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| October 2005 October, 2005 |
Harlem Dowling's 169 Year Legacy: Being Part of the Solution Melba Butler, LMSW, Executive Director, Harlem Dowling West Side Center for Children and Family Services Harlem Dowling was one of the first charitable institutions in the United States dedicated to children, and the very first to provide for “children of color”. Founded in 1836 as the Colored Orphan Asylum by Anna Shotwell and Mary Murray, Harlem Dowling grew into one of the most vigorous charitable institutions in the nation. As a not-for-profit, child welfare agency, the mission of Harlem Dowling West Side Center for Children and Family Services is to serve and assist children and their families in crisis and distress. Our services include foster care, adoption, preventive services and related assistance to children and their families to enable them to live in a stable nurturing environment. The agency is headquartered in the community of Central Harlem, the locus of African American culture in NYC since the Depression. It is a community with a strong history, in which generations of families - African American and Hispanic - raised their children and made their home. Yet it is also a community plagued by years of economic neglect, poor housing, substandard education and health care, unemployment, poverty and violence. As a result, in NYC in the 1990’s, Central Harlem ranked highest in the number of children who were placed in foster care due to abuse and neglect. The other three communities served by Harlem Dowling - Washington Heights, Jamaica, and Far Rockaway - mirror Central Harlem in terms of being plagued by many of the same social indicators of need. However, these other communities include significantly more diverse immigrant populations. Language barriers and inter-generational value conflicts between recent immigrants and their more Americanized children add extra challenges to the survival of these families. Yet, what these families and all four communities share is a commitment to their children that is often confounded by the struggle of daily living.
As a social service organization that is anchored in its host communities, we at Harlem Dowling approach the work with a philosophy that we do not have all of the answers. Harlem Dowling’s role is to build on the strengths of these communities and their families to enable them to provide safe and nurturing environments for their children. We contribute the skills, commitment and resources of Harlem Dowling as “part of the solution”. So what does being “part of the solution” look like? Social work staff at Harlem Dowling is encouraged to partner traditional clinical, casework and organizational skills with creative engagement techniques. For example, Harlem Dowling’s Family Reimbursement Program is a family program created for developmentally disabled children. Since its conception, we have created a network to provide goods and services that allow parents the time to run errands, keep appointments or just relax and “de-stress”. In conjunction with that program, our Respite Preventive care provides immediate relief in order to maintain or restore family functioning. The following vignette describes a successful case story. Charisse D., a single mother of four, has 6-year-old twins with multiple health and developmental issues. Charisse came to Harlem Dowling initially for the Family Reimbursement Program, where she encountered two social workers who determined that there was an additional need to assist with her two older teenage daughters who were having problems at school. Today, Charisse’s teens are back on track in school. Harlem Dowling’s professional, hands-on service has helped them both find their own voices as well as build upon their passions. Paired with the young twins’ remarkable improvements, Harlem Dowling remains a “part of the solution” contributing to this family’s continued growth and success. Serving as Catalysts for Coalition Building Harlem Dowling has a long history of partnering with other providers who offer expertise in areas such as substance abuse, mental health, employment, housing and education, so that collaboratively we can respond to the multiple needs of families. Often we serve as catalysts for coalition building so that we can work to break down systemic barriers that impede access to services. Coalitions also enable agencies to share resources to enhance overall range and quality of service delivery. Like many organizations, Harlem Dowling faces the ever present challenge that arises when program models that produce positive outcomes for youth and families need to be sustained after their funding dries up. Two Harlem Dowling programs in particular had outstanding outcomes, but are no longer funded. The Parent Peer Advocacy Program, a citywide standard, trained birth parents to be mentors and advocates for other parents whose children were in a foster care program. Another Harlem Dowling model program, Adoption Option, funded by the Casey Foundation and the Administration for Children’s Services, resulted in 18 adoptions of youth ages 14 and older within the last year. Four of the teens resided in Harlem Dowling’s Therapeutic Foster Boarding Home program. Today these teens, who struggle with severe emotional and mental health issues, have stable homes and nurturing parents to care for them. Programming Consistent with Emerging Community Needs Harlem Dowling remains firm in its commitment to develop programming that is consistent with the needs of our communities. Strong linkages, advocacy, and innovative programming are critical to ensuring that our social workers and staff can respond to emerging needs, even as funding streams are exhausted. Moreover, our 169-year legacy dictates that we continue to be “part of the solution”.
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