by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Aug 15, 2022 | Blog
Earlier this summer, North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center was excited to announce that our Children’s Center at Nassau County Family Court had reopened after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic. During that time, almost all court business was conducted virtually, but with more and more children and families returning to in-person court visits, our Children’s Center is a much-needed community resource!
With family court matters such as divorce proceedings and custody cases often very contentious, youngsters can be traumatized if they are in the courtroom. But many parents and guardians don’t have the luxury of leaving their children home.
That’s what makes our Children’s Center at Nassau County Family Court so important. At the Children’s Center, kids from 6 weeks to 12 years old are provided with free care in a nurturing and safe early learning environment while adults are busy in court.
How can you help? We are seeking volunteers at the Children’s Center, which is located at 1200 Old Country Road in Westbury. To volunteer, we request that you are…
- 16 years of age or older
- Fully vaccinated against COVID-19
- Able to work a minimum of four hours per week
- Comfortable wearing a mask
- Willing to complete a NY State background check, including fingerprinting
- Able to lift children when necessary and have good mobility
- Friendly and nurturing
Volunteering at the Children’s Center is a great way for high schoolers (16 and up) or college students who have an interest in children and education to gain experience! And it’s also a wonderful opportunity for anyone who loves kids to give back and make a difference for the youngsters and families in our community.
To learn more about this fulfilling volunteer opportunity, contact Dr. Nellie Taylor-Walthrust at 516-997-2926, ext. 229, or email ntaylorwalthrust@northshorechildguidance.org
Benefits of Volunteering:
- It reduces the risk of depression by helping you make new friends and building a support network.
- It boosts your self-esteem and helps you develop better communication skills.
- Volunteering helps you stay active and engaged with the world, and depending on what kind of volunteering you do, it could even help you stay more physically fit, including lowering your blood pressure!
- It exposes you to new experiences, giving you insight into the world around you and all the opportunities that are out there just waiting for your energy and dedication.
- It helps reduce stress and loneliness by providing you with a feeling of purpose and connection.
- The symptoms of mental health issues such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, anxiety and other conditions have been shown to decrease when people volunteer.
- Volunteering gives you perspective, helping you realize that there are others in the world struggling with issues, just like you.
- The bottom line: Volunteering is fun!
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Aug 15, 2022 | In The Media, Long Island Business News
By: Adina Genn, LIBN
Grammy-winning jazz saxophonist Kenny G is the guest performer at the North Shore Child & Family Guidance fundraiser, which will be held Sept. 8 at 6:30 p.m. at Manhasset Bay Yacht Club in Port Washington.
Kenny G has sold 75 million albums across the world. His works including Breathless, the instrumental album released in 1992. His 19th studio album, New Standards, was released in 2021.
The evening will feature cocktails, dining, water views and auction proceeds, with all proceeds benefitting the Guidance Center, the children’s mental health nonprofit organization that has served Long Island for nearly 70 years.
“After having to postpone our in-person event for the past two years due to the pandemic, we are so excited to be welcoming back our devoted supporters for what promises to be a spectacular evening,” Kathy Rivera, executive director of the Guidance Center, said in a statement.
She added that the center “has been committed to providing essential mental health services to the children and families in our community, regardless of their ability to pay. And those services are needed more than ever during these very difficult times, when depression, anxiety and other mental health challenges are at epidemic proportions among our youth.”
The co-chairs for this year’s event are longtime Guidance Center supporters Nancy and Lew Lane and Andrea and Michael Leeds. The mistress of ceremonies will be Stacey Sager of Channel 7 Eyewitness News.
To learn more about becoming a sponsor or an underwriter or purchasing tickets, visit www.northshorechildguidance.org/sunsetsoiree.
Photo credit: Art Streiber
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Aug 15, 2022 | In The Media, Press Releases
Roslyn Heights, NY, August 12,2022 — North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center (the Guidance Center) is thrilled to announce that Grammy-winning musician Kenny G will be the guest performer at the organization’s Sunset Soirée, a fundraiser that will be held on September 8, 2022 at 6:30 p.m. at the beautiful Manhasset Bay Yacht Club in Port Washington, N.Y.
Saxophonist Kenny G recorded the best-selling instrumental album of all time in the Diamond-selling, 12-times-Platinum 1992 Breathless. His latest release, New Standards, his 19th studio album, could well be used to describe his four-decade body of work, a vision of jazz that helped launch both a musical genre and radio format. New Standards continues the musical path that has seen Kenny G sell 75 million albums around the world.
