NEW ALTERNATIVES FOR CHILDREN INC
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Mission Statement
New Alternatives for Children, Inc. (NAC) helps medically fragile children who are at risk of abuse and neglect to grow up safe and secure in loving, permanent family homes and gives them the opportunity to succeed and thrive. NAC serves the entire family with social services including Preventive Services, Foster Care & Adoption, aftercare services including post adoption support, medical and mental health care, educational support and advocacy, accessible recreational programs and emergency services including a food, clothing and toy bank, medical equipment and emergency funds.
About This Cause
NAC was founded in 1982 on the belief that all children have the right to be nurtured within a safe and permanent family. Our mission is to provide innovative high quality services in support of birth, foster, and adoptive families caring primarily for medically fragile children, which includes children with severe physical disabilities, emotional and behavioral challenges, and developmental disabilities. NAC’s services enable children to remain in or to be returned to their families whenever possible or to be adopted by loving families. Working with children whose birth families live in poverty, NAC’s continuum of services ensures that children’s physical, social, educational, recreational, medical, and mental healthcare needs are met. By supporting families NAC prevents lengthy stays in foster care, hospitals, or other institutions. NAC builds on family strengths, provides opportunities, and assists all family members in reaching for and achieving their potential. Annually, NAC serves approximately 820 families consisting of 1,550 medically fragile children and their siblings and 1,100 parents. The children NAC serves are the most vulnerable children in the New York City child welfare system. They not only live in poverty but also have the added challenge of having a severe disability and/or chronic illness. The birth families caring for these children have long histories of complex and deeply embedded socioeconomic problems, including poverty, homelessness, substance abuse, domestic violence, incarceration, and mental illness. Services are provided throughout the New York City metropolitan area. NAC’s unique program model provides an inter-disciplinary continuum of specialized child welfare, health and social services for at-risk medically fragile children and their families. NAC’s core child welfare programs include Special Medical Preventive Services, Special Medical Family Foster Care & Adoption Services, Partners In Parenting (PIP), a prevention aftercare program, and the Post Legal Adoption Network (PLAN). Bridges To Health (B2H) is a Medicaid waiver add-on program for children in foster care with special needs. These core programs operate under one roof with an array of interdisciplinary support services, including: The NAC Comprehensive Healthcare Center (CHC) which combines an on-site licensed Article 28 Medical Clinic and Article 31 Mental Health Clinic; Educational Services and Advocacy; a year-round Recreation Program; Transportation Services; and Auxiliary Services including food, clothing and toy banks, financial aid for emergencies or the purchase of special medical equipment, and homelessness prevention services. Two recent multi-year program additions, both funded by the NYS Dept. of Health (DOH), are New Horizons for Kids – a project of the statewide Successfully Transitioning Youth to Adolescence Initiative; and Healthy @ Home, a project intended to prevent or reverse the incidence of medically fragile children living in long term care facilities by helping them to live with birth, or foster/adoptive families who can care for them at home. This project includes the acquisition of a mobile medical van which will increase access to healthcare for our families and others like them in the community. NAC serves our city’s most vulnerable children – those who not only live in poverty but also have the added challenge of having a severe disability and/or chronic illness, and who are at risk of experiencing or have experienced abuse and/or neglect. NAC’s programs are specialized to meet the unique needs of this population. Medically fragile children have higher instances of abuse and neglect, higher foster care recidivism rates, and poorer health and education outcomes than children without medical fragility. The birth families caring for these children have long histories of complex and deeply embedded socioeconomic problems, including poverty, homelessness, substance abuse, domestic violence, incarceration, and mental illness. Many of NAC’s children have had more surgeries than birthdays. They may depend on special equipment such as feeding tubes, wheelchairs or oxygen tanks and nebulizers. They have a range of diagnoses from asthma and diabetes to cerebral palsy, autism, cancer, spina bifida and HIV/AIDS to name just a few. Some of the children have spent years growing up in the hospital; others have experienced fragmented health services, prolonged hospital stays, trauma, abuse, and/or medical and educational neglect. These children often experience social isolation and rejection, difficulty communicating, disrupted relationships and other emotional stress, in addition to specific issues related to their medical condition (pain management; coping with invasive procedures; lack of control over bodily functions, stigma and isolation, etc.). Many NAC children also have serious mental health diagnoses in addition to their medical condition, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depressive and bipolar disorders, autism, attachment disorders, conduct disorders, psychosis, adjustment disorders, and anxiety disorders. Approximately 70 to 75% of children and adolescents evaluated at NAC have behavioral and/or emotional problems that require mental health treatment. NAC’s practices are widely applicable and constitute a model for foster care services nationwide; a model that minimizes trauma while maximizing permanency and well-being in a timely and lasting manner. NAC is the recipient of numerous awards, among them: a National Adoption Excellence Award from the US Department of Health and Human Services in 2008. NAC’s Executive Director Dr. Goldsmith was very recently honored by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI) in Washington, DC as a 2014 Angels in Adoption™ awardee, selected by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.