Proposal for Neighborhood-Based Child Welfare Services

The Task Force focused on the frequent recommendations made by advisory groups (under public, private and independent auspices) to integrate services to disadvantaged children, families, and neighborhoods. Finding that the fragmentation of services was a continuing problem, the Task Force proposed a solution that recognized the need for a change agent to guide changes in the service delivery system. The Task Force proposed a neighborhood-based planning process to coordinate human services and economic development efforts. ACT’s proposal had five key elements:

Mayoral support for the effort's policies and programs

Public/private sector cooperation

Specific action-oriented proposals with measurable outcomes

Active outreach and constituency building

Persistent follow-up advocacy and monitoring

Development of Local Collaboratives

ACT analyzed indicators of risk to children at the community district level, and then created detailed data profiles of ten of the city’s most troubled neighborhoods. Five of these communities-Bedford-Stuyvesant, South Jamaica, Mott Haven, Bushwick, and Washington Heights/Inwood-were selected for the development of neighborhood collaboratives. Within in each neighborhood, ACT convened residents, community-based groups, service providers, churches and schools. Collaboratives brought together individuals and organizations from the public, non-profit, and private sectors to bridge the worlds of social services and economic development. Membership ranged from 175 in the Mott Haven collaborative to 500 in the Washington Heights/Inwood collaborative.

Through the collaborative, ACT helped each neighborhood plan for itself. The steps for each community were to:

Convene key stakeholders and define the collaborative's role and goals

Identify potential fiscal agents and office locations;

Validate data on community conditions and existing resources;

Develop collaborative participation, membership agreements, and by-laws;

Recruit, hire and train a local planner (by consensus).

The collaborative worked to create neighborhood specific strategies to revitalize the neighborhood and improve the quality of services to connect families and children to the right services at the right time. It's "bottom-up planning in a top-down world."

Snapshot of collaborative accomplishments:

Vacant lot clean-ups to develop Green Thumb projects.

Identifying 10 potential sites for midnight basketball courts in collaboration with NYC Department of Parks and Recreation.

Organizing Early Childhood Coalitions

Organizing job shadowing programs for junior high school students in conjunction with local development corporations.

Distributed City Family, a publication to inform New York's Spanish speaking communities about ways to improve their quality of life
Incorporated Youthline into the collaboratives' information system.

Public/Private Sponsorship

In order to conserve resources for community focused activities, ACT has not created an independent organizational structure. Rather, it remains a public/private sponsorship. Housed in the offices of the Administration for Children’s Services, ACT benefits both from the visibility and the connections of its public agency auspice and from the technical and community expertise of the Fund for the City of New York. ACT retains a critical degree of independence by relying on private funding, as well.