Younger students are developmentally behind, educators say, and they’re blaming the pandemic

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Aug 21, 2024 | In The Media, Newsday

By Craig Schneider, Published in Newsday, August 20, 2024

Roosevelt kindergarten teacher Margarita Acevedo said she’ll be starting the new school year with excitement, anticipation — and concern.

The teacher said that since children returned from the pandemic in fall 2021, some have lacked basic abilities, including how to handle pencils and crayons, as well as social skills such as getting along with others, taking turns and listening to one another.

“I feel like I’m starting off the year needing to do urgent interventions,” said Acevedo, who teaches at Ulysses Byas Elementary School.

She is hardly alone in such worries. Long Island educators and child experts say some of the youngest students — who were babies, toddlers and in prekindergarten when COVID reached the United States in 2019 — are struggling with relating to other students, throwing tantrums in class and not wanting to go to school.

WHAT TO KNOW

• Some of Long Island’s youngest public school students — who were babies, toddlers and in prekindergarten during the COVID pandemic — are struggling with relating to other students, throwing tantrums in class and not wanting to go to school.
• These students, now in kindergarten through third grade, missed important social interactions with their peers and others during the year or more of lockdowns and remote learning.
• Island educators say they are optimistic the children can catch up, given the school-based interventions and kids’ natural resiliency.

“We’re seeing an increase in these children with social deficits — navigating a social setting, navigating conflict and sharing things,” said Antonio Santana, superintendent of the South Country school district in Suffolk County. “More young kids need counseling. … It’s enough that it’s notice.”

The pandemic impacted students across all ages, setting many back academically and developmentally. Many were largely left at home to their own devices without much supervision or time with friends. Now, educators are seeing the effects it had on younger children.

These students, now in kindergarten through third grade, missed important social interactions with peers during the year or more of lockdowns, educators say. They lost out on structured learning when day care centers and preschool programs shut down in March 2020, educators and local child therapists said.

“We have noticed that many students entering kindergarten are not at the developmental and academic level we would typically expect,” said Shawn Wightman, superintendent of the Roosevelt school system. “Issues such as difficulties in fine motor skills, limited verbal communication, and challenges in emotional regulation have become more pronounced.”

Nakia Wolfe, a math intervention instructor in the Amityville district, taught grades 3-5 after the pandemic. He said he saw the difference as soon as the children came into class.

“Especially in terms of stamina, their ability to focus,” Wolfe said. “There were more behavior issues, more fighting.”

Helping kids readjust academically was difficult enough when many students returned to classes full time in 2021, he said. But dealing with the added social and emotional difficulties “felt like you were climbing up a steep hill and now were pushing a boulder.”

Island educators say they’re addressing the challenges. Children’s mental health already had become a major concern before the pandemic, and COVID added to those worries. Educators have been using millions in federal aid to hire more school counselors and implement more interventions.

South Country added a counselor at the elementary level in the 2023-24 school year and is considering adding another for its youngest students, Santana said.

“We’re continuing our focus on character education, so we actually do look out for one another,” he said.

More younger children need counseling, said Antonio Santana, superintendent of the South Country school district. Credit: Alejandra Villa Loarca

Roosevelt spent about $200,000 to add a speech specialist and an occupational therapist during the pandemic to address the developmental delays in these students, Wightman said.

The district also has hired three additional social workers, at a cost of about $495,000, since the pandemic to ensure every building has social workers and counselors, he said.

Roosevelt also hired three reading specialists and three math specialists during the pandemic, at a cost of $625,000, to work with the students, he said.

In addition, Roosevelt’s after-school and summer tutoring programs have helped to close academic gaps, Wightman said, adding that these programs cost a total of about $1.2 million. Those costs cover a range of initiatives, including those that started in the summer of 2021 to target young learners with foundational literacy and math tutoring, he said.

The superintendent said assessments indicate a 14% increase in reading fluency among K-3 students since 2021.

In Port Jefferson, school officials said that at the elementary level, speech teachers and counselors are providing “push-in” services in which they come into a class to provide lessons in social skills and language skills, said Jodi Cahill, district director of special education.

“Many teachers are doing a social-emotional check-in at the start of a class, asking students, ‘Feel OK today?’ ” she said. “It’s become ingrained in a lot of our teachers.”

COVID money ending this school year

Worries persist, however.

