Passage of Hope Program

Journey to Hope and Opportunity

Each year, thousands of unaccompanied children cross our borders, fleeing violence, abuse, and neglect. After traveling as much as 1,500 miles to reach safety in the U.S., they are temporarily taken into custody by the U.S. Border Patrol, which is not designed to provide the emotional and medical supported needed by unaccompanied children, who have no one to advocate for them.

The next step in their journey takes them to a short-term shelter, such as our Passage of Hope, which operates in partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement.

After their grueling journey, we help these children be children again. In a nurturing environment, we provide what they have been missing — enough food, clothing, and the opportunity to play and learn.

We provide clinical, therapeutic, educational and case management services while working to link them with family members or other sponsors in the United States. Our goal is to provide these courageous children, who have experienced incredible trauma, with the support, nurturing and care that they need to move forward with their lives and to thrive.

Preparing for the Next Step

As part of our program, we help reunite the children with the family members or other sponsor they are searching for. We make sure that their new homes will be safe and nurturing by conducting home studies of those who have been waiting for them to arrive. While waiting for a permanent place to live, the children learn about American culture, they learn English, and they attend school. At Passage of Hope, children move from danger to safety, from fear to hope.

Location

463 Hawthorne Avenue, Yonkers

Contact

Diana Amado, Director

914-375-8789

dgonzalez@leakeandwatts.org

Mother & Child Program

Family Is What You Make It

Imagine a teenager who hasn’t had a nurturing family of her own, who has been abused and neglected and suddenly becomes the mainstay of a family, responsible for the healthy development of a new baby.

Our Mother & Child program helps teen mothers in foster care create the strong families they may have never had and provide their children with love, guidance, and security. In a safe, nurturing environment, these young women learn to create lasting bonds with their children, develop parenting skills to ensure that their children are prepared to be successful, with the confidence they need to get ahead in their own lives.

The mother-and-child families at our residence in the Bronx may not be traditional, but they are grounded in the positive parenting practices of mothers who are dedicated to success in their own lives despite backgrounds that may include abuse, poverty, and homelessness.

Each mother and her child has a private room — a home of their own to decorate as they like, a place to be together as a family. Common areas provide opportunities for peer support and recreation, including a playroom so mothers and their children can play together. A study room gives young moms a place to focus on their schoolwork, and an onsite nursery ensures that their children are cared for by staff in a loving, familiar environment while mom is at school or work.

Building on Personal Strengths to Create Loving Families

Our Mother & Child program helps teen mothers, who are just starting to plan their lives and with limited experience themselves being nurtured or cared for, learn parenting skills from the basics, like diapering and bathing a baby, to the more complex, such as how to read with their child or set boundaries.

While learning to be nurturing parents, our moms are also building the self confidence needed to move forward in their own lives, whether that means finishing high school or getting a job.

With the help of a multidisciplinary team using the Bright Beginnings/Personal Best model, these young mothers learn how to cope with the life’s challenges, from money management to good nutrition. In doing so, they learn that they are competent, capable and, finally, important to someone.

Ensuring a Strong Foundation for Children

With nurturing moms taking care of them, the children in the Mother & Child program are off to a good start in life. Their mothers know how to help them learn so they have the pre-literacy skills needed to do well in school and to become confident, competent students. The Mother & Child program makes sure they have medical care and the formal preschool education they need to thrive and grow. They’ve got a healthy family.

Location

225 East 234th Street, Bronx, NY

Contact

Janice Lloyd, Director

jlloyd@leakeandwatts.org

Foster Care & Adoption

Every Child Deserves a Loving Home

Home and family are the center of every child’s life. But what happens if that center falls apart? Who do children turn to? That’s where we enter. Our Family Foster Care program provides safe and nurturing care in the homes of trained foster parents to children who temporarily cannot be with their birth families. At a time when it is needed most, we provide the caring support a child needs and, most importantly, deserves.

