by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Oct 20, 2014 | Press Releases
North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center hosted a reception on October 8 to celebrate the Campaign for the Next Generation and the rededication of the Lucille S. and Martin E. Kantor Bereavement & Trauma Center.
The Guidance Center completed the first stage of the Campaign by reaching the goal of $2.5 million. A second stage of the Campaign will begin immediately. The Campaign was led by board members, Jo-Ellen Hazan and Andrea Leeds.
Seven of the Past Presidents of the organization were on hand to celebrate the rededication of the Bereavement & Trauma Center named in honor of Lucille S. and Martin E. Kantor:
Joan Saltzman (president in 1965), Dorothy Greene (president in 1973), Jane Schwartz (president in 1979), Lucille Kantor (president in 1983), Sandy Garfunkel (president in 1997), and Jo-Ellen Hazan (president in 2005).
The occasion was celebrated with several local government leaders: Nassau County Legislator Judith Jacobs, New York State Assemblymen Chuck Lavine and Michael Montesano, and Town of North Hempstead Council Members Anna Kaplan and Peter Zuckerman.
North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center is the pre-eminent children’s mental health agency on Long Island. The Guidance Center is dedicated to strengthening the emotional well-being of children and families, and leads the way in diagnosis, treatment, prevention, training, parent education, and advocacy.
The Guidance Center helps families to raise healthy children and works with kids (ages 0-24) who are troubled, in trouble, or causing trouble and parents who need help in these stressful times. Difficulties range from depression and anxiety, developmental delays and school failure, from substance abuse to family crises stemming from illness, death, trauma, and divorce. We offer outpatient mental health counseling and teen drug abuse and prevention services.
Our highly-qualified staff consists of teams of caring psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, drug & alcohol counselors, mental health counselors, and family advocates, with expertise in working with children.
To learn more about the Guidance Center, visit our website: www.northshorechildguidance.org.
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Aug 21, 2014 | In The Media
Reading Ruben Navarrette Jr.’s essay, “The boundaries of immigrant identity” [Opinion, Aug. 17], brings to mind the emotional impact, on young people, of the never-ending stream of events with racial and ethnic overtones — for example, war, terrorism, bias crimes and racially charged jury trials.
One can only hope, as a new school year approaches, that along with a focus on standardized testing, educators find time to encourage discussion about ethnic identity, prejudice and intergroup relations. Opportunities for healthy exchanges of ideas and opinions about controversial subjects in a safe environment enables young people to test their beliefs and attitudes, to practice listening to others’ views, to respectfully express differences, and to find common ground.
National research affirms that feeling connected to school is a critical variable for students’ success. Teens who feel connected are less likely to engage in such behaviors as self-harming, violence, early sexual activity, eating disorders and suicide. Recognizing and building on the strengths and assets of children and youths and promoting social and emotional learning are essential to optimizing connectedness.
Andrew Malekoff, Long Beach
Editor’s note: The writer is the executive director of the nonprofit North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights.
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Aug 18, 2014 | In The Media
Guidelines is the bi-annual newsletter of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center.
Click here for Guidelines
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Aug 13, 2014 | In The Media
Robin Williams’ suicide has become a prelude to a brief and intense opening in our collective consciousness about the torment of depression and addiction. As this moment in time dissipates, and it will, please know that these are the issues that North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center addresses each and every day, year-round. The number of emergency calls to the Guidance Center, many involving depression, addiction and suicidal intent of young people, have reached 40% of all those who seek our services. Through our triage and emergency services we respond rapidly to these calls, embrace families through their most excruciating of times and hold their hands as we seek the way to the other side of their torment.