COVID money is drying up this coming academic year. That and other budget cuts have forced some schools to cut back and even lay off some counselors and social workers, said Stacy Pellettieri, clinical director of Long Island Counseling, which has offices in East Meadow and Melville.

“Some schools don’t have the resources, and they’re overwhelmed,” said Pellettieri, who works with about 30 Island districts. “This is the worst possible time to get rid of school social workers.”

Wightman said Roosevelt is keenly aware of the financial challenges that will arise when COVID money runs dry. He said the district is pursuing additional grants and other funding to sustain the additional positions.

“However, if we are unable to secure the necessary funding, we will be faced with difficult decisions that could involve reductions in services and/or programs, leading to potential budget cuts and staffing reductions,” he said.

The majority of Island districts, including Roosevelt, begin school Sept. 3.

Over the past year, Amityville has let go of a half-dozen social workers, leaving the district with about five, Wolfe said. The Sachem district also has laid off social workers in that period.

Following the pandemic, Riverhead added several social workers, psychologists and guidance counselors, interim Superintendent Cheryl Pedisich said. This past school year, due to budget constraints, the district reduced one psychologist, one social worker, and 0.4 guidance counselor, Pedisich said.

Pellettieri said she is seeing roughly a 30% to 40% increase in young students with emotional problems coming in for help. She said some teachers are reacting to these children acting out with punishments that don’t get to the heart of the problem.

“It’s really important not to shame them. … It’s almost like punishing a disability,” Pellettieri said.

Stacy Pellettieri, clinical director of Long Island Counseling, said she is seeing more young students with emotional problems coming in for help. Credit: Rick Kopstein

Teachers and parents need to help the child feel safe in school and catch up on the skills they need, she said. The child may need some counseling or to come to class in shorter periods until they become comfortable with the school setting.

Cahill said the Port Jefferson district is using “trauma-informed” responses to young students acting out, rather than just simple discipline.

“We’re looking at how do we work with a student, and understand what they’re going through, rather than just punishment,” she said.

Before the pandemic, it was not uncommon to see some nervous kids on the first day of school clinging to their parents outside. But now, for some kids, that separation anxiety has grown into refusing to go to school at all, Pellettieri said.

“Certain stages of development require experiences. … The pandemic interrupted those experiences and interactions,” Pellettieri said.

Playing with other kids teaches them to take turns, share and resolve conflicts, she said.

“Both parents had to work from home, and day cares and preschools were all closed, leaving parents no choice but to use the television or iPads to keep the kids busy,” she said.

Much depends on how parents themselves handled the pandemic, said Susan Cohen, clinical director of the Right From the Start program at the North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center in Manhasset. Even the youngest of children pick up on their parents’ stress, she said.

“The anxiety trickles down. They may not know about the pandemic, but they see that the anxiety is amped up,” Cohen said. At the same time, she said, some children are simply more prone to anxiety regardless of their parents’ behavior.

The stakes are high in helping these children, she said.

“It’s in second and third grade when learning disabilities often show up. That’s when children go from learning how to read to reading to know other subjects,” Cohen said. “If they’re not succeeding, they can fall behind. Their self-esteem takes a hit.”

That can lead to more absenteeism and resistance to even go to school, she said.

“They don’t want to be put in an environment where they’re not succeeding,” she said.

1.3M behind in reading, 1.7M in math

The issue stretches well beyond Long Island.

While studies show older students have shown encouraging signs of recovery in math and English, younger students who were not in a formal school setting when the pandemic hit have not fared as well, and some are falling further behind, according to a 2024 report by Curriculum Associates, a Massachusetts company that provides math and reading tests for students.

If applied nationally, the report suggests that 1.3 million second-graders are behind in reading, and 1.7 million are behind in math.

Addressing students in K-3, the report concluded, “We found these students are performing behind pre-pandemic levels, with limited signs of recovery.”

The report notes that the pandemic’s impact on older children has been studied extensively, but little research has focused on the youngest children.

“I think this data, based on millions of students across the nation, is a call to action across the education community,” said Kristen Huff, the company’s vice president of assessment and research, noting it could take years for these young learners to rebound.

However schools respond to this trend, it’s critical that they involve parents, educators and therapists.

