St. Vincent's Services

St. Vincent's Services Executive Summary

About Us

St. Vincent's Services (SVS), founded in 1869 as a refuge for homeless Brooklyn newsboys, is one of the oldest and most respected childcare agencies in New York City. Our mission, to serve needy children and their families with services that support, supplement or substitute for the healing, nurturing, and developing relationships ideally found in family life, remains unchanged as our objectives and programs have grown to meet the increasingly complex needs of our city's families.

Today any child in need of a home is welcome at SVS. Our homes are staffed with nurturing, supportive adults who are trained to address the developmental needs and growing pains of young people-especially those who are separated from their natural families. SVS also provides inclusive, caring support to our children's foster, birth and adoptive families to promote stable home environments.

Our programs presently serve about 850 of New York City's most vulnerable children, including more than 650 in family foster homes, 90 in our Positive Caring Program, including children with HIV/AIDS and other medically fragile conditions, and 90 in nine group homes.

St. Vincent's Services is licensed and has contract agreements with the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, and in New York City with the Administration for Children's Services and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. For quality purposes, these government agencies review all of our programs and visit our facilities.

Locally SVS is a member of the Council of Family & Child Caring Agencies, as well as the InterAgency Council of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Agencies.

On a national basis, St. Vincent's Services (SVS) is a member of Catholic Charities USA, the Alliance for Children and Families, Child Welfare League of America, National Association of Homes & Services for Children, and the Coalition of Mental Health Agencies. We are also recognized by the Council on Accreditation of Services for Families & Children.

In addition, SVS is a Better Business Bureau accredited charity.

Our Programs

Our Family Foster Care Program exists to make sure that New York City children and youth who need our help are placed in safe, loving homes. We offer adoption and post-adoptive services to our families and community, as well as an intensive case management program for our older adolescents and their foster and natural families to prepare them for aging out of care and coping with the dynamics of this major life change. SVS works hard to find permanent homes for its youngsters and places approximately 100 children in permanent adoptive homes each year.

In 2000 SVS launched our innovative Specialized Preventive Services initiative-a community-based program funded in part by the New York City Administration for Children's Services that provides a host of services to families and children in order to prevent foster care placement when possible. Our services are geared towards families where there is a child at risk, who has a special medical condition or developmental disability.

SVS launched its supportive housing initiative in 2007. The program serves 20 adult clients referred to us from local hospitals who struggle with substance abuse, mental health issues and/or developmental disabilities. Residents are linked to support services, such as mental health and drug treatment programs, to help them become self-sufficient.

Through our Youth Residential Services, SVS operates nine group homes in Queens and Staten Island, which serve more than 90 adolescents. The young people in our group residences benefit greatly from living in safe, stable homes where they receive caring attention and work to overcome their challenges. In this environment, our young people attend school, participate in community activities and are part of a family.

By providing structure and encouragement, SVS helps our youth to become resourceful and goal-oriented by offering personal, academic and career counseling. Our broader goal is to prepare young people in our care to be the best they can be when they leave us; it is our expectation that, one day they will be equipped to give back to the community-each one in his or her own way.

St. Vincent's Services opened its first Children's Community Residence in Springfield Gardens, Queens, in 2008. The dedicated staff of this home for emotionally disturbed teens provides comprehensive services aimed at meeting our youth residents' needs while working collaboratively with their families. This new model is a beneficial temporary step between the institutional environment of a hospital and the young people's own homes, to which they will ultimately return.

Developmentally Disabled Services

In the 1970s, the inhumane treatment of the developmentally disabled was exposed in the media and New York State encouraged the establishment of non-institutional homes for people with developmental disabilities. St. Vincent's responded to this need by creating community residences where 54 profoundly disabled adults, ages 20 through 70+, live in five "family style" Brooklyn residences. Many of our residents have lived together since they were children or teenagers and spent the earlier part of their lives in horrific conditions.

St. Vincent's turned their lives around and today provides comfortable living conditions, high-quality medical care and physical therapy. We engage these residents in practical workshops throughout the week, so that they can care for themselves to the best of their individual abilities, and take them on recreational and cultural outings on weekends. Overall, we ensure that our residents' quality of life is as high as possible and encourage them to express themselves by choosing their own clothing and room décor, and by engaging with one another, and their families and friends, in a positive, affirming manner.

Behavioral Health Services

St. Vincent's outpatient mental health clinic, licensed by the State Office of Mental Health, serves the community and hosts 24,000 visits annually. The treatment that we provide is "holistic," and treats both the mind and body. We employ a variety of approaches, including crisis intervention, individual, family and group psychotherapy.

In addition to providing these services to the general public, our outpatient chemical dependence treatment program helps the birth parents we serve to reunite with their children that have been placed in foster care due to chemical or alcohol addiction problems (80% of foster care children come into care for this reason).

The American Dream Program

St. Vincent's Services has always been deeply committed to education as the route to independence in adulthood. To formally take on this challenge, SVS launched our signature American Dream Program (ADP) in 1997. In addition to housing and guidance, the program provides for our youths' post-high school education costs-often past the age of 21 when they are no longer eligible for government aid. This extended support is crucial as most of our youngsters have not graduated by age 21. They usually come to SVS well behind grade level in school due to the family difficulties that led to their placement. In addition, they often begin college at 19 or 20 with a GED rather than a high school diploma and are required to take remedial classes. Our extended support ensures that they catch up to their peers and thrive in their colleges and vocational schools.

So far more than 70 SVS youth have benefited from the unique program, which is completely supported by private funds. These young people's lives could have taken radically different paths-most likely to low-wage, unfulfilling work, underemployment or even unemployment-without the generosity of our committed supporters, who are truly making the world a more hopeful place through their support of the American Dream Program.

Our American Dream graduates are alumni of our nation's most prestigious schools, including Harvard, Polytechnic University and Amherst, among others. While some ADP alumni have gone on to become doctors, attorneys, accountants, scientists and other professionals, others have become chefs or service technicians, studying at schools such as the Culinary Institute of America and New York City Technology College while sustaining full- and part-time employment. The overall goal of ADP is to ensure that when our youth leave us, they do so with marketable skills that will enable them to secure meaningful employment and compete in today's competitive global economy.