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Precious, a resident in The Foundling’s Supportive Housing Program for youth aging out of foster care, speaks about her experience in foster care, and hopes for the future.

 

Help more people like Precious become better prepared for successful adulthood by donating to our Annual Appeal!

 

Simply print this coupon and bring it to your local New York Modell’s store to get 15% off your purchase and send 5% back to The Foundling! You can use it over and over again through December 26th, 2013.
2013 Modell's Coupon

Here are some wonderful books to give as gifts in the spirit of winter holidays to the children and teens in your life. Courtesy of Foundling friend Celia McGee. Enjoy!    

 

AGES PRE-SCHOOL TO 3

   Pat-a- Cake and All Fall Down, by Mary Brigid Barrett, illustrated by LeUyen Pham (Candlewick Press) are two jolly board books that transform a duo of old-fashioned nursery rhymes into contemporary language and situations that little ones will relate to, with peals of laughter.

Pat A Cake and All Fall Down

   With PANTONE Box of Colour (Abrams Appleseed), the company known worldwide since the 50s for providing the standard language for color communication from designer to manufacturer to retailer to customer, has turned six of its colors into six toddler-size peek-a-boo board books, which will teach tots about colors, shapes and objects, as well as purely delight.

   Emma Dodd’s Forever (Templar Books), which has holiday-glittery bits of foil worked into its illustrations, Sarah L. Thomson’s Cub’s Big World, illustrated by Joe Cepeda (Harcourt Children’s Books), and, also for slightly older children, Naoko Stoop’s Red Knit Cap Girl to the Rescue (Megan Tingley Books/Little, Brown) all center on one of this season’s favorite and cutest animals—polar bears. To little readers these present little polar bear cubs, who sometimes get lost or up to no good, but ultimately find their way home to a mother’s love.

   Toys Galore, by Peter Stein, illustrated by Bob Staake (Candlewick Press) is a veritable toy chest of zany children and zanier toys accompanied by quick-stepping rhymes that tout the playful powers of both.  Last but not least emerges the most special power, but no spoiler here.

 

AGES  4-7

   Two more books that glisten with sparkles, Tallulah’s Nutcracker, by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Alexandra Boiger (Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and The Very Fairy Princess Sparkles in the Snow, by legendary actress Julie Andrews and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton (their illustrator is Christine Davenier) (Little, Brown), remind us that Christmas isn’t Christmas without “The Nutcracker” while in Geraldine’s (aka The Very Fairy Princess) hometown,  the holiday season isn’t the holiday season without the Winter Wonderland Festival. Both Tallulah and Geraldine are sure they are destined to be stars—and they are, just not as they expected.

The Very Fairy Princess

   In Olivia and the Ice Show: A Lift the Flap Story, adapted from the popular Nickelodeon show by Tina Gallo and illustrated by Shane L. Johnson (Simon Spotlight/Simon & Schuster) we get another performer in the making. Olivia (may we call her the famous young pig?) is determined to be cast front and center in the “Cinderella on Ice” show coming to town. She’s a very good skater, but her friend Julian, who helps her concoct a practice rink, is not. But Olivia is not so stuck up that she doesn’t take time to aid Julian in mastering skating, and the results are fun and rewarding.

   Snowflakes Fall, by Patricia MacLachlan and Steven Kellogg (Random House) is a charming, frolicsome treat of a book with a subtly bittersweet ending featuring a row of snow angels. Behind its message of no two snowflakes or children being alike is a moving backstory. The book commemorates the lost children of Sandy Hook and Newtown, Ct. (where Steven Kellogg lived for 35 years), and in their honor publisher Random House has made a donation to the Sandy Hook School Support Fund and is also donating 25,000 new books to the national literacy organization First Book in support of children everywhere.

   Almost smack in the middle of movie star Julianne Moore’s sweet and inclusive My Mom Is a Foreigner, But Not To Me, illustrated by Meilo So (Chronicle Books) is a colorful two-page spread about different holidays around the world, including wintertime’s Chinese New Year, the Scottish Burns Night, St. Lucia Day, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and the St. Nicholas Day.  “We celebrate some holidays on a different day or two,” it says there, and, if you’re Dutch, “…sometimes I find PRESENTS stuck inside my SHOE.”

   Believe it or not, in  DragonQuest, by Allan Baillie, illustrated by Wayne Harris (Candlewick Press),  “the last dragon” turns out to live up high above the snowline in mountains few men dare to climb. But not the intrepid young lad who, with an elderly guide full of wisdom about the perils of nature and the supernatural they must brave to attain their chilly goal, grows up quite a bit as he uses courage as his other companion.  For slightly older friends or siblings (8-12), the lavishly designed and informative 10th anniversary edition of Dr. Ernest Drake’s Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons (Candlewick Press) will make a nifty gift.