In Roosevelt, school officials have made a point of working more closely with parents, Wightman said. The district launched family engagement programs in the fall of 2022, at a cost of $80,000, that include training sessions on positive parenting techniques and tools for managing stress, he said.

“Despite the challenges, we remain optimistic about our students’ ability to catch up,” he said. “Young children possess remarkable resilience and adaptability. . . . Many of our students are demonstrating significant improvements in literacy and numeracy skills, and we are witnessing enhanced social interactions.”

Acevedo, the Roosevelt kindergarten teacher, said she’s heading into the school year with more hope than worry. She’s been focusing on positive reinforcement with the kids.

“When I see a child crawling around on the floor, I look at the child who’s behaving and say, ‘I love the way you’re sitting in your seat,’ ” she said. “The child on the floor sees the praise, and they’re going to want that praise.”

TIPS FOR PARENTS

Susan Cohen, clinical director of the Right From the Start program at North Shore Child & Family Guidance, offers these tips to parents for helping children with emotional problems:

1. Be open to listening to the child.
2. Help the child express their feelings.
3. Try not to project your own anxiety onto the child.
4. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
5. The child needs to understand there are consequences for their actions, but also work on understanding what’s behind the behavior and work on better ways to handle it.
6. Always try to communicate with the child’s school.

Click to read the article, Younger students are developmentally behind, educators say, and they’re blaming the pandemic – Newsday

Mental health among nation’s teens takes upward turn, but challenges remain, study says

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Aug 21, 2024 | In The Media, Newsday

By Bart Jones, Published in Newsday, August 11, 2024

The mental health of teenagers improved somewhat as the COVID-19 pandemic eased, a new federal study says, though experts on Long Island said it remains a major problem, fueled in part by addiction to cellphones and social media.

The number of adolescents reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness dropped slightly between 2021 and 2023, from 42% to 40%, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released last week. For girls, the percentage dropped from 57% to 53%, while the number of girls who seriously considered suicide fell from 30% to 27%.

Mental health experts on Long Island said that while those numbers may be cause for limited optimism, they underscored that depression, anxiety and other issues remain widespread among teenagers.

“Even though there are some improvements in some of the mental health markers among youth, it is important to note how dramatic the continued mental health crisis is,” said Dr. Victor Fornari, the vice chair of child and adolescent psychiatry for Northwell Health.

He noted that four out of every 10 teenagers reported continuous sadness or hopelessness in 2023, meaning they felt so despondent for at least two weeks that they stopped doing their usual activities. About 20% seriously considered suicide, 16% came up with a suicide plan, and 9% attempted suicide, according to the report.

And while the number of teens reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness fell to 40% in 2023, a decade earlier it was 30%.

Dr. Adria Gerber, a licensed clinical psychologist at Stony Brook Medicine, said that “although there has been some improvement … the numbers are daunting.”

The report did not include figures on suicides among teenagers, but according to the CDC, suicide is now the second-leading cause of death after unintentional injury among people ages 10 to 34 in the United States.

Guarded optimism about new numbers

CDC officials said they saw reasons for hope with the latest report.

“One of our main priorities at [the] CDC is improving Americans’ mental health,” Dr. Debra Houry, the CDC’s chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science, said in a statement. The report shows “improvements to a number of metrics that measure young people’s mental well-being — progress we can build on. However, this work is far from complete.”

Among minority teenagers, the report found some improvement also.

The number of Hispanics who felt persistently sad or hopeless fell from 46% to 42%. Hispanic students who seriously considered attempting suicide dropped from 22% to 18%, while those who made a suicide plan fell from 19% to 16%.

Among Black students, the amount who attempted suicide fell from 14% to 10%, while those injured in a suicide attempt fell from 4% to 2%.

For LGBT+ students, the study found troubling trends: In 2023, nearly three in 10 were bullied at school, and two in 10 attempted suicide.

Some local experts attributed the small improvements to the country emerging from the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and returning to some normalcy. The CDC study was based on data from the 2021 and 2023 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The pandemic erupted in the United States in March 2020.

“Some of it might be coming out on the other side of the pandemic,” Fornari said. “We know that the COVID pandemic demonstrated a dramatic increase in mental health concerns among youth” as they had to stay home for months and engage in remote learning.

Christopher Coluccio, of Blue Point, whose 14-year-old son, also named Christopher, died by suicide in 2021, agreed.

