February Newsletter

Celebrating and spreading love and thanks

We laughed and smiled our way into the New Year and have hit the ground running in 2023. We enjoyed our youth and staff holiday events and shed bountiful thanks to our donors, supporters, and volunteers for going above and beyond.

Just because the holidays are over, the work doesn’t stop there. We’re focusing on strengthening our programs, hiring new teammates, and working with the community to help best serve our existing youth and families.

The Heart Program

What better month than February to spotlight Hope For Youth’s Heart Program.

HEART stands for Help Enhance Attachments and Remain Together.

The focus of HEART is to prevent a disruption of a family that will/could result in the imminent placement of a child in foster care, enabling a child who has been placed in foster care to return to his/her family at an earlier time than would otherwise be impossible, and to reduce the likelihood that a child who has been discharged from foster care would return to such care.

Licensed Social Workers provide therapies and support services to families/children in the HEART program with a large focus on treatments addressing the parent-child relationship for families with young children. The HEART Program also provides families with Case Planners who will meet with them at a minimum, twice per month. The Case Planners will work collaboratively with families, children and outside service providers to create service plans to address identified needs.

To learn more about our HEART Program call 516-221-5435 or email pins@hfyny.org

We Love a Success Story

Hope for Youth’s Juvenile Drug Treatment Court Program (JDTC) provides clients with Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT). This therapy is often challenging for clients and families, but its rewards are abundant. The following success story (shared by a MDFT supervisor) is one of many from this program, and we feel honored to work alongside such incredibly talented and caring therapists, caseworks, and supervisors.

Client G was referred to Hope For Youth’s Juvenile Drug Treatment Court Program due to severe drug and alcohol use and experimentation, being physically aggressive with his family members, refusal to attend school, unmanaged symptoms of depression, anxiety and intense history of suicidal and homicidal behaviors. Client G and his mother received Multidimensional Family Therapy for 6 months where both identified individual and family goals that were necessary to achieve for Client G to remain out of placement from home and to comply with probation and court mandates.

At the start the engagement phase was challenging. However, soon Client G was able to connect how MDFT model approach was different from what he had experienced in the past and actually tailored to all the needs he was able to prioritize to feel and become a successful young man.

An initially extremely guarded client who struggled with identifying any positive relationships in his life soon developed a healthy therapeutic alliance with his therapist allowing himself to be vulnerable and honest with both therapist and family. During a 6 month duration the client actively engaged in treatment to work through issues in his life including building self-confidence, better understanding of family dynamics, and acceptance of his parents’ divorce. He learned to utilize healthy and socially acceptable coping skills to manage his symptoms of anxiety and depression. Instead of aggression he began to utilize effective communication, negotiation, and conflict resolution skills.”

We applaud our clients for their hard work and success.