AGENCY TESTIMONY
Continuum of child well-being prevention services
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3 min
Commissioner Dannhauser details the extensive range of prevention services offered by ACS, aimed at supporting families and preventing involvement with child protection services.
- ACS contracts with 43 providers for 124 programs, serving over 15,000 families annually
- Services include evidence-based models like MST, FFT, and GABBY
- New school-based early support model launched in July 2024
Jess Dannhauser
0:09:13
ACS oversees a nationally recognized continuum of child well prevention services aimed at keeping children safe, supporting parents with the resources they need, and preventing, where possible, involvement with child protection.
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ACS contracts with 43 providers for a 124 programs, reaching over 15,000 families and 32,000 children each year.
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I wanna take a moment to thank our prevention service providers, all of the nonprofits community based organizations, for all they do each day supporting families and children.
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Referrals to these services are increasingly coming from schools, communities, and families themselves.
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Just 2 years ago, 93% of referrals to prevention came directly from ACS and our providers.
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After more than 250 trainings over the last 18 months with staff from schools, medical providers, hospitals, and shelters, nearly 1 fourth of referrals are now coming from the community, not from ACS.
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ACS funded prevention providers support and stabilize families by addressing common family challenges, including family communication, homemaking, health and mental health, substance misuse, intimate partner violence, housing instability, and more.
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Our continuum ensures that every model is available to families regardless of where they live.
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The full continuum is available for free regardless of immigration status.
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Our continuum includes clinically delivered evidence based intensive models such as MST, multisystemic therapy, functional family therapy, and brief strategic family therapy, which typically works with families with teens.
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We also have child parent psychotherapy, which is an intervention model for families with young children who've experienced trauma.
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We offer family treatment rehabilitation for families where the primary issue is substance misuse or mental health challenge.
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A safe way forward for families impacted by impartment violence and special medical services where a parent or child needs additional support because of a significant health or developmental condition.
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Group attachment based intervention, GABBY, is available in 6 sites in all 5 boroughs and helps caregivers of children under 4 build strong bonds with their young children.
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We contract with 5 agencies to provide homemaking services, which is a support in home services to help parents and caretakers develop skills to support child and family well-being and to success successfully manage daily household tasks.
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These services can be available up to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and we provide over 1,000,000 service hours annually.
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We also offer family support programs, which provide case management and in home tailored services to address needs, such as service referrals, support with concrete goods, and regular assessments of child safety and well-being.
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Our newest model is school based early support, which launched in July 2024 and builds on the legacy of the ACS, Beacon prevention model and support efforts and support our efforts to link families to support and resources without the need for a child welfare investigation.
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As part of our contracts with 16 programs, each has identified at least 3 partner elementary and or middle schools in their district where they will maintain a presence to serve families.
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Providers are required to collaboratively co design at least 4 school based offerings per year based on the needs of the school community, all with the goal of being an easily accessible support for families.