“I have a concern that, as much as it’s a good number, that some of it is just falling off from how people were in COVID and that we’re just getting back to the real numbers,” said Coluccio, who now runs a foundation aimed at combating suicide.

Others said the improvements might be due to more people seeking mental health services as the stigma surrounding the issue slowly dissipates.

“The one good thing about COVID is that we really laser-focused on people’s mental health, because we saw it deteriorating so quickly,” said Jeffrey Friedman, CEO of the nonprofit CN Guidance & Counseling Services in Hicksville.

“We’re seeing more people access services, and when more people access services and enter treatment, we do see a decrease in people experiencing sadness or hopelessness and an increase in their overall mental health,” he said.

His agency has seen a 20% increase in young people receiving mental health assistance since 2022, he said.

Gerber, who works at the Outpatient Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department of Stony Brook University Hospital, said that clinic was overwhelmed with requests for help during the early years of the pandemic, with a 200% increase between 2020 and 2022. Social isolation due to the pandemic was causing widespread depression, anxiety and other issues, she said.

“We were getting this huge increase in call volume that we weren’t able to manage,” she said.

Demand for service is still high, she said, but has dropped to a more manageable level.

Access to mental health counseling has improved partly because of another consequence of the pandemic — “telehealth,” or counseling sessions held over Zoom or other programs. Now teenagers don’t have to rely on their parents to drive them to a therapist’s office, she said.

Not all local experts think the mental health situation of teenagers has improved.

“Rates of depression and anxiety are pervasive, particularly among Hispanic girls,” said Kathy Rivera, executive director and CEO of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center in Nassau County. Her agency has “not seen a reduction in the overall need for our vital children’s mental health programs.”

Claudia Boyle, CEO of the Hispanic Counseling Center in Hempstead and Bay Shore, said that while the overall picture for Hispanics nationwide may have improved, “That’s not the case … in Nassau and in Suffolk. I don’t feel that it’s going down.”

Her agency is receiving a growing number of calls for help, with self-harm, hopelessness, thoughts of suicide and other problems common. Even this summer — a season when requests typically drop — the number of calls has remained steady.

“The kids have very few coping skills,” she said. “It’s just a different world.”

Social media and mental health

Many experts attribute some of the ongoing mental health problems to the emergence over the last decade of ubiquitous cellphones and social media.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy in 2023 issued an extraordinary public warning that social media poses a threat to the mental health of young people. In June, he called for warning labels on the platforms, like those mandated on cigarette boxes. Adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms, he said.

Cellphones, said Northwell’s Fornari, are central to the mental health crisis “because we are holding a handheld computer that has access to the internet and social media. Youth are targeted and bullied on social media in ways that we can’t even imagine. It’s not just being called names in the cafeteria or in the hallway. It really can be quite toxic and quite hurtful.”

Rivera agreed, and said many teens are even turning to the internet for inappropriate mental health assistance.

“The dangers of social media have only intensified over time,” she said. “Many youths, particularly teens, are turning to online platforms for self-diagnosis and treatment or use unregulated mental health apps to fill their need for social connectedness. While these may offer temporary relief, they fail to address the underlying issues, which may exacerbate at a later time.”

Still, some experts have hope that the improvement in the numbers cited by the CDC will continue. They say the growing number of famous people speaking out about their mental health struggles can help end the stigma around the topic.

Simone Biles, considered the greatest gymnast of all time, has spoken openly of her mental health struggles — and how therapy helped her. After withdrawing from five event finals at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, she came back to this summer’s games in Paris — and won three gold medals and one silver.

“She’s phenomenal,” Gerber said. “It’s just unbelievable to see the turnaround and to see her performance. I think she brought to the stage just this understanding that she’s human. She’s shown that if you admit what is going on, there is a community out there to help you. They can help you become your best self.”

Link to article, Mental health among nation’s teens takes upward turn, but challenges remain, study says – Newsday

Pregnancy, postpartum can be key times for mental health challenges

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Dec 3, 2023 | In The Media, Newsday

By Tiffany Cusaac-Smith, Published in Newsday, October 21, 2023

After giving birth to her son in March, Justine Hofsiss lay in the fetal position on a couch at her Franklin Square home unable to function.

Ringing in her ears, heart palpitations, sweating, shaking — those were among the symptoms she shared with her best friend, a nurse, who tried to provide remedies until realizing the salve might be mental health treatment.

