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 For many years, The Children’s Village was famous for being the nation’s largest institutional residence for foster care children and troubled youth. With more than 350 beds, that may still be true. However, the size and scope of its almost 200-acre Dobbs Ferry campus is no longer the primary point of pride for the agency which has dramatically redesigned its approach to residential services and the ways in which those programs mesh with a broader continuum of services focused on helping kids and families while they are at home in their own communities.
Sidebar: Look at the Evidence! CV Leads State in MST Programming
“If you had done a story about The Children’s Village eight years ago, 93% of our budget would have been devoted to this campus,” says Jeremy Kohomban who has served as CEO since 2004. “Today, less than 50 % of what we do happens here.”
Part of this shift results from the opening or expansion of community-based programs. For example, Children’s Village serves more than 260 youth annually in foster boarding homes and now operates the state’s largest system of home-based Multi-Systemic Therapy (MST) programs designed to help families and their children stay together. Its Street Outreach program makes more than 5,000 contacts with young people living on the streets of Westchester every year. The agency provides an extensive system of ongoing after-care for youth coming out of its residential program and has developed supportive housing for young people aging out of the foster care system.
Just as important, however, has been the transformation in Children’s Village’s approach to the role and practice of residential care. “Historically, residential care had been viewed as a destination, a place for kids to go and stay when there was no other place for them,” says Kohomban. “We view residential care as an emergency room where kids can go when they absolutely need it. But, they should only stay for the shortest possible period of time until we can set up appropriate services for them in the community. In the same way that people don’t live in an emergency room, kids shouldn’t live in a residential institution. Children must have at least one place where they experience unconditional belonging. Residential care offers many positives, unfortunately like all other services, unconditional belonging is not one of these. Children should grow up with love and in a family. ”
This philosophy would seem to align closely with that of New York City’s Administration for Children Services under the leadership of Commissioner John Mattingly. It is a public policy which has led to a significant contraction in the use of and overall system-wide capacity to provide institutional residential care.
Kohomban, however, emphasizes the important role that residential programs can and should continue to play within the overall continuum of services. “We still believe that residential services are absolutely essential,” he says. “Every night there are kids out there that need a residential bed.”
At the same time that many other child welfare agencies have seen their residential programs shrink in size or close altogether, The Children’s Village campus has remained strong. In part, this is due to a conversion of some larger campus programs into smaller, highly specialized services addressing the needs of kids facing particular types of crises. Many of these young people still are referred by ACS, but many aren’t.
For example, CV operates an Office of Mental Health-licensed Residential Treatment Facility (RTF) for boys with serious emotional problems. This program, which serves 14 youth from age 12 through 15, features a structured and enriched daily schedule and a high level of professional and clinical support.
In December of 2004, Children’s Village was approved by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to operate the first Transitional Residence for Alien Children (TRAC) in New York State. The program serves children who have come to the United States illegally without an adult guardian and cares for them until they are either released from custody by ORR or returned to their home country. First opened in Queens, CV expanded TRAC to a second site on the Dobbs Ferry campus in 2007. In its first year of operation, CV’s TRAC Program achieved the second highest rate of reunification with family members of all ORR programs nationwide.
The Louis Jackson Crisis Residence is a 21-day program that provides short-term care for children and youth as an alternative to psychiatric hospitalization. Also licensed by OMH, the 16-bed Crisis Residence serves over 250 children annually – both boys and girls – and offers diagnostic assessment, family assessment, a review and assessment of psychotropic medication if needed, short-term intensive psychotherapy, and 24-hour supportive counseling. With a new contract from ACS, this program is going to be operated as a Rapid Intervention Center that provides diagnostic services as well.
In 2006, CV was awarded a contract from Westchester County to care for youth awaiting family court hearings after having committed minor offenses or whose families have filed PINS (Person in Need of Supervision) petitions. The Family Court Assistance Program has a capacity to serve 12 boys and 12 girls, who live in two cottages on the campus of the Children’s Village. CV’s clinicians provide the court with diagnostic information that help the court decide on the best services and placement. In most cases, youth are returned to their families with in-home support to help the families deal with risky behavior. In 2009, this program evolved into a hybrid providing alternatives to detention for low-risk offenders, allowing them to remain at home while awaiting the next court date.
“We have a specialized cottage for high-end substance abusers and a cottage for kids with violent tendencies,” says Kohomban. In the next couple months, CV will open a new specialized program for medically-fragile children.
Despite this specialization and targeting of services, CV believes that there are fundamental aspects to all successful residential programs: Relationships and Family Work.
Building Relationships
“It takes one stable and appropriate relationship with an adult to change a child’s life,” says Kohomban. “We’re always looking for that one adult. That is where we spend most of our resources.”
