Bronx Times reports the recent Bronx “No Hit Zone” campaign, spearheaded by Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark and community leaders including Dr. Mel Schneiderman, Aenior Vice President of The Foundling’s Vincent J. Fontana Center for Child Protection. As part of the campaign, a variety of stores in the area known as the Hub—where East 149thStreet, Willis Avenue and Third Avenue meet—have agreed to be designated “No Hit Zones.”
The Bronx District Attorney’s Office has announced a new “No Hit Zone” awareness campaign to help reduce child abuse in the borough.
As Dr. Mel Schneiderman, Senior Vice President of our Vincent J. Fontana Center for Child Protection stated in the press release, “The New York Foundling is thrilled to participate in the No Hit Zone initiative and commends the Bronx DA’s office in their efforts to create an environment of safety for children and families. The New York Foundling has been dedicated to protecting and supporting New York’s children for over 150 years. Through our Fontana Center for Child Protection, we work tirelessly to reduce child maltreatment, and are involved with many local and national efforts to reduce the reliance on and use of corporal punishment. We are proud to partner with other agencies and offices across the city to work toward this mission.”
New York, NY (April 19, 2021) – The New York Foundling is proud to announce the opening of a first-of-its-kind training and resource center in partnership with New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
The Strong Families and Communities Training Center (SFC Training Center), which officially opened its doors in October of 2020, provides workshops for front-line social service workers across three core areas: training and technical assistance, implementation support for evidence-based practices, as well as coalition building and community engagement. These areas equip, support, and train both service providers and community members with best practice techniques and date-driven approaches to positively impact the communities they serve across The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island.
The Center is grounded in the Communities that Care organizing model, an evidence-based framework that elevates community voice to see strengths in a community and have community picked services. In the difficult time of COVID, a key goal of the SFC Training Center is to train CBO family-serving staff in evidence-based parenting models to better serve parents, communities and families who are experiencing a great deal of stress.
“We are proud to be able to share our evidence-based best practices with social service workers and community organizers across other New York City-based agencies and organizations,” said Elizabeth Tremblay, Assistant Vice President at The Foundling and Director of The Foundling’s Strong Families and Communities Training Center.
“Opening The Strong Families and Communities Training Center in partnership with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is a critical step toward ensuring that The New York Foundling’s incredible work reaches every corner of the city. Importantly, we are thrilled to be building on The Foundling’s 150-year-long legacy of helping communities thrive and reach their full potential,” added Shannon Ghramm-Smith, Senior Vice President of Child Welfare and Behavioral Health at The New York Foundling.
The SFC Training Center’s unique approach includes open trainings that are based on community feedback and listening sessions to discuss training needs and topics to better serve families. Featuring expert peers with years in the field, the SFC Training Center adapts their programming to ensure the information is applicable and helpful for the peer workforce.
“The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is proud to partner with The New York Foundling on this important effort,” said Dr. Myla Harrison, Acting Executive Deputy Commissioner of the Division of Mental Hygiene at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “Strengthening the capacity of front-line staff to deliver high quality services to parents/caregivers and families in our communities will help promote children’s mental health and well-being.”
The SFC Training Center, which aims to train and upskill workers outside of The Foundling’s own staff, marks a new chapter for the organization’s robust set of social services helping children, families and people with developmental disabilities. By equipping practitioners from other agencies and organizations with their time tested and proven approaches to social services, The Foundling continues to demonstrate its strong commitment to broadening its impact on communities across the city outside of just its own services. To date, The SFC Center has trained over 200 care workers across various agencies and organizations in New York City.
About The New York Foundling
At The New York Foundling, we trust in the potential of people, and we deliberately invest in proven practices. From bold beginnings in 1869, our New York based nonprofit has supported a quarter million of our neighbors on their own paths to stability, strength, and independence. The New York Foundling’s internationally recognized set of social services are both proven and practical. We help children and families navigate through and beyond foster care. We help families struggling with conflict and poverty to grow stronger. We help individuals with developmental disabilities live their best lives. And we help children and families access quality health and mental health services core to building lifelong resilience and wellbeing.