“It was a very scary, very overwhelming time in my life, where I felt like I had no control of my body whatsoever,” said the mother of two who had already eschewed driving because of her emotions.

With a referral from the friend, Hofsiss in April turned to the North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, crying in an intake call but finally hearing a voice to help make sense of her feelings after a traumatic birth and pregnancy.

“I hung up the phone and just cried because I’m like, ‘OK, this isn’t going to be forever. I’m going to be OK. I’m gonna get help,’” she said.

The North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center’s maternal health and wellness program is among a handful of places on Long Island working to treat pregnant people and those who have recently given birth for mental health issues such as anxiety or perinatal depression, which is common but can impact a woman’s ability to function — and even be life-threatening.

Roughly one in eight women in the United States said they experienced symptoms of postpartum depression since the birth of their babies, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mental health conditions are the leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths, the CDC said, citing data from 2017 to 2019. That figure includes suicides and overdoses related to substance use.

In New York, mental health issues made up 15% of pregnancy-related deaths in 2018, or the third-leading cause, the state Department of Health said.

The overall number of women in the state who asked for help for depression after giving birth has steadily increased from 2017 to 2020, moving from 7.7% to 11.3%, the Department of Health said.

Meanwhile, the number of women who said a health care provider had asked them about depression symptoms at a postpartum visit moved from 76.1% in 2016 to 82.4% in 2020, the DOH said.

Childbearing is often perceived as a joyous moment, but it is also a moment of immense physical and emotional change that can leave people in anguish, experts say.

“The expectation is this should be such a wonderful point in your life,” said Dr. Sue Cohen, clinical psychologist and a clinical director at the center.

She later added: “Everyone, maybe their parents say to them, ‘Oh, you should feel so grateful you have a healthy child,’ but they’re not feeling it.”

Barriers to getting mental health care

And while in the throes of mental health ailments, many women also face barriers to getting care, including the stigma of such illness and long waits to see providers, said Dr. Brittain Mahaffey, a licensed clinical psychologist and director of the Dialectical Behavior Therapy at Stony Brook Medicine.

In addition, some psychiatrists will not prescribe medication to people who are pregnant or breastfeeding out of fear of harming the child. Other times, women will forgo their prescriptions while pregnant.

The North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center maternal program seeks to be a bridge for women seeking care, taking referrals from OB/GYNs, pediatricians and word-of-mouth.

They then do a screening call to ensure the women don’t need to be taken to a hospital. Within a week of that call, the parent is seen.

“We treat it like an emergency because these moms are at risk, and the babies could be at risk,” said Cohen, later noting: “We need to make sure everyone’s safe.”

Cohen said many of the program’s clients have had a traumatic birthing experience. A depressive or anxious history is sometimes the case.

The patients go into individual therapy or with a partner. A staff psychiatrist works to provide care for women who are pregnant or have just given birth. Parents can bring their children if they come in for visits, as evidenced by the toys and children’s artwork in the offices.

The sessions usually take place over a year but can last longer.

“Some women just need a little support to get through this period and you know, are grateful that they’ve gotten this, and they can go back to their level of functioning,” Cohen said.

Anxiety after difficult delivery

While pregnant with her son, Hofsiss was hospitalized multiple times because her blood pressure spiked. During delivery, the baby’s heart rate dipped, and she was given oxygen.

After the birth, she stayed in the hospital for a week — away from her daughter, 5, and unable to adjust to everyday life.

“I had a full-blown anxiety attack because I was afraid that my blood pressure was not going to get better. It was constantly going to be high. I was never going to go home. We have this new baby now, we need to get adjusted. And my anxiety just got bigger and bigger.”

She reached out to the North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, where she was diagnosed with postpartum depression and anxiety.

There, she met a therapist who gave her strategies to promote her care and mindfulness. One of the tools that she holds close is the idea of kintsugi. The Japanese technique mends broken pieces of pottery but still shows the seams, demonstrating both beauty, imperfections and endurance.

“It’s a different version of what you were, but it’s going to be a better version. And it’s OK that it’s different than what you were used to,” said Hofsiss, who is also on medication.

Mahaffey said the stress that mothers experience before they become a parent is one of the most important predictors of depression and anxiety.

