Applying Guiding Principles

Serving Latino Families with Multiple Needs

Denise Rosario, MSW, DCSW, Executive Director, Coalition for Hispanic Family Services

In recent years the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) and its contract agencies have made tremendous strides to reduce the population of children in foster care in New York City. With less than 20,000 children in foster care in June of 2005, 28% of that population was Latino children. The Coalition for Hispanic Family Services (the Coalition), located in Bushwick Brooklyn, is the only Latino community based organization (CBO) that is licensed to provide foster care services to children and families in the City of New York.

A Community-Based Organization Offering a Continuum of Services

The Coalition has served the Latino communities of Bushwick, Williamsburg and East New York since 1990. Initially established to provide foster boarding home services, the Coalition has since developed into a multi-service CBO offering a continuum of services to families in our community.

Each of our programs has developed out of the needs identified in serving our foster care children and their birth families as well as the overall needs of families in North Brooklyn. Services provided to the community include foster care and services, therapeutic foster care, family based treatment for seriously emotionally disturbed children, HIV prevention, case management and custody planning, outpatient children’s mental health services, after school programs, family support services for children ages 0-5 and their families, family group conferencing and fathering support services.

Principles for Building on the Strengths of Latino Culture

Our experience with Latino families in the child welfare system indicates that families often enter the system with multiple needs beyond the scope, responsibility and resources available in the foster care system. These families are confronted by mental health and substance abuse problems, housing and homelessness challenges, health troubles, and educational failure. In order to effectively serve Latino families in the child welfare system, the Coalition operates under the following guiding principles:

• Culture is the number one source of strength for our children and families. Our service approach builds upon the strengths of Latino culture, emphasizing the importance of family and the interpersonal relationship as a means for creating healthy change.

• Family is at the center of all services, creating opportunities for the family’s “voice” and their sources of support to be the driving force behind service planning and service delivery.

• As our Latino immigrant population continues to grow, we consider the “journey” of the child and the family to the United States and provide services in the context of the family’s level of acculturation.

• In order to effectively serve families, we utilize a multi-system approach that integrates and coordinates services through a “wrap-around” process to service delivery practice.

• As a Latino CBO we have a responsibility to serve as an empowerment model for our consumers of service. The Coalition provides the message to the community that “we are able to help ourselves”. From the front desk to the executive office, Latinos are present in leadership roles at the Coalition.

• As a CBO, we are committed to improving the status of our community and, as such, we are intricately involved in community building efforts such as Bushwick Agenda for Children Tomorrow.

• As relationships are central to the successful strengthening of the Latino family, collaboration proves to be a successful means for strengthening our community. Our collaborative relationships have served to develop new services, expand resources and strengthen our organization. We currently enjoy collaborative relationships with the Medical and Health Research Association (MHRA), National Center on Addication and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University, the Ackerman Institute for the Family, and Ridgewood-Bushwick Senior Citizens’ Council. Past collaborators have included The Brooklyn Hospital Center and the Progressive life Center in Washington D.C.

Social Workers: Developing New Service Modalities

Social workers have been at the center of the Coalition’s vision, development and implementation since its inception. Whether in leadership positions or as direct service providers, social workers have embraced the mission of the Coalition and brought their own personal commitment to strengthening Latino families and communities. For many of our Latino social workers, the choice to work in a CBO is driven by the desire to “give back” to our community. While our bilingualism is a valuable asset to the field in general, the opportunity to work in a CBO often reaffirms the social worker’s sense of personal, ethnic and professional identity.

Our social workers have been instrumental in developing new service modalities that meet the needs of the populations that we serve. Our understanding of language, culture and the importance of family has allowed us to work in partnership with birth families to negotiate the child welfare system and insure that every effort is made to reunite a child with his family before considering other permanency resources.

A Challenge to Services for Latino Families – Shortage of Bilingual Social Workers

Social work’s greatest challenge in providing services to Latino children and families in the child welfare system is reflected in the shortage of bilingual social workers that are graduating from our schools of social work. Such a shortage is reflected in the number of Latino families who receive services through the use of a translator or who fail to seek services because they are uncomfortable with the setting, location or services that are offered.

From a broader perspective, such a shortage will result in diminishing numbers of future Latino leaders who are prepared to carry on the mission of such organizations as the Coalition. With an ever growing Latino population in New York City, representing a multitude of Latino subgroups, the field of social work should be at the cutting edge of service delivery, offering new service modalities that are reflective of the populations that we serve.

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