For more information about The New York Foundling, please visit www.nyfoundling.org.
In 1869, we opened our doors and became a safe, stable, and loving home for infants and babies who couldn’t be cared for by their parents. More than 150 years later, The Foundling has maintained its commitment to keeping children healthy, supported, and protected from abuse, maltreatment, and neglect. Our legacy has not only continued through the years, but has grown stronger by working together with our community and our supporters. We help 30,000 of our neighbors each year across New York and Puerto Rico, with the goal of keeping children and families safe, supported, and together.
Initiatives like Healthy Families partner with new parents and provide guidance and linkages to community resources that promote positive childhood development. And Families Are Stronger Together uses an evidence-based approach to therapy that helps families experiencing crisis work through conflict and challenges and avoid a potential foster care placement. When there’s a clear risk and threat to a child’s health and safety, our Foster Care program pairs children with committed and loving relatives or foster parents. And, our innovative Child Abuse Prevention Program uses life-size puppets to teach elementary-age students how to detect and report abuse in their homes, while the Vincent J. Fontana Center for Child Protection leads the charge in advocacy and education against corporal punishment.
April is Child Abuse Prevention Month—and you can help us expand and grow our reach and impact as we share updates and information about our life-saving work.
| How it works: Simply follow or add @TheNYFoundling to your social media accounts!
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn For each new follower we gain between April 1-30, an anonymous donor will contribute $1 to support our services and programs that keep children safe.* |
Throughout April, we’ll be posting informative content on ways to recognize and prevent abuse and neglect. Not only will following The Foundling on social media allow you to hear about our latest news and updates, but you’ll help The Foundling secure additional funds to support children in our community through our $1 matching donation!*
In addition to following us on social media, please consider also making a direct donation to the Foundling’s child abuse prevention activities.
*$1 matched for each new follower on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn; up to $3,000 (between April 1—April 30, 2021).
In a press release, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, Jr. announced that beginning today, the non-profit organization The New York Foundling is supporting survivors of sex trafficking through its new child and youth sex trafficking intervention program, “the Phoenix Project.” The innovative program will serve approximately 50 to 70 young people ages 12 through 21 each year at locations across New York City.
Staten Island Advance recently profiled the work of our Staten Island Community Partnership, which has worked to address acute community needs that have arisen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Initiatives over the past few months have included food distribution, laundry cards, funds for necessities, a school supply drive, and even fun events for families.
“I know we have had a meaningful impact through our outreach and initiatives by the positive responses from residents. They have expressed such heartfelt gratitude when we connect that it brings both a smile and a tear to our faces. Just the idea that we are helping to feed dozens of families each week is so rewarding and we are so pleased that we can continue the food pantry through the Spring,” says director Chris Dowling.
The year ahead is filled with promise and hope—and a path forward as our community makes its way through and beyond the pandemic. As 2021 unfolds, we are pleased to share a new and innovative program that will support survivors of human trafficking, and we have a brand-new training center housed within The Foundling that will broaden our reach to youth, peer, and family advocates who work at community-based organizations across New York City.
For more than 150 years, The Foundling has been steadfast in its approach and commitment to providing programs and services focused on well-being, safety, stability, and helping people build supportive and healthy relationships. Our work has intersected with children and youth who been involved in human-trafficking, or found themselves susceptible to becoming involved in one. This is why we committed ourselves to partnering with victims and survivors: through therapeutic support and mentoring, our services allow survivors to increase their self-esteem and overcome the obstacles and hardship they previously experienced. The program has been named The Phoenix Project and staff at The Foundling will use several evidence-based therapy models to help survivors attain independence.
In addition to providing therapy and mentorship to survivors of human trafficking, The Foundling has created a training center, The Strong Families and Communities Training Center (The SFC Training Center), that provides specialized workshops and assistance to social service professionals and peer advocates working with youth and families across New York City. Since the start of the year, weekly trainings have been attended by 30-40 people.