The process starts with making sure that CV staff effectively engage with kids and families. To that end, Kohomban and the CV board launched an effort to transform the organizational culture after his arrival back in 2004. Starting salaries for front line workers were increased by more than 20%. “Staff can’t give what they don’t get,” Kohomban explains. “You can’t address the issues of poverty in kids and families if your staff is living in poverty.”
CV also invested over $30 million to upgrade the campus’ physical plant, including cottages, program space, the grounds and staff housing. “It’s beautiful,” says Kohomban. “That’s a benefit for the kids and the staff.”
And, Kohomban has tried to move the agency beyond the “treatment culture” that tends to identify and define kids by their “diagnoses” rather than see them as whole persons. “There is a notion that kids comes to us because they have a pathology,” he explains. “That’s not true. In most cases, something terrible happened in their families. There is a lack of closure and a lack of belonging in their lives that brings them to us in this emotionally dis-regulated state. There is no clinical response to the issue of belonging. There is no social work protocol or pharmaceutical product that is going to solve the problems brought on by the lack of belonging. We think that 30% of our kids have mental health issues. That means that 70% do not. We need to de-emphasize the medical/clinical approach and invest more in the relationship and humanistic approach.”
This is not to say that CV doesn’t believe in medical and clinical services. “We have psychiatrists and medical doctors on staff – not just consultants. We are a leading provider of evidence-based services like MST,” says Kohomban. “But, kids and families do best when you invest in the relationships first. Once the relationship is established, then you can effectively layer on services. I am proud that the overwhelming majority of staff on our medical and clinical teams operate on this concept of relationships first.”
Working with Families
Efforts to reconnect kids with their families – or find new ones if that isn’t possible – and then provide ongoing support is the second critical component of CV’s efforts. “Family work is the key,” says Kohomban.
CV begins by attempting to engage a child’s birth family. The agency’s Family Leadership Initiative is designed to overcome natural tensions between birth parents and child welfare agencies like Children’s Village. It is led by Parent Advocates -- parents who at one time were in similar positions with children in foster care – and assists birth parents to actively participate in planning and preparation for the return of their children. “They can engage parents in ways that are not always possible for our professional staff,” says Kohomban. “They share life experiences that allow them to speak with parents, and be heard by parents, in ways that other staff often cannot.”
For the children on CV’s campus – most of whom are older with an average age of 15-16 and long histories of foster care placement – reestablishing family ties often is far more difficult than simply reaching out to a birth mother. “We have to expand the definition of the family,” says Kohomban. CV staff look for fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins; anyone who may have a feeling of attachment for a child on which the agency can build.
In family structures where fathers most often are notable by their absence, CV’s Fatherhood Program is designed to seek out and tap a hidden and often overlooked parental resource. “We say that fathers matter,” says Donald Somerville, Director of CV’s Family Education Programs. The program helps to identify fathers – even those who may have left the household years ago -- and offer them the support they need to reconnect with their children. “We have classes for fathers that are different than our normal parenting classes,” says Somerville. “The needs of fathers are different. Society puts males who want to be active as fathers in a very difficult position. We try to offer them the support they need.”
The payoff has been a number of family reunifications which would not otherwise have taken place, says Somerville. “We have several men who are now the custodial fathers of their children; in some cases children who had been in foster care for an extended period of time because their mothers had not been able to get their lives back on track.”
Sometimes, recognizing the unbreakable bonds which children in care have with their birth families – even mothers whose parental rights may have long since been terminated – is a key to future permanency. Kohomban tells the story of a young adolescent who recently asked to use his phone to make a call. “It turned out that he was calling his mom,” Kohomban explains, despite having been freed for adoption years earlier. “He’s been talking to his mom forever. It’s the only place he knows.” Now, Children’s Village is going back to court to request that the boy begin supervised visits with his mom. While this step may not lead to a reunification between mother and son, it could ease the way towards a custodial placement with other family members.
And, in many other cases, family doesn’t even have to be family. CV works hard to find that potential adult relationship in a variety of places, including program volunteers, mentors, foster parents and even its own staff.
CV has an extensive volunteer and mentoring program with more than 500 individuals working with individual youth or groups of young people annually in a range of activities. These include mentors, tutors, life coaches, interns, individuals who share a skill such as yoga or chess, groups who sponsor cottages, and corporate groups who come to beautify the campus and interact with the kids.
“So many of our volunteers have gone on to become permanent resources for these youth,” says Kohomban. “And, our staff have adopted some of our long stayers. Sometimes it is legal adoptions. In some cases it is a moral commitment that they will always be there for the child. They can come and stay with them; they’ll help them out; they will be there to celebrate birthdays and holidays.”