Grounded in our roots as an orphanage founded in 1831, we have been looking after and caring for children who have been unable to live with their parents for more than 185 years – offering the commitment, encouragement, and resources that help guide a child’s and his/her family’s future toward a positive path. While working to ensure that the comprehensive therapeutic and educational needs of children are being met during this traumatic time in their lives, we concurrently work with birth parents to get them the help they need so they can be reunited with their children.

Supporting Each Child’s Well-Being

Working together, our team of social workers and other trained staff make sure each child has the individualized support needed to get through this difficult time and cope with the impact of possible parental abuse or neglect. We place children with families in their own communities —with relatives or close family friends whenever possible — to provide continuity in their daily lives and so they can stay in the same school with people they know. And we provide and link children with everything from individual counseling and educational tutoring to behavioral supports and recreational activities to support their well-being.

We recognize the importance of well-informed, well-trained caregivers who can nurture and support children and teens. Our foster parents are part of a support team that makes sure everything possible is being done to help children with all their needs – healthcare, education, social activities, confidence-building. Foster parents receive intensive training so they understand how children respond to trauma and how to nurture healthy relationships. And we back them up — we can be reached 24/7 to help deal with any issue that comes up.

Planning for the Future

From the moment a child comes into our care, we immediately begin to work toward permanency – a plan for a permanent home for every child. Family team conferences – which include each child (when old enough), birth parents and foster parents – to create a plan for support and permanency occur within the first week of placement. And while we support children in foster homes, we work intensively with birth parents to get them the help they need to be reunited with their children – anger management training, domestic violence support, substance abuse counseling. We offer additional assistance through the use of various evidence-based practice models to tailor the services and supports we offer.

All of our efforts have resulted in a history of success, reunified healthy families, stronger connections to community networks and lasting relationships with foster parents. In fact, we have been ranked as a citywide leader by New York City for reaching 100% of our goals in creating permanent and kin/relative connections for children in foster care with approximately 65% of our families achieving reunification after working diligently with our team.

And our work doesn’t stop when families are back together. We also provide transitional and continuing support to birth families to ensure bumps in the road with reunification are addressed in real time.

Specialized Care for Teens that Need It Most

Our Treatment Foster Care Oregon Program (TFCO) is a specialized foster care program that supports youth ages 12 to 17 with significant behavioral or mental health challenges. TFCO is an evidence-based treatment program based on many years of research that helps to both promote and support a teen’s relationship with his/her family. Because TFCO values each family’s potential to provide guidance and support for their child’s positive adjustment, this treatment program helps us to provide family-driven care that works toward the important goal of reunification. Though this model, we help break down any road blocks to communication between teens and their parents, and teach families various parenting strategies that support and guide a teen’s positive behaviors. Caseworkers are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for questions, consultation and support.

Adoption: Creating New Families

While we make every effort to reunite children with their birth parents, sometimes, birth families cannot give their children a healthy, safe and permanent home. When this is the case, we find loving adoptive homes for children— no matter their age. In fact, most children in our program who cannot be reunited with their birth families are adopted by foster parents with whom they have been with for an extended period of time and already have an established, loving relationship.

In preparation for adoption, we make sure that children and their new families have all the supports they need to stay on track in school, in good health, make friends and achieve their dreams and goals.

Location

1529 Williamsbridge Road, Bronx, NY, 10461

Contact

Debra McCall, Director

718-794-8274

dmccall@leakeandwatts.org

Parent-Child Home Program

Parents Are a Child’s First and Most Important Teacher

Would you believe that bringing a free book or toy, working for 30 minutes with a parent and their child twice a week for 2 years increases graduation by 30% and results in a 50% reduction in the need for special education? Something so simple has tremendous impact on families! Loving parents care for their children in the best way they know how, but they may not know the power they have to help their children out of poverty. For one mother, playing with her child was all about tickling and peek-a-boo. “I didn’t know we could teach about colors and numbers so easily. Look at how much he knows now!” A loving parent, she just needed the opportunity to learn how be her child’s first teacher.

