Achievements
of ACT Central
For 14 years, ACT has built neighborhood collaboratives
that respond to the diverse needs of children and families
in ACT’s five targeted neighborhoods: Bedford Stuyvesant,
Bushwick, Washington Heights-Inwood, Mott Haven and South
Jamaica. These neighborhood collaboratives bring together
individuals and organizations in the public, nonprofit, and
private sectors, bridging the worlds of social service and
economic development. Each collaborative has assessed its
community’s strengths and needs, set its action agenda
and created a committee structure to carry out the collaborative’s
priorities and projects. At the center of the collaborative
is a planner, whose role is to encourage and facilitate inclusive
membership and participation, help the collaboratives formulate
their objectives, and carry out a range of specific tasks
to achieve goals. The collaborative works together 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. Through
the collaborative, ACT helps the neighborhood plan for itself.
“ACT Central” directly supports
the neighborhood collaboratives and their local planners by
providing information, advice, technical assistance, connections
and resources. In this role, ACT Central becomes a service
organization as soon as a local collaborative has created
its own priorities and strategic plan. The central staff also
work independently to decentralize and increase the responsiveness
of services to the neighborhoods and advocate for policies
that will improve the conditions for families and children
throughout the city. In this role, ACT central staff are often
“behind the scenes” educating, informing, interpreting,
advising, offering ideas, and bringing people together—all
in the pursuit of a vision of a comprehensive, coordinated,
community-based service system for families and children that
has “no wrong door.”
ACT’s
Role Today
Gradually, ACT Central is redefining its presence,
moving from “doing the invisible” and towards
identifying a new and apparent role within New York City communities.
As in the past, ACT is continuing its pioneering work with
geographic community-specific data that was first used to
galvanize local interest and inspire city government agencies
to use local information to inform their planning and decisions.
How ACT Influences Government
ACT, now one of the oldest public private initiatives
of its kind, offers lessons on how to survive political transitions
while making a difference in the lives of children and families
in New York City communities. Now housed at the Administration
for Children’s Services, we are particularly proud to
be supportive players in the one billion dollar reconfiguration
of New York City’s Child Welfare System (begun by former
Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta and now led by Commissioner
William Bell, ACT’s public sector co-chair).
In addition, ACT provides direct assistance
to five of the Administration for Children’s Services’
child welfare networks in Brownsville/East New York, Central
Harlem, Staten Island, Southeast Queens, and Bushwick. These
networks are staffed by Network Liaisons whose responsibility
is to improve the capacity of the ACS Neighborhood Network
by providing programmatic and administrative assistance and
coordinating special projects unique to its operations.
With this framework, ACT has been able to influence
the creation of service delivery models that are family-focused
and neighborhood-based, and has initiated a large-scale shift
towards more widespread provision of preventive services.
Through the vehicle of the ACT Collaboratives, and ACT Central’s
relationship to ACS and other city agencies, ACT has been
able to initiate and implement many integrated, collaborative
approaches to problem-solving that involve public, private
and voluntary agencies.
These letters and the reforms outlined within
them helped redefine ACS’s mission and to establish
the framework for the agency’s transition to neighborhood
based service provision.
Since the issuance of these letters, a number
of complementary initiatives have been developed and implemented,
including:
1) A 72-hour-case conferencing model has been
implemented by ACS.
2) A risk assessment conference model has been
developed by ACS.
3) ACS, along with the Department of Homeless
Services (DHS), the Department of Probation and other city
agencies, has developed a “one-city” strategy:
a case-conferencing approach to understanding and remedying
conflicting policies among agencies,
4) A “Coalition for Hispanic Families”
case conferencing model has been developed and implemented
in Bushwick, Brooklyn. (Additionally, as a new “spin-off”
of this model, the Ira W. DeCamp Foundation has supported
the inclusion of a Case Conferencing Coordinator as part of
the dedicated Case Conferencing Team in Bushwick.)
Learn more about Neighborhood
Based Services in New York City and the ACS Neighborhood Network
Liaison Initiative»