All these various strategies come together in the form of CV’s Permanency for Teens initiative, which was recently recognized by the Council on Accreditation (COA) with a 2011 Innovative Practices Award. Since its inception in 2004, Permanency for Teens has worked with 97 youth from CV’s residential school and has posted a success rate of 50 percent. Forty-eight troubled older youth were successfully matched with families and continue to live with or have a strong connection with those families. Many of these youth are now attending college or working in the community. “We get 15-, 16-, 17- and even 18-year-olds adopted; young men of color,” says Kohomban. “We are able to do it because we don’t give up on the idea of a family. We always believe that there is something else we can try.”
The WAY Home
Sending kids home is one thing. Making sure that family reunifications are successful is something else. Children’s Village has long been a leader in providing on-going after-care to ensure that youth are able to reintegrate into their families and the larger communities in which they live.
The WAY to Success Program was begun at CV in 1984 to help youth leaving residential treatment develop the attitudes and skills necessary to succeed as adults. The program starts while youth are at CV and provides support and guidance for three to five years with the goal of helping students complete high school and enter the workforce successfully. A 15-year longitudinal research study published by CWLA in 2000 showed significantly improved outcomes in graduation and employment rates among WAY participants compared to a broader population of youth leaving foster care and the program is now nationally recognized and replicated.
The original WAY program, however, focused on smaller cadres of older youth who received support for extended periods of time.
“Six years ago, when Jeremy got here, he asked how we could help all of the kids we send home,” explains Richard Larson, Director of WAY Scholarship and Aftercare programs. “We decided to offer a version of WAY for every child we discharged.”
The WAY Home program is now a one-year aftercare model that works with youth and families in terms of their own relationships and helps the young person successfully get back into a community school. The process begins while the child is still on campus. Case planners notify the WAY program about three months in advance of a planned discharge. “This gives us a chance to meet the kid and the family and start to build a relationship,” says Larson.
After discharge, WAY staff get out to the home within the first week. “Families usually appreciate a visit from us at that point,” says Larson, noting that there is often something of a “honeymoon” period during the first few days after a child returns home when positive changes in family dynamics can be encouraged. Without this immediate support, old and often negative habits begin to reassert themselves.
The program’s help in successfully re-entering a community school – often in the middle of a school year -- is also essential, says Larson. “We know that if you just send a kid back with a referral, they are going to sit at home for two months and get into trouble. If we take care of the paperwork and make sure they are back in class within the first week or two, we are going to be much more successful in keeping them in school. If we can get them through that first semester, then they are back in synch with everyone else and their odds continue to improve.” Initial visits and ongoing involvement by WAY Program staff with school counselors can also help to break the ice for kids who may not always feel welcomed by community school administrations.
WAY staff meet regularly with kids and families, usually once a week in the beginning and at least twice monthly later on. There are a variety of individual and group activities to help kids deal with typical issues readjusting to life in the community and prepare them for the future.
Typically the WAY Home program works with about 70 young people a year. Some of these may apply to continue on with the longer duration WAY to Success program (the original WAY model) which offers intensive after-care and supports for up to five years to another 70 youth each year. Both programs are operated totally with private dollars. A believer in the need for aftercare, CV also offers aftercare to another 140 Westchester youth through the STEP program.
Runaways and Homeless Youth
Children’s Village also runs a variety of programs – both residential and street outreach – to serve homeless and runaway youth in Westchester and Rockland Counties.
The Sanctuary, which CV has operated since 1994, is the only shelter for youth in the Westchester County. It can accommodate up to 14 youth ages 12-17 who can call for shelter via an emergency hotline 24-hours per day.
Project Turning Point in Clarkstown provides shelter for runaway and homeless youth ages 14-21 in Rockland County.
Both The Sanctuary and Project Turning Point provide healthy meals, access to medical care, in-depth assessments, individual and/or group/family counseling, recreation, and positive development activities.
CV also operates a van-based, mobile Street Outreach Program as a way to reach the thousands of alienated youth who spend all or most of their nights on the streets of Westchester County. Program staff makes contact with 5,000 street-involved youth each year, connecting them to the network of related services operated by CV’s Westchester Youth Services.
Looking Ahead
Children’s Village, like many of its peers, foresees a variety of significant challenges over the next several years as governments at all levels continue to cut back on funding for critical services.
“There is this notion that we can do more with less,” says Kohomban. “I’m sorry, but there is a point of diminishing returns and I think we have already hit that point. We might be able to choose a few less things and do them well, but we cannot possibly continue to do all the things we are asked to do with fewer resources. Otherwise, we completely frustrate the people who are out there trying to do the work. To say anything else is to be hypocritical. That is our number one challenge.”
Kohomban also returns to his view that clinical interventions are not the answer to many of the problems facing the kids and families who CV serves. “Evidence-based programs are not a panacea,” he says. “Poverty, racial issues and life circumstances play critical factors in the work we do. This cannot simply be about getting kids home earlier. We also need to make the world a better place for our families.”
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