by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Mar 12, 2015 | In The Media
SOCIAL MEDIA CAN BE A HAMMER, a tool that is rigidly used, or PUTTY, a tool that is flexible. TROUBLE IS we never grew up learning how to use this tool. It’s all trial and error. And, so, there are human benefits and casualties. Let’s teach our kids how to reduce the casualties and advance the benefits. Maybe this original poem can be a start.
SOCIAL MEDIA?
Tool for good?
Tool for evil?
Tool for fun?
Tool for none?
Tool for look-at-me?
Tool for look-at-you?
Tool for humor?
Tool for ridicule?
Tool for building up?
Tool for tearing down?
Tool for giving?
Tool for taking?
Tool for connecting?
Tool for isolating?
Tool for growing?
Tool for stagnating?
Tool for hiding?
Tool for seeking?
Tool for finding?
Tool for concealing?
Tool for protecting?
Tool for attacking?
Tool for hating?
Tool for loving?
Tool for learning?
Tool for ignoring?
Tool for attacking?
Tool for protecting?
Tool for remembering?
Tool for forgetting?
Tool for listening?
Tool for filibustering?
Tool for boasting?
Tool for humbling?
Tool for challenging?
Tool for accepting?
Tool for leading?
Tool for following?
Tool for organizing?
Tool for disrupting?
Tool for forgiving?
Tool for living?
Tool for who?
Tool for you?
Tool for me?
Additional Information: View Website Link
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Mar 3, 2015 | Press Releases
North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center is hosting a brand new event this spring: a Luncheon featuring games (mahjong, bridge and canasta), vendor boutiques and a powerful, engaging keynote speaker.
The Luncheon will take place on April 23 at the Glen Head Country Club. Boutiques will open at 10 a.m.; game playing will begin at 10:45; and the luncheon and program will start at 12:30.
The keynote speaker is award-winning journalist Edie Magnus. Ms. Magnus is the Executive Producer of the PBS documentary Cry for Help, an intimate look at the efforts of two high schools to identify adolescents at risk of depression and suicide. She is currently the Executive Director of Media & Innovation at Mercy College.
Co-chairs for the event are Guidance Center board members Janice Ashley of Signature Bank, Amy Cantor and Alexis Siegel. Sponsors to date include Amy Cantor, RFC Fine, Nancy & Lew Lane, Nanci Roth and Alexis & Howard Siegel.
North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center is the pre-eminent not-for-profit children’s mental health agency on Long Island, leading the way in diagnosis, treatment, prevention, training, parent education, research and advocacy. The Guidance Center is dedicated to restoring and strengthening the emotional well-being of children (from birth – age 24) who are troubled, in trouble or causing trouble.
Our highly qualified team of caring psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, drug and alcohol counselors, mental health counselors, vocational rehabilitation counselors and family advocates work with children and their families to address issues such as depression and anxiety; developmental delays; school refusal; bullying; sexual abuse; teen pregnancy; and family crises stemming from illness, death, trauma and divorce. We offer outpatient mental health counseling and teen drug abuse and prevention services. For more than 60 years, the Guidance Center has been a place of hope and healing, providing innovative and compassionate treatment to all who enter our doors, regardless of their ability to pay.
To register for the Spring Luncheon, please visit: www.northshorechildguidance.org/events.html or call (516) 626 1971 ext. 310.
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Mar 3, 2015 | Press Releases
On February 25, the Business Advisory Council of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center hosted Winter Wind-Up, an after-hours networking event at the Revel Restaurant and Bar in Garden City. The evening of winetasting and networking attracted over 60 attendees and raised $1,700 for the Guidance Center’s Children’s Center at Nassau County Family Court. Blank Slate Media, Driven Local and Farrell Fritz, P.C. sponsored the event.
The mission of the Business Advisory Council is to increase awareness of the Guidance Center across corporate Long Island. The Council is chaired by Janice Ashley of Signature Bank and Jacqueline Bushwack of Rivkin Radler LLP.
The Children’s Center, a Guidance Center program, provides a safe and enriching environment for children ages 6 months to 12 years on-site at the Nassau County Family Court while parents are involved in court business.
North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center is the pre-eminent not-for-profit children’s mental health agency on Long Island, leading the way in diagnosis, treatment, prevention, training, parent education, research and advocacy.