Providing Resources

The majority of the families in our Parent-Child Home Program — 95% — live in extreme poverty. They get by on less than $16,000 per year. That is simply not enough to buy the educational toys and books that those with higher incomes take for granted. So we bring free books and educational toys to their homes and help parents — who may never have had a book read to them as children — learn how to make play a learning experience. Our home visitors model for parents ways to incorporate learning about shapes, colors, numbers, and more into their daily life. As parents and children learn together, family relationships are strengthened. Our program has shown a 133% improvement in parent-child bonds.

Closing the Achievement Gap

With their parents engaged as teachers and educational role models, children in this program don’t lag behind their middle- and upper-income peers. They start school equipped for success.

Graduates of our program:

Enter kindergarten with skills an average of 10 months above their age.
Are 50% better prepared for elementary school than low-income children who do not attend the program.
Are less likely to need special education or remedial services.
Are less likely to repeat a grade.
Are more likely to graduate from high school.
Have a higher lifelong income of $600,000 to $1,000,000 more than their peers who did not participate in the program.

Parents, too, close a gap in their education. Many are immigrant families who do not speak English at home. After experiencing success with their children, many are inspired to pursue their own educational goals, including ESL classes or obtaining their GED. In this way, our program supports entire families and our community as a whole.

Graduation

Contact

Joannie De La Cruz, Coordinator

914-327-6384

JDeLaCruz@leakeandwatts.org

Soundview Family Resource Center

A Place to Come Together and Learn

Soundview Family Resource Center 4

Being a new parent is a time of wonder and excitement. You are filled with joy at each new development of your child — her first smile, his first steps, the first time she says, “Mama!” But it is also a time of questions and challenges. “How do I deal with this new behavior?” “My child didn’t eat much at all today. Should I be worried?” Nearly 40% of families in the Bronx live at or below the poverty level, which is an added hurdle.
We help families meet these challenges at the bilingual Family Resource Center in the Soundview neighborhood of the Bronx, where all services are free. We bring parents and caregivers together to build a community of support and to provide a safety net for families. Targeted to families with children under the age of 5, the Center equips parents and caregivers with knowledge, stability, support and access to resources so they can help children develop to their full potential.

Building Bonds with Children and Parents Alike

The Center hosts a wide range of free family and community activities — playgroups, movie afternoons, festivals, and field trips — so parents and caregivers have the opportunity to come together with others in a warm, comfortable environment. Parents and children bond while meeting neighbors, building a sense of community in a neighborhood with limited outlets and where families, particularly those with limited English-language skills, might otherwise feel isolated.

Parents and caregivers, along with their children, join us weekly for free arts, crafts, readings and other activities. Our staff model how parents can interact with children to promote positive social, emotional and intellectual development.

In addition to activities for families, parents and caregivers can share and learn from each other through workshops and other activities, such as a moms nights out, a parenting support group and more.

Making Sure Families Have the Resources They Need to Thrive

We offer a wide range of multilingual, essential resources in one community hub, at no charge.

Parenting and life skills workshops
Assistance with public benefits, health services, and advocacy for tenant’s rights
Career and job-readiness including help accessing GED and ESL classes, adult education services, job skills, and assistance writing résumés and seeking jobs
Access to a free computer lab
Assistance with tax preparation
Referrals to community organizations for other services

The Parenting Journey

For parents and caregivers who need more intensive help, including those involved in Family Court, we offer a 12-week, evidence-based curriculum called The Parenting Journey. In addition to helping parents develop a greater understanding of child development, the program helps uncover patterns of behavior and shifts the focus away from the child to the welfare of the family as a whole. This curriculum encourages positive parenting and gives parents the tools they need to build united, strong families.

Location

575 Soundview Avenue, Bronx

Contact

Maria Deaquis, Coordinator

718-991-1500

frc@leakeandwatts.org