 Dragon Quest

 

AGES 8-12

   Sophie Scott and her Antarctic adventures in Sophie Goes South, by Alison Lester (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children), will appeal to the younger end of this age group, but that doesn’t mean the tantalizing story of a girl and her dad on a trip to the lands bordering the South Pole isn’t also long on real details and the occasional page of photographs from the regions they visit. Does it elude Sophie that she has the same last name as the famous Antarctic explorer? No, it does not.

   Just in under the wire for gift-giving purposes, that weird and wonderful Lemony Snicket has managed to publish  the second book in his new “All the Wrong Questions” series,  “When Did You See Her Last?”  with vintage-meets-mad-scientist type illustrations, again by Seth (Little, Brown). Still living in the bedraggled town of Stain’d-by-the-Sea, Snicket the young P.I. is put onto a case involving the disappearance and possible kidnapping of the town’s debutante. This somehow gets tangled up with his chemistry-loving crush, Ellington Feint, a curious statue of  a local hero,  a laudanum pusher, underground passageways, and Mr. Snicket’s typical who-knew-nothing-and-when-did-they-not-know-it.  Breath will stay bated for the next installment.

   Tom Angleberger’s The Origami Yoda Files, a boxed set of all four “Origami Yoda” novels, illustrated by Angleberger and Jason Rosenstock (Amulet Books), reminds us that few authors do a better job of unfolding (get it?) the trials, tricks, absurdity and whacky victories of middle school. Just look at that adorably bizarre “Star Wars” paper knockoff smiling—or is it glaring?—at you from the front of the box, and you want to dive right into the dramedy of the McQuarrie Middle School’s troop of misfits and dreamers. The ultimate question is: do you believe in magic, or is it the strength imagination?

   A treasure trove of tales about The Mysterious Benedict Society also gets the boxed-set treatment in Trenton Lee Stewart’s The Mysterious Benedict Society Collection, illustrated by Diana Sudyka  (Megan Tingley Books/Little, Brown), with the well-loved prequel, The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict of course coming last. In the first book, young Reynie Muldoon of Stonetown takes the enigmatic series of tests that will land him in the company of three other out-of-the-ordinary geniuses at a rather odd boarding school, and from then on it’s one challenge, dastardly plot, dangerous puzzle, death-defying feat, and lesson about friendship after another in the battle for good to prevail. No clueless reader may apply.

Mysterious

   Animation Studio, by Helen Piercy, with various illustrators (Candlewick Press), comes in a box, and looks like a retro something aimed at toddler siblings. But it is, in fact, a clever kit devised for the very up-to-date, sophisticated middle-school pastime of learning all about animation—to the point that you may even be able to figure out how to send out your own story-boarded, dramatically lit, action-packed animated movies over your cell phone.

 

Ages 12 and up

  Of the exquisitely produced Eragon Collector’s Edition: Inheritance, Book One (Alfred A. Knopf), author Christopher Paolini writes: “When I was a kid”—keep in mind that he wrote this myth-laden best-seller when he was fifteen—“I thought every book ought to be bound in leather. My stance has mellowed over time, but even so, there’s something special about a book clad in leather and adorned with marbled endpapers. Even more so if it’s illustrated.” Some of the fanciful, full-color illustrations are by Paolini himself.  In its intricacies of clans and the mystical, the original saga, published in 2003, about a boy suddenly dealt the fate of defending a well-intentioned folk against an evil dictator and his forces of darkness, foreshadows the ardor now also felt for “Game of Thrones.”

   Before there was a Katniss, a Stephanie Meyer or the many other authors and characters who newly keep us us enthralled by the sanguinary and otherworldly, there was Lois Lowry with The Giver, in 1993. To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Houghton Mifflin has produced a boxed set of The Giver Quartet—The Giver, Gathering Blue, Messenger and Son—and its brilliant evocation of a dystopian world bereft of feeling, real families, and the idea that death as we know it exists. Is escape possible, and what happens then?

   Beware beautiful creatures, or rather the ancient curses and secrets, gore, Southern Gothic, and violent emotions that beset the four books of The Beautiful Creatures Complete Paperback Collection, by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (Little, Brown). Beware dull, sleepy, smothering towns below the Mason-Dixon Line and the centuries of powerful, supernatural malevolence they may contain, only to be brightened by intense teenage romance. And even that may not be what it seems.  For something completely different, beings called casters and incubi might just show up at the fusty town grocery store.