Young parents may have more stress because of financial difficulties and mothers who have had a traumatic pregnancy could be also more prone to anxiety.

“I want people to know that mental health problems don’t just magically start in the postpartum; it usually starts during pregnancy and then worsens into the postpartum,” she said.

Depression deepens during pregnancy

After struggling to get pregnant, Dhipinder Walia said she felt “embarrassed” when depression crept back up while she was pregnant.

“I always just sort of felt like something was wrong with me because it is something I was asking for. So why, why couldn’t I just figure it out?”

Walia, 35, of Lynbrook, eventually told her OB/GYN that she was depressed, only for her to be given providers who had a long waiting list.

Meanwhile, she said, her feelings of depression were stronger and deeper than when she was a teen and in her 20s.

“Whereas before I just felt like I was unable to, like, find joy in things and like, I just needed help and getting there,” she said. But this time, “it was like, physical and mental pain.”

She got mental health care only after her child was born, after she mentioned her feelings to the child’s pediatrician, who called a social worker and put her in contact with the program.

Once in therapy, Walia said she learned how not to lean into distorted thoughts or how to set herself up for a good cry when she was feeling weepy.

By 18 months into therapy, she had better structures in place, aiding her overall health and giving her a clearer sense of her purpose.

“My purpose is to, you know, be a good mom and to support folks who need support,” she said. “But, I also feel like I’ve gained a lot of confidence and … understanding — all these abilities that I didn’t ever think I could have.”

Newsday, “Rising mental health issues among teen girls,” By Bart Jones, February 14, 2023

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Feb 19, 2023 | In The Media, Newsday

Nearly 3 in 5 teenage girls felt persistent sadness in 2021, while 1 in 3 seriously considered attempting suicide, according to a new CDC report that experts said mirrored trends on Long Island.

The survey of 17,000 teenagers across the country by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the feelings of sadness among girls was double that of boys.

The CDC conducts the survey every two years, and said rates of mental health problems among young people have gone up with every report since 2011.

Experts on Long Island attributed that to various factors including the pandemic, but some focused on the rise of the smartphone and the constant access it gives children to social media.

Dr. Victor Fornari, the vice chair of child and adolescent psychiatry for Northwell Health, said the declining mental health of teenagers and younger children parallels the widespread use of smartphones.

“We really do see an association timewise with the smartphone in every teenager’s hand in the past decade and the dramatic increase in this degree of depression and suicidal ideation amongst youth,” he told Newsday.

At Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, where he practices, the number of adolescents coming to the emergency room for suicidal thoughts or attempts has soared in the past four decades, he said.

In 1982 the figure was 250. By 2010, it increased to 3,000. By 2022, it was about 8,000, he said.

Experts also cited other causes of the deteriorating mental health of young people, including pandemic-era isolation, the pressures of re-entry to “normal” life at school, growing drug use, fear of mass shootings, and a lack of therapists and mental health counselors.

Kathleen Ethier, director of CDC’s adolescent and school health division, said that in 30 years of collecting similar data, “we’ve never seen this kind of devastating, consistent findings. There’s no question young people are telling us they are in crisis. The data really call on us to act.”

Jeffrey Friedman, CEO of the nonprofit Central Nassau Guidance & Counseling Services in Hicksville, said his agency has seen an increase in young people and especially girls coming to them for help during the pandemic.

He said that by the time they arrive, many are “very close to the end of their rope” because it is so difficult for their parents to find mental health counselors.

“It’s really hard to navigate the mental health system,” he said. “So when you need to find a child psychiatrist on Long Island, it’s almost impossible. There are very few, and many don’t take insurance. And so parents and families feel alone, that there’s no help out there.”

Monique Barragan, a licensed mental health counselor at the North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center in Nassau County, said the pandemic increased isolation and anxiety among young people. But transitioning back to regular classes has also created mental health challenges.

“It’s almost like a shock,” she said. When they were under lockdown at home, “they didn’t really have to think about other people judging them.”

The nonprofit Family Service League, which works mainly in Suffolk County, said it responded to seven suicides of young people and young adults in 2022, and to four already this year.

The number of school districts requesting anti-suicide programs increased from three in 2021 to six in 2022, said Kathy Rosenthal, the group’s senior vice president.

Fornari, of Northwell, said society needs to find a way to prevent smartphones from undermining children’s mental health.

