CYSJ

Our new Children’s’  Resource and Community Center embraces a rapid housing approach accompanied by wraparound housing stability services that will limit the time any child might spend without a home.  It also functions as a community center of first choice, where children know that they can always find a welcome, a hot meal, the company of other children and responsible adults, and access to services as they adjust to new life circumstances and neighborhoods.

 

Key to the success of this model is the deep understanding we develop of our clients from our in-depth intake assessment.  Some clients may come with an income and/or housing vouchers in place, but we do anticipate that many clients will have an interim period in which they await benefits and housing applications to be processed and go into effect.  During that time, a team of social services professionals, housing and benefits specialists, urban planners and in some cases CPS(child protective services) attorneys conduct a detailed psychosocial assessment of each client.  This assessment enables us to build a highly individualized service plan, in collaboration with our client families, that helps identify appropriate housing types and locations, and that permits us to determine in advance the level of continuing support needed from CYSJ staff, ACT teams (as necessary),  community volunteers.

 

It has been our experience through our Moving On housing program that the compelling majority of our clients, even those with multi-situational life circumstances of long-term homelessness and domestic violence and or neglect, require extended, but not necessarily intensive, supportive interventions to remain stable in housing, and keep children in their homes.  It has also been our experience, recently substantiated by research conducted  NYU and the  NYS Office of Mental Health, that children  who have been homeless and/or removed for the natural parent and families are bereft of virtually all ties to community, a condition  similarly true for older persons homeless for years and decades as well as those newly homeless. 

 

For children and  youth entering the foster care system for the first time, then, housing stability depends upon building roots and a sense of belonging in their new community: with neighbors, service providers, faith-based organizations, etc.  It also depends on services provided to clients in their homes – such as home visits, home health care, and telephone reassurance – that encourage a child to believe that she/he can obtain any needed supports in his home or neighborhood.  Such reassurance is critical, as a fair number of our interest and investments, as well as resources lie with the options and networking our client families to outside assistance and connectivity when needed.

 

Still, we recognize that natural family-integration may be a long-term process, especially because many of our clients have grown distrustful of strangers and services. Too, our clients have faced for many years the isolation, and stigma of poverty and homelessness. For that reason, the CYSJ Children’s Resource Center is both a resource center for services to find and thrive in new homes if needed, and a community center, where children learn how to build dual levels of trust – in their neighborhood of residence and at The Children’s Resource Center – that ensures that children and young adults can transition successfully to a stable, cared for lifestyle with dignity and respect.