The Guidance Center is dedicated to restoring and strengthening the emotional well-being of children (from birth – age 24) who are troubled, in trouble or causing trouble. Our highly qualified team of caring psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, drug and alcohol counselors, mental health counselors, vocational rehabilitation counselors and family advocates work with children and their families to address issues such as depression and anxiety; developmental delays; school refusal; bullying; sexual abuse; teen pregnancy; and family crises stemming from illness, death, trauma and divorce. We offer outpatient mental health counseling and teen drug abuse and prevention services.
For more than 60 years, the Guidance Center has been a place of hope and healing, providing innovative and compassionate treatment to all who enter our doors, regardless of their ability to pay.
To learn more about the Guidance Center, please visit www.northshorechildguidance.org or call 516 626 1971 ext. 310.
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Feb 26, 2015 | In The Media
So here’s the deal folks. Last week it was announced that Catholic Charities is giving up their Freeport mental health clinic. In January, $250 million, 81-year-old FEGS announced it was closing; before that Peninsula Counseling Center (PCC) in Valley Stream and Pederson-Krag Center (PK) in Huntington gave up their mental health clinics. (Actually it is more insidious than that. PSCH, an NYC-based $100 million operation, took over PK and PCC and then dumped their mental health clinics). Before that, South Shore Child Guidance was taken over by the Epilepsy Foundation. And before that, Family and Children’s Association let go of their mental health clinics in Roosevelt and West Hempstead. And, there is more to come.
Now, one might ask, “Well, aren’t they being picked up by other organizations?” That may be so; but these mental health clinics were tied to reputable organizations with venerable histories and committed local boards of directors. In other words, they were grounded in community-based cultures.
Culture matters when growing an organization! Change the culture and the values follow. Change the values and time-honored practices change too. Managed care becomes managed cost, and vulnerable children and their families are then shortchanged as a factory mentality prevails.
Why is this happening? Because New York State government leadership is neglectful, misguided and lacking in humane leadership. And, because they can get away with it.
The State has systematically stripped funding from well-established, community-based organizations and, in so doing, has restricted access to care to Medicaid recipients only. Meanwhile, private insurance companies pay substandard rates. Consequently, fewer and fewer providers will contract with them, leaving hundreds of thousands of middle class families in NYS with nowhere to turn for affordable, community-based outpatient mental health care for their children.
Government leaders won’t address the fact that insurers do not have adequate networks of providers because providers don’t like their substandard rates of pay. Why doesn’t the government better regulate them? Because the insurance companies’ lobbyists pay elected officials big bucks for their silence. Elected officials can apply pressure or ease pressure depending on what best suits them and their campaign treasuries.
Now, back to those that let go of the mental health clinics and those that picked up their business. The only profitable way for the latter to proceed, with few exceptions, if any, is to restrict access to care to clients with the best insurance rates (that’s Medicaid); to see clients for shorter amounts of billable time to pack more revenue into a day; to eliminate salaried employees to save expenses by eliminating fringe benefits; to not respond to time-consuming and labor-intensive crisis situations; to cut parents out of the equation; and to eliminate consistent clinical supervision and team meetings that are essential to quality of care. In other words, build a factory to maximize revenues and minimize quality care.
In the end, what you get are fewer and fewer vulnerable children who are able to access the best care and more and more services that slide from a gold standard of care to a bronze standard or worse. This is because New York State plays us for fools. Do you know what they refer to their “transformation” initiative as? CLINIC REFORM and REGIONAL CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE. They deform clinics and call it reform, and they offer mediocrity and call it excellence. Factories and propaganda.
So why are North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center and a few others still standing and providing universal access to care with diverse (including bilingual), salaried employees? Because their boards of directors won’t have it any other way. For now, that is. Whether they can continue to weather the scorched earth policy of New York State remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the public deserves to know what our government and the insurance industry are up to. What are they up to? NO GOOD.
Which kids’ lives are at stake? What kinds of issues are they facing? Depression, anxiety, abuse, neglect, trauma, domestic violence, isolation, school failure, demoralization, bias, bullying, family unrest, learning problems, posttraumatic stress, loss and grief, gang exposure, rape, incest, poverty, dislocation, suicide, homicide, obesity, eating disorders, alcohol and drug addiction, gambling, cutting and burning oneself, immigration (including unaccompanied minors), adjusting to foster care, loneliness, and more.
These are the children that a community-based mental health center sees every day. Lots of them each week, thousands each year. This is what is at stake. This is what is being neglected and eroded by New York State.
What will come of this? More tragedy for more families and, ultimately, more cost to warehouse vulnerable children and youths who will not be able to access preventive care or more intensive outpatient care early on.