What better way to put Williams’ death into some perspective than to share an excerpt from a brilliant essay written by fellow comedian Russell Brand. He said of Williams:
“. . . Robin Williams could have tapped anyone in the western world on the shoulder and told them he felt down and they would have told him not to worry, that he was great, that they loved him. He must have known that. He must have known his wife and kids loved him, that his mates all thought he was great, that millions of strangers the world over held him in their hearts, a hilarious stranger that we could rely on to anarchically interrupt, the all-encompassing sadness of the world. Today Robin Williams is part of the sad narrative that we used to turn to him to disrupt. What platitudes then can we fling along with the listless, insufficient wreaths at the stillness that was once so animated and wired, the silence where the laughter was? That fame and accolades are no defense against mental illness and addiction? That we live in a world that has become so negligent of human values that our brightest lights are extinguishing themselves? That we must be more vigilant, more aware, more grateful, more mindful? That we can’t tarnish this tiny slice of awareness that we share on this sphere amidst the infinite blackness with conflict and hate? That we must reach inward and outward to the light that is inside all of us? That all around us people are suffering behind masks less interesting than the one Robin Williams wore? Do you have time to tune in to Fox News, to cement your angry views to calcify the certain misery? What I might do is watch Mrs. Doubtfire or Dead Poets Society or Good Will Hunting and I might be nice to people, mindful today how fragile we all are, how delicate we are, even when fizzing with divine madness that seems like it will never expire.”
If you or your neighbors need our help, please know that North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center is just a phone call away – 516-626-1971.
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Jul 21, 2014 | In The Media
NEWSDAY – July 21, 2014 by ANDREW MALEKOFF
New York State has launched a three-year plan it says will transform the public mental health system. It intends to shift emphasis from costly long-term inpatient treatment to a community-based network of “regional centers of excellence.” The fact is that only children from families with Medicaid insurance fit into the plan, which hardly suggests excellence.
Here are the facts: 75 percent of serious mental illness occurs before age 24, and 50 percent before age 14. Yet, only 1 out of 5 children with emotional disturbances receives treatment from a mental health specialist.
In the past 25 years, the mental health system has undergone many changes. In New York, it consisted primarily of outpatient clinics, community hospitals, state hospitals and residential treatment facilities. It now includes additional services originally funded with dollars saved from the 1990s reduction in state hospital beds. The largest of these programs are Medicaid-driven.
Middle-class parents find that there are major gaps in our system. For example, at North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center government funding has not increased in more than 30 years. Yet, almost 65 percent of the children it serves do not have Medicaid. Increasing referrals are coming from clinics that no longer accept private insurance due to substandard rates of reimbursement. It is only through fundraising that community-based agencies can meet the demand.
The onset of managed care resulted in hospitals discharging kids earlier, often before they were sufficiently stabilized. Outpatient mental health clinics then have to provide adequate care to these often high-risk children and youths, but with highly inadequate rates of financial support from insurance companies and government.
Despite a growing demand for community-based mental health care, some outpatient clinics in Nassau County have closed, or have been taken over by corporate entities with no community roots, or have been transformed into fee-for-service operations with little or no capacity for dealing with crisis situations.
Further, some insurance companies expected to demonstrate “network adequacy” and “parity” are not delivering. Network adequacy refers to a health plan’s ability to deliver the benefits for health care services. Parity refers to acknowledging and treating mental health conditions and substance-use disorders the same as all physical pathologies. For example, the state has settled cases against Emblem Health and Cigna for wrongly denying behavioral health care coverage.
Nevertheless, more and more families find insurers do not have adequate behavioral health care networks. When it comes to seeking mental health care, finding help is difficult.
We continue to treat illnesses above the neck differently from those below the neck. Children with mental health problems, and their families, often suffer in silence, while those with physical problems evoke the sympathy, support and comfort of others.
Community mental health organizations that provide care for children are diminishing. Long Island Consultation Center in West Hempstead and Roosevelt Counseling and Resource Center, which operated since 1958, closed in 2012. Also, community acute-care hospitals, due to insurance limitations, are often unable to keep kids long enough to stabilize them. If the state is to truly create regional centers of excellence, it must not ignore the need for community-based care for the children of middle-class families on Long Island.
Malekoff is executive director of the nonprofit North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights.
Additional Information: View Website Link
