The Community Partnerships and The Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) work hand-in-hand with local community groups, faith-based institutions, non-profits and individuals in New York City neighborhoods to build a safety net for children and families. The Community Partnerships work with ACS to promote child safety and strengthen the community’s ability to keep children safe and support families. One of the Partnerships’ chief tasks is to help recruit strong and loving foster families in their neighborhoods. When families need help – and when children need safe and loving foster homes – the Community Partnerships are there to help.
Our Mission Our History in Working with Communities Our Goals
All of us are committed to the same goal: to ensure the well-being of children and families. Towards that end, in 2007-2008, Children’s Services created eleven Community Partnerships throughout New York City. Here, ACS professionals work directly with key members of the local communities who know the neighborhood on a first-hand, first-name basis. These include:
• Child welfare agencies;
• Local child care providers;
• Principals, counselors, and teachers from neighborhood schools;
• Community-based preventive services;
• Head Start provider agencies;
• Neighborhood church leaders.
Our Mission
The guiding principle behind the Community Partnership Initiative is to make sure that no child or family falls through the cracks. That’s what communities are good at. Neighbors and caring individuals look out for one another. Though they look like ordinary citizens-teachers, neighbors, doctors, faith-based leaders, extended family members, child care providers, police officers, and friends—they are the first line of support during moments of need. Our intent is to weave a safety net for struggling children and their families that makes the most of caring, personal relationships by supporting them with the professional services that ACS can offer. ACS can offer through our partnering agencies. Agencies include
• Concord Family Services
• Big Brothers Big Sisters of NYC
• Women’s Prison Association
• Beacon Center for Family Services
• Children’s Aid Society
Sadly, many of our most vulnerable families come into contact with Children’s Services as a result of alleged child abuse. In order to ensure the health and safety of the children in such households, the resulting investigation can sometimes lead to those children being removed from their homes and placed, under ACS supervision, in temporary foster care with relatives or non-relative foster families. When this happens, the warmth and strength of the community partnership tapestry comes into full play. By collaborating with families, services providers, and the community, the Community Partnerships help to ease the trauma of removal while, at the same time, work together to find the best solutions for everyone involved. Partners take a holistic approach to the needs of children who are in ACS care, attending to their health, developmental, and educational needs. Through partnerships, these services are family-centered, flexible, and neighborhood-based, all of which helps us to protect and care for these struggling children, helping them to cope, to grow, and to thrive.
Our History in Working with Communities
We at Children’s Services cannot protect children and strengthen families alone. A critical partner for strengthening families and protecting children is the network of community supports available to birth families, relative caregivers, foster families, and adoptive families. Already, we have made considerable progress towards instilling a greater community focus in our approach. Accomplishments include:
• The assignment of Child Protection Specialists (CPS) to specific geographic areas, where they can get to know the families and local environments.
• The contracting of preventive services provider agencies which are located in the neighborhoods they serve.
• The requirement that foster boarding home agencies find homes that minimize disruption by keeping children in the neighborhoods where they’re already living and the schools they’ve been attending.
• The development of Neighborhood Networks that make sure the best services are delivered to local families in the most personal and timely fashion possible.
These foundational steps have already strengthened the network of care and protection for our children. Today, ACS and neighborhood organizations are working side-by-side. Our future is to continue to work together, in true partnership, as a seamless system of family support. The mission of the Community Partnerships Initiative is to extend this highly effective network of support, expertise, and caring, throughout all the neighborhoods of New York City.
Right now, we are continuing our phased roll-out of the Community Partnerships Initiative. In July of 2007, partnerships were launched in:
• Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
• Jamaica, Queens
• Highbridge, Bronx
In December of 2007, partnerships began in:
• East Harlem, Manhattan
• Lower East Side, Manhattan
In March of 2008, partnerships will begin in:
• East New York, Brooklyn
• Stapleton, Staten Island.
• Bushwick, Brooklyn
• Elmhurst, Queens
• Soundview, Bronx
• Mott Haven, Bronx
Ultimately, our network of community partnerships will blanket the entire city.
• Establish a coordinated system through which we can deliver services more efficiently, and bridge the gaps between Head Start, child care providers, and community-based preventive services.
• Introduce new, research-driven, innovative approaches to the issues that struggling families are facing.
• Use our Neighborhood Networks as forums where members can share resources, ideas, information, and referrals, engage in joint planning, service coordination, training, and advocacy.
• Assist families and local agencies in the decisions that they make for children and families by participating in family conferences to assess the service needs of children and their families and develop safety plans where necessary.
• Support foster and adoptive parents in caring for their children.
• Recruit new foster and adoptive families.
• Help parents, children, and siblings in foster care deal with any issues that they might be facing.