Trainings are currently held in a virtual setting*—with more sessions scheduled each month. Topics covered include: strengthening communication skills, learning how to establish healthy and safe boundaries, helping youth and families obtain and secure services, navigating technology, and recognizing when there’s a crisis. The SFC Training Center looks to partner with community-based organizations and social service agencies in the months ahead—with hopes to train even more professionals who have built careers centered around service-delivery and supporting those who are experiencing hardship.
“With both of these new initiatives, we are intervening at the micro and mezzo levels. From expanding direct therapeutic services to an underrepresented population to enhancing family protective factors and providing skills for parents and youth to thrive, we’re helping everyone move forward,” said Shannon Ghramm-Smith, Senior Vice President of The Foundling’s Child Welfare and Behavioral Health Division.
* Trainings are currently being offered virtually and plans are in place to provide in-person trainings later in 2021 across all five boroughs of New York City.
In a recent blog post, Youth Villages (which created the LifeSet program model) shares the story of Crystal – a young mother who has participated in our Mother/Child and LifeSet programs. With the support of Foundling staff, she has learned parenting skills to better support her children, moved into her own apartment, enrolled in college, and is now building toward a bright future.
As Hadiyyah Thomas, her LifeSet specialist, shares, “She is a young person who transformed in The Foundling’s programs; she matured.”
In a segment airing on local television channel BronxNet, OPEN Host Daren Jaime speaks with our CEO and President, Bill Baccaglini, to discuss how The Foundling has provided education, child welfare, and healthcare services to children and families in The Bronx throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
Watch the full video below or learn more on BronxNet:
By Peter Rizzo, Co-Chair of The New York Foundling Junior Board’s Corporate Engagement Committee
I love Christmas. I love the holidays and this season of giving. For three generations, it has been an extremely important part of my family’s tradition, starting with my grandfather, Thomas Kelly, and his lifelong connection to The New York Foundling. In the late 1930s when he was a young boy, my grandfather and his siblings were dropped off at The Foundling by their mother. She entrusted them into The Foundling’s foster care when she could no longer take care of them herself.
It is this personal connection that led me to join The Foundling’s Junior Board. I help plan The Foundling’s Blue Party each spring, and I have coached youth in the Mentored Internship Program. Simply put, even before I joined the Junior Board, The Foundling has always been a part of my life—especially during the holiday season.
My grandfather was placed in several different foster homes before finding his long-term childhood foster home, where he lived until he joined the U.S. Navy. From there, he went on to make a good life for himself and his family. My grandfather and grandmother married in 1952 and had four children. On Christmas Eve in 1960—as he laid out presents beneath his Christmas tree—he thought of all the children living in foster homes or in homes lacking stability and comfort who would not have any gifts to open the next morning.
After a conversation with my grandmother, he drove into Manhattan that Christmas Eve and delivered presents to The Foundling. My grandfather was a ‘foundling’ himself, and understood what it felt like growing up with certain unanswered questions, so he gave back to the organization that helped him find a home, a family, a bright future, and lifetime of holiday traditions and celebrations.
And each subsequent year, my grandparents continued to send gifts to The Foundling during the holiday season. This quickly became family tradition—donating gifts to The Foundling each December. We have done this every year for as long as I can remember.
What started as an intimate tradition amongst my immediate family has now grown to include friends, friends of friends, and their families, as well. In 2019, my family and I had more than 100 people over for a holiday party and each guest brought at least one gift to give to The Foundling.
It is amazing how much the tradition has come to mean to me, as well as so many other people in my life. Everyone looks forward to this party every year. It is their way of acknowledging how fortunate we all are. Unfortunately, it is the first time since 1960 that the party will be cancelled. However, my family and friends were still able to donate gifts through Amazon to ensure the children and families of The Foundling were not forgotten. I look forward to continuing this tradition for years to come!
Happy Holidays!
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