Beautiful Creatures

   Continuing our gift-giving theme that the only thing better than getting one book is receiving more, Veronica Roth’s phenomenally best-selling Divergent, Insurgent and Allegiant have been boxed together in The Divergent Series (Katherine Tegen Books/HarperCollins). The futuristic setting here is a radically changed, dystopian Chicago, its inhabitants divided into five factions that are supposed to keep society in balance. But when Tris Prior chooses to buck the system, all kinds of surprises, horrors and heartbreak are revealed to her, and they only increase in mysterious behavior and open warfare as her saga progresses. In the mean time, she struggles with a secret of her own. The set comes with a bonus booklet, The World of Veronica Roth’s Divergent Series, which is well worth keeping at hand.  

 

Mirza is a 22-year-old former foster youth living in the Bronx. She was recently hired by The Foundling as a Resource Specialist for our Queens office. A shining example of someone who defied the odds, Mirza discusses her future ambitions and reasons for them in the audio clip below:

 

 

 

Where so many youth who age out of foster care succumb to homelessness, poverty, and dependency, Mirza is a college graduate living in her own apartment and working full-time for The New York Foundling, the same agency that helped her years ago. 

 

 

Mirza used her own initiative and self-advocacy to end up where she is today, but relied on help from The Foundling and others to help her navigate the road to independence. Because of that help, Mirza aspires to use her many talents and passion to “be a part of a positive change in someone’s life. I want to work for a social services agency like The Foundling.”

 

There are over 1,000 children like Mirza living in Foundling foster homes. All of them have the potential to live independent and fulfilling lives when they age out of care. But they need our help to provide the proper foundation, and a path to true success as adults.

 

Help us pave the road to independence for more youth in foster care like Mirza. Donate Now!

 

 

We are thrilled to be featured in this month’s issue of O Magazine as one of the best ways to give this holiday season! 

 102013 Oprah Giving_Page_2_cropped

 

You can do your part by helping to prepare our youth in foster care for successful adulthood. Give back by:

 

  • Sharing- Please share your advice for successful independent living with our foster youth on our facebook page. Taking the time to share your tips with our youth in foster care lets them know you care!
  • Donating- Your generosity will go a long way toward helping us pave the road to independence for the 1,000 foster youth in our care. 

Foster youth who age out of care are struggling to make it in the real world. Reiterating our commitment to better preparing our foster youth for life on their own, The Foundling’s CEO, Bill Baccaglini, discusses some of our initiatives to pave the road to independence for our youth in 2014:

 

Infograph_FINAL

 

I think we can all agree that the figures above are unacceptable. In our current system, when a young man or woman in foster care turns 21, they “age out” of the system and, in the process, lose the only support system they’ve known for most of their lives. The fact is, we have all failed to adequately prepare our youth who grow up in foster care for life on their own. These young men and women have been through more than many of us can imagine: abuse, neglect, poverty, and unstable home environments have all made the road to independence much more difficult. That is precisely why we all need to do more to help each young person in foster care learn the skills necessary to transition smoothly into adulthood.

In the coming year, The Foundling is instituting a number of new and revamped holistic initiatives to help pave the road to independence for the 400 14-21 year-olds in our care:

 

  • Educational Support

 

This fall, The Foundling instituted our “Road to Success” tutoring program, through help from the Hilton Foundation. One of the most intensive tutoring programs to date, Road to Success provides individualized tutoring and college preparation to Foundling 8th graders each year until they graduate high school. 2014 also marks the second full-year of our Educational Specialists, who serve as in-school advocates for our youth in foster care that are struggling to get on grade-level, or need an extra push to get into college. In 2013, we also saw our first graduating 5th-grade class from Haven Academy, our charter school designed to meet the needs of children in the child welfare system. By giving our youngest kids in the system an excellent education, we provide the proper foundation for their success down the road.

  • Housing– The Foundling is placing a premium on finding secure and independent housing for all of our older youth before they age out of care. Statistics show that 32% of youth that age out fail to find stable housing. This can lead homelessness soon after leaving foster care. Our Foundling social workers are helping each of our youth apply for NYCHA housing and expedite their applications so that they don’t face this problem when they age out.

 

  • Mental Health Assistance– Many of our older youth in foster care are struggling to cope with years of trauma. It would be hard for any person to excel without working through the emotionally scarring moments from their past. The Foundling is providing mental health assistance for many of our youth this year to help them overcome the root causes of their difficulty, and begin the healing process. By giving that extra therapy, we give our kids the chance to focus on their future, not their past.

