Programs
After School and Summer Programs
The Arts and Literacy After School and Summer Program addresses the educational needs of children by providing them with opportunities to create, think, communicate, and problem solve. Program activities build literacy in the widest sense of the word through creative writing, the visual arts, theater, photography, video, creative movement, music, martial arts, media literacy, gardening, and Yoga. The interdisciplinary curriculum builds upon the children's interests and strengths, using the same effective, holistic, multicultural approach which is the hallmark of all of CHFS's programs. The program also offers art therapy, monthly Family Arts Nights with family literacy workshops, support for families, family educational trips, apprenticeships for neighborhood high school students, and comprehensive services through the agency's other programs.
The Beacon Center for Arts and Leadership is an educational and recreational community center serving the youth and families in Bushwick out of I.S. 291. Beacon provides free opportunities to create, critically think, communicate, and problem solve through arts-based activities that build leadership skills and empower the individual. Community youth have access to free programming in mediums such as culinary arts creative writing, visual arts, sports, media literacy, and dance, in addition to homework help. During evenings and weekends, programs are available for teens, including open gym, basketball, and a youth advisory council; for adults there are Zumba, step and yoga, classes.
The Cornerstone Community Centers are housed in Hope Gardens and Cooper Park. The Cornerstone sites offer free after school programming and summer camps for children that include homework help. Evening activities for teens and adults are offered year-round and including basketball tournaments, Zumba, Teen Action, Youth Advisory Council, and Community Advisory Boards.
Learning Bridges (temporary)
Learning Bridges (aka Learning Labs) is a new program that provides free child care options for children from 3-K through 8th grade on days when they are scheduled for remote learning
UPDATE: CHFS Learning Labs are currently accepting K-8 NYC DOE students enrolled in both blended AND remote-only instruction at their schools.
For more information about Learning Labs, please click here.
Foster Care
Offers bilingual (English/Spanish) services in community based foster care, adoption, home finding, independent living for teens, and such ancillary services as housing advocacy, education and training for youth, birth parents, and resource parents.
Treatment Family Foster Care (TFFC)
TFFC offers community based placements for seriously emotionally disturbed children who have also been abused and neglected and are known to the child welfare system. With teaching parents as therapeutic agents of change, these children have the opportunity to have their mental health needs addressed while remaining within their own community. The program also works closely with birth parents to facilitate reunification.
Wendy's Wonderful Kids (WWK)
Coalition for Hispanic Family Services is pleased to be implementing Wendy's Wonderful Kids, a signature program of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption that is bringing children waiting to be adopted from foster care one step closer to safe, loving and permanent homes. Through Wendy's Wonderful Kids, the Foundation provides grants to adoption agencies to hire and train adoption recruiters who implement the Foundation's evidence-based Child-Focused Recruitment Model. This model is up to three times more effective at serving children who have been in foster care the longest, including older youth, sibling groups and children with special needs.
Services for Family Development
Preventive Family Support Services is a free counseling, support and referral assistance program for families in crisis. It seeks to strengthen families in the midst of family crisis by connecting them to community based services while providing general counseling and support throughout their involvement with the program.
A primary prevention program for parents, their babies under three years of age and their older siblings. Group services are offered to the parent and child with the goal of fostering a positive, nurturing, relationship between parent(s) and child(ren), Parents also participate in adult groups that introduce and facilitate goal setting for the parents. Siblings under the age of 5 also participate in a sibling group. Group services are accompanied by home visits and all infants are followed until the age of three. Ackerman Institute for the Family developed the curriculum for this program and are partnering with CHFS in operating First Steps.
Mental Health Services
Offers clinical services that will make permanency for children more likely and better enables children to grow up to become healthy adults. The program provides psychiatric evaluation, individual, family and group psychotherapy for children, resource parents (foster parents) and biological parents, and as appropriate, support services and crisis intervention. The Community Residence, located in Bushwick, is a single site residence with group living for eight seriously emotionally disturbed children ages 8-13 which provides a supervised, therapeutic environment seeking to develop the residents’ skills and capacity to live in the community.
We are a registered 501 (c3) not-for profit agency.