In addition to a live performance by Kenny G, the Sunset Soirée will feature elegant cocktails and dining, beautiful sunset views and fabulous silent auction prizes. All proceeds will benefit the Guidance Center, Long Island’s premiere children’s mental health nonprofit organization.
“After having to postpone our in-person event for the past two years due to the pandemic, we are so excited to be welcoming back our devoted supporters for what promises to be a spectacular evening,” said Kathy Rivera, Executive Director of the Guidance Center. “For nearly 70 years, the Guidance Center has been committed to providing essential mental health services to the children and families in our community, regardless of their ability to pay. And those services are needed more than ever during these very difficult times, when depression, anxiety and other mental health challenges are at epidemic proportions among our youth.”
The co-chairs for this year’s event are longtime Guidance Center supporters Nancy and Lew Lane and Andrea and Michael Leeds. The Mistress of Ceremonies will be Stacey Sager of Channel 7 Eyewitness News.
All proceeds will benefit the Guidance Center. To learn more about becoming a sponsor or an underwriter or purchasing tickets, please visit www.northshorechildguidance.org/sunsetsoiree, call (516) 626-1971, ext. 309 or email mespichan@northshorechildguidance.org.
Photo credit: Art Streiber
by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Aug 9, 2022 | Anton Media, Blog, In The Media
By Erika Perez-Tobon, Published in Anton Media Newspapers
One of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center’s signature programs is the Latina Girls Project, which was created in response to the alarming rates of depression, school refusal, self-harm, suicidal ideation and attempted suicides by Hispanic teen girls.
More than a decade ago, our team at the Guidance Center noticed an increasingly large number of first-generation Latinas were coming to us with severe depression, self-harming behaviors and suicidal thoughts. Many had stopped attending school, and some had been hospitalized for suicide attempts.
The research backed up what we were seeing at the time: Hispanic teenage girls were significantly more likely than their non-Hispanic peers to suffer from depression, thoughts of suicide and suicide attempts. More recent research, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, showed that 10.5% of Latina adolescents aged 10–24 years in the U.S. attempted suicide in 2016, compared to 7.3% of white female, 5.8% of Latino and 4.6% white male teens.
In response to this crisis, we formed the Latina Girls Project, an innovative program that employs individual, group and family therapy, along with monthly outings and other activities, all designed to tackle issues such as depression, low self-esteem, social anxiety, school refusal, self-harming behaviors or suicidal ideation.
Some of our clients who were born outside the U.S. have witnessed violence in their homelands, and many have experienced complex trauma since a young age. Those who were born in the U.S. are impacted by the generational trauma experienced by their parents and limitations around communicating with their parents.
Regardless of where they were born, a big part of the reason these girls are struggling is because they are pulled in conflicting directions, with their parents wanting them to adhere to the traditional values of their homeland, while the girls seek to integrate into American culture and find acceptance among their peers.
The result: Parents are often extremely overprotective; they won’t allow their daughters to venture out and participate in activities such as sleepovers, dating or trips to the mall. Even if the teens are allowed to go out with their friends, they are required to have a chaperone, such as a parent or brother. In addition, they are often relegated to gender-biased roles, required to cook, clean and take care of their siblings while their brothers are treated, as one girl said, “like princes.”
During bilingual individual, family and group therapy sessions, the girls realize that they can trust their therapists, many of whom also grew up as first-generation Latinas. The therapists teach the girls healthy strategies to deal with stress and depression and effective ways to communicate with their parents.
For their part, the parents become more compassionate about their daughters’ desire to fit in, and they also understand the need to let their teens separate in age-appropriate ways. One of our Latina clients put it this way: “My parents learned that I just wanted them to be there for me and listen. They learned that it doesn’t help to question why I feel the way I do but to accept it and support me.”
In addition to therapy, the program incorporates monthly supervised outings to places such as theaters, museums and other cultural and educational sites. These trips, made possible by the generosity of John and Janet Kornreich, expose the girls to the world in a way that would never have happened if not for this Guidance Center program. The trips serve to boost the teens’ confidence and sense of independence, and the girls also discover that there’s a great big world of opportunity out there for them, which allows them to feel hopeful about their futures. The trips also offer respite to the parents who are relieved to know that their daughters are in safe hands.
As one girl put it, “The Latina Girls Project helped my mother and I communicate and become very close, and the monthly outings showed me a world I never would have seen. I felt that I wanted to be a part of the larger world. The trips gave me the feeling that I could be truly happy in my life.”
Bio: Erika Perez-Tobon, LCSW, who is originally from Venezuela, is the bilingual Clinical Supervisor of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center’s Latina Girls Project, which is located at the agency’s Westbury location.