 

These are just some of the ways The Foundling is doubling-down in 2014 to empower our youth with the skills they need to become successful adults. But we cannot do this alone. More people need to advocate for the over 12,000 youth in foster care throughout New York City. We need to treat these children as our own. Together, we can truly pave the road to independence for all children in foster care. 

 

Bill Baccaglini, President and CEO of The Foundling

 

Foster care, and how it is managed in New York City, will be getting an overhaul in the next two years.

 

To me and to many professionals in the field, it represents a great step in the right direction. It’s a win for the children of NYC and the agencies like The Foundling who work to protect them.

 

The Child Success NYC (or CSNYC as it is commonly called), is a set of initiatives developed by the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS).  It organizes methods of training and interacting with biological parents, foster parents and youth in care with the goal of improving quality, support and consistency among foster care providers citywide.

 

The Foundling is one of the agencies that have been participating in a pilot of the CSNYC initiatives for the past year and so far we have had success with it. It has improved accountability, structure and communication, as well as dependability of our services. We’re thrilled it will be expanding to other agencies as well.

 

CSNYC engages foster parents in a more focused way than ever before. The focus is on permanency for the child right out of the gate as opposed to 6 months or more down the road into placement as it was before.

 

A recent federal waiver allows ACS more flexibility in the use of child welfare funds known as Title IV-E funds. Without this waiver, there is no way the city could bring CSNYC to scale. The funding that this provides for foster care over the next 5 years is invaluable and permits the city to use monies in more and different ways that it could before and invest in beneficial new initiatives like CSNYC.

 

Commissioner Ronald Richter of ACS should be commended for his persistence on this, as should the ability and effectiveness of the New York City, State and Federal governments to work together to make the waiver and CSNYC a reality.

 

The more focused and tested practices that CSNYC will bring to foster care in New York City will help improve lives and bring families together – and that’s something to celebrate.

 

 

November is National Adoption Month and as one of that largest facilitators of foster care adoptions in New York, it is a great chance for The Foundling to spread awareness! We were invited to help kick off the month at HuffPost Live yesterday on a segment about special needs adoptions. You can watch the recorded interview here featuring our CEO Bill Baccaglini with Edward, adoptive father, and Johnny, the boy he adopted at age 15 through The Foundling.

Edward and Johnny

 

The 11th issue from Celia McGee is here!

 

Unbreakable: The Legion, Book I, by Kami Garcia (Little, Brown) Ages 12 and up  

Unbreakable

   Evil takes many forms, inhabiting the world around us, but also threatening the good in people from within. When this double whammy takes on supernatural forms, as it does in this first solo novel by Kami Garcia, coauthor of Beautiful Creatures, beware—and be prepared to be sucked into an incredibly suspenseful book. And it’s just the first in an interlocking series Garcia has planned. Kennedy Waters, the teenager at its center, is living a mostly carefree existence blessed by a wonderful mother and a stalwart best friend—though there is that boy who just dumped her, and distant memories of a father who took off when she was little with strange words about wanting “a normal life.”  But then her vital mother dies under puzzling circumstances, and appearing on the bereaved Kennedy’s doorstep—her tear-stained mascara “like fingerprints at the scene of crime”—are two handsome twins, Jared and Lucas Lockhart. They inform her of her ancestral ties to the Legion of the Black Dove, a secret society that must count five members at all times, and her obligation to fight with them against a timeless evil, a demon named Attas. But as Kennedy helps combat supernatural “vengeance spirits” and shiver-inducing ghost (some as innocent -looking as a little girl with a doll) on a trail through haunted mansions, a creepy magician’s shop, down a dank well, and in the bowels of an abandoned orphanage, she is not only torn romantically between Jared and Lucas, but questions the legitimacy of her membership in the legion, which is rounded out by the rich, beautiful black girl Alara (possessed of spells inherited from her Haitian grandmother), and Priest, a youngster with a knack for devising weapons for vaporizing otherworldly attackers.  As signs, symbols and horrifying adventures take them closer to Attas’s realm, Kennedy starts to realize that the photographic memory she’s always taken for granted just might be her special strength. Yet she is still faced with the knowledge that “the only person she belonged to now was herself.” How this will serve her, and if it will change, remains an open question in this cliffhanger of a novel.