How will tragedy manifest itself? Probably not horrifically, like Sandy Hook where the outcry and ocean of tears changed nothing of significance that anyone sees or feels on the ground. It will happen more insidiously and slowly, in drip, drip, drip fashion. That is, unless there is pushback.
Pushback against speed cameras and slot machines brought about change in Nassau County in the snap of the finger. But children’s mental health? Nah, nobody’s going to stand up for that. Until it is their child who is suffering and can’t get quality care. And then, too often, they fight alone. After all, STIGMA rules. And it crushes.
It is more convenient for the masses to pretend that children’s mental health problems are the result of bad upbringing or moral failing. Bad government counts on that. Everyone rallies around kids with cancer. But who rallies around kids with mental illness?
Do you?
You CAN make a difference.
TAKE ACTION AND BE A VOICE FOR VULNERABLE CHILDREN!
Here’s how to help:
- Share this with your friends and colleagues via Facebook, email and other social media
- Write to your local newspaper
- Contact your local, state and federal legislators (see below for contact information)
To find your congressperson: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
To find your senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
To find your New York State Senator in Albany: http://www.nysenate.gov/senators
To find your New York State Assembly member: http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/search/
Andrew Malekoff is executive director and CEO of the nonprofit North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights, NY
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Feb 20, 2015 | Anton Media
Anton News, Long Island; Opinion – Andrew Malekoff
February 25 – March 3, 2015
When we hear that our neighbor’s teenage son has been diagnosed with cancer, or that our colleague’s newborn has a heart defect, we shed some tears—and then we move into action. We bring meals; we offer to take their other kids to soccer games or piano lessons; we raise money so the parents can stay home from work to care for their ailing children.
But when we learn that our daughter’s best friend has been hospitalized for depression, or that a boy on our son’s basketball team has stopped going to school because of severe anxiety, we’re often at a loss as to how to respond.
Here’s a fact that may surprise you: Although more children suffer from psychiatric illness than autism, leukemia, diabetes and AIDS combined, only one of five with an emotional disturbance gets help from a mental health specialist. Moreover, 50 percent of serious mental illness occurs before the age of 14.
People with mental health problems and addictions, along with their families, often suffer in silence, while people with physical health problems evoke the sympathy and support of others. Why do we continue to treat illnesses above the neck differently than illnesses below the neck?
The sad truth is that there’s still a widespread stigma when it comes to mental health. The result? Parents who need help often wait months and even years to make that first phone call. A parent whose child is diagnosed with cancer doesn’t wait to ask for help. Waiting only happens with mental illness and addiction.
Fortunately, more than 60 years after our founding, North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center is still here to fight that stigma and provide help to children in need. Let me share a few of their stories.
We met nine-year-old Joey 14 years ago, a few weeks after his father died in the World Trade Center. We soon discovered that he was calling his dad’s cell phone number every day. As Joey explained, “I call because, what if he is still alive? I don’t want him to be all alone.”
We met seven-year-old Jeremy two years ago. He came to us holding a large flashlight in his tiny hands. He said he needed it in case the lights went out again, like they did after Hurricane Sandy, when Jeremy lost his toys, his home, his daily routine. And, as Joey before him, he lost his belief that the world is a safe place.
While we do respond to headline stories, we more often are called upon to respond to personal dramas and private disasters that are hidden in plain sight.
For example, we met six-year-old Jerome soon after he attempted to jump out a window because, as he said, “Nobody loves me.” Fifteen-year-old Celeste said the reason that she cuts her arms until they bleed is not to take her life, but to lower her blood pressure. And 14-year-old Maria told us that she lives in a house with a revolving door welcoming men who touch her.
Depression, anxiety, fear, child abuse, school refusal, bullying, isolation, drug addiction, domestic violence . . . we receive more than 100 calls a week, and increasing numbers are emergencies.
All across Long Island, mental health agencies are shuttering their doors, or they’ve been acquired by corporate entities with no roots in the community. That’s tragic, because community-based mental health organizations are as essential to the health and well-being of our children as hospitals or schools.
What can you do? First, tell your representatives that you value the mental health organization that serves your community and would like their support to ensure its future. And if you know someone whose child is suffering from a mental health issue, don’t ignore them. Make that phone call. Let them know you care.
Bio: Andrew Malekoff is the Executive Director of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, which provides comprehensive mental health services for children from birth through 24 and their families. To find out more, visit www.northshorechildguidance.org.
