more warm, personal, and family-friendly. Mott Haven has hosted family visiting days at
New York Foundling where games, family-centered activities, and food gift cards were available for families.