 

The Sultan’s Tigers, by Josh Lacey (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) Ages 9-12

The Sultan's Tigers

   From the beginning, young Tom Trelawney declares that he “I come from a long line of liars, cheats, crooks, bandits, thieves and smugglers.” Though you’d never know it from his loving, trusting, strict but kindly family, he has taken that heritage on faith from his Uncle Harvey, a charming scoundrel if ever there was one. Whether this too will prove to be Tom’s case is a quiet question running throughout this book by the author of The Misfitz Mysteries and Grk series, and Island of Thieves, the Tom Trelawney novel that preceded this one. Things are not looking good for the better parts of Tom’s character when he runs away from home to join his uncle on a quest to find a jewel-encrusted, golden tiger figurine looted in a battle in India by an earlier, unscrupulous Trelawney. Originally part of a set of eight surrounding the throne of a grand sultan, seven are now the pride of the collection of the internationally powerful Indian tycoon Jalata Jaragami. He will stop at nothing to get the last tiger, including sending an assassin after the Trelawney pair. The hunt becomes a question of who will find the tiger first. Or does it? Lacey paints a rich, multi-layered portrait of disparate parts of modern-day India, and his sense of plot and the human frailties even among the high and mighty never disappears. Tom is also exposed to his first impressions of freewheeling adult liaisons, crushing poverty, and the pricks of conscience. Safely back home, the call of adventure still sounds for him. What this means for this intrepid young lad will be revealed in Lacey’s next Tom Trelawney book.

 

The Mysterious Traveler, by Mal Peet and Elspeth Graham, illustrated by P.J. Lynch (Candlewick Press) Ages 5-8

   There are times when a snippet of history, the sound of a legendary city’s name, and curiosity about people of a vanished culture, take hold of a writer’s imagination and won’t let go. This happened to Elspeth Graham whenever her thoughts turned to the illustrious, half-mythical metropolis of Timbuktu, in West Africa’s Mali, where once camel caravans carrying traders in salt and gold crossed paths on their way north and south through the treacherous Sahara Desert. Out of this fascination, she and Mal Peet have created a story about an almost preternaturally gifted but aging guide, Issa, whose unmatched foresight and bravery really come from his deep understanding of his natural surroundings, and his ability to judge the human landscape as well. But even he is at a loss when a baby girl, apparently kidnapped in some gruesome blood feud, comes into his life in a basket atop a camel in the aftermath of a deadly sandstorm. He names her Mariama, and teaches her all he knows, from tracking, to hardscrabble survival, the ways of the animal kingdom, and his gentle Islamic faith. These are buoyantly accompanied by P.J. Lynch’s finely-tuned illustrations. Still, the mystery of Mariama’s origins lingers, along with half of a star-shaped pendant she was wearing around her neck when Issa found her. As Issa grows old, though, Mariama must face that he has gone blind, and she becomes his eyes and his guide, and a testament to her own acquired self-reliance and resistance. Those qualities are tested when three strangers appear with unknown intentions, and both danger and another desert storm threaten. Mariama and Issa, though, adhere to their inseparable bonds, and are rewarded in ways they never could have dreamed of.

 

The Tiny King, by Taro Miura (Candlewick Press) Ages 2-5

The Tiny King

   Take a close look at the front cover of The Tiny King, by the acclaimed Japanese writer and illustrator Taro Miura, and you will see a few words reporting that the little ruler is shown at “actual size.” That makes him 10 inches tall (including crown). No wonder he rattles around in his big castle, is dwarfed by the dining table and all its goodies stretched out before him, keeps falling off his large white horse, gets no pleasure out of his bathtub with its own bubbling fountain, and feels especially lonely when he gets into his big, wide, fluffy bed. We’ve all experienced loneliness in one form of another, and we know that making friends or falling in love, no matter what the person’s size or color, is a wonderful solution. The tiny king and his domain, adorably brought to life by illustrations that, through collage and cut-out shapes, give the impression of a saga  charmingly unfolding through building blocks, have a lot to learn on that score, but caring and sharing finally come his way through one very big and a cheerful number of smaller surprises. It is fair to say that everyone and every thing, whether foot soldier, white steed, dining hall table or the tallest tower and steepest staircase in the castle, live happily ever after. 

For the second year in a row, The New York Foundling is participating in Food Day. This year’s event is taking place on October 24 and we’re celebrating with celebrity chefs Katie Lee and Sunny Anderson. Katie and Sunny will share fun, affordable recipes and easy tips for healthy eating with fourth grade scholars at Haven Academy, our charter school in the South Bronx that was uniquely designed to meet the needs of children in foster care and the child welfare system.

 

Happy Food Day, check out photos from the event here

 

 

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