“How many times an hour do they check their texts, their emails, and WhatsApp, their social media sites?” he said.

“In conversations with kids you’ll hear about all of the ways in which they feel slighted, insulted, angry, attacked by being excluded from an event, or betrayed by a friend,” he said. “It goes on all day long to the point in which they are so distracted that they can’t even focus on anything else.”

“There are clearly many advantages and many benefits from social media but there is also a dark side,” he said, “and I think the mental health crisis in youths is part of the dark side.”

WHAT TO KNOW

• Nearly 3 in 5 teenage girlsfelt persistent sadness in 2021, while 1 in 3 seriously considered attempting suicide, a new CDC survey says.
• Experts said that mirrored trendson Long Island, where they say finding mental health counselors is extremely difficult.

• One expert blamed smartphones and social media for much of the distress young people are feeling.

Sensory-friendly classes on Long Island for kids on the autism spectrum

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Jan 30, 2023 | In The Media, Newsday

By Beth Whitehouse, Newsday.com, January 25, 2023

From obstacle courses to cooking classes to horseback riding, several Long Island groups offer extracurricular activities that help children on the autism spectrum feel more at ease while they’re having fun.

The activities may provide higher staff ratios or have directions and processes broken down into parts to help out participants, organizers say, and the age range goes from toddlers all the way into the teen years.

Here are some places that offer fun recreational options geared toward kids with special needs:

The center’s weekly Friday Night Social Scene from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. is a very popular offering, during which participants do arts and crafts, play video games and make friends, says Lonnell Harrington, assistant director. For more information and pricing, which varies, call 516-355-9400 or visit familycenterforautism.com.

The center also offers a six-week series of clay classes during which students make cups, bowls, decorations and more, with advanced students about to use pottery wheels; cost is $250 plus a $40 fee for the clay. A Clay Partners class at 11:30 a.m. Saturdays allows ages 5 and older to collaborate on projects with a parent for the same fee that includes both participants. For more information, call 631-470-9620 or visit spiritofhuntington.com.

“We Turn No One Away: Nonprofits Offer Therapy,” January 9, 2023 Cover Story, featuring Kathy Rivera

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Jan 6, 2023 | In The Media, Newsday

Newsday, By Bart Jones

Nonprofits on Long Island say they are offering affordable mental health therapy for teens and young children — without long waiting lists — as the region faces a shortage of psychologists serving those age groups.

Many families in Nassau and Suffolk counties have grown frustrated trying to find private therapists, who often don’t take insurance and have waiting lists months long — or no available appointments at all.

The nonprofits are encouraging parents to contact them at a time when depression, anxiety and suicide rates among young people are rising due to a confluence of factors including isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and heavy social media use.

“Right now, we have capacity to take on cases,” said Kathy Rivera, executive director and CEO of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, with offices in Manhasset, Roslyn Heights and Westbury.

“We turn no one away for any inability to pay,” she said. “We are grassroots, and we are committed to equity in mental health regardless of what your ZIP code is, what your bank account looks like. Everyone deserves to have access to care.”

The agency has 50 therapists on staff, along with other workers and a department that deals solely with insurance companies, she said.

Nonprofits such as North Shore said they can help fill a gap as families struggle to find therapists for their children. Some parents are taking their kids to private therapist appointments during school hours — the only time slots available — while others are getting saddled with thousands of dollars in bills because their therapists don’t take insurance, experts said.

Meanwhile, the number of people between the ages of 12 and 17 nationwide who experienced at least one major depressive episode increased by 306,000, or 1.4%, year-over-year, according to an October 2021 report from the Mental Health America nonprofit. At the same time, nearly 61% of New York youths with major depressive episodes did not receive treatment, the report said.

Finding trusted therapists

Adrienne LoPresti, executive director of YES Community Counseling Center in Massapequa, said her nonprofit also generally has capacity to provide therapists for young people in a timely manner.

“There is a comprehensive system of care for youth and families, which includes YES, that provides affordable services regardless of income and health insurance status,” LoPresti said. “Unfortunately, many community members are unaware of these networks and resources.”

LoPresti cautioned that families should make sure they connect with reputable agencies, since there is a proliferation of people offering “telehealth” appointments who are not always qualified.

“It’s important to find access to a vetted mental health provider you trust in your community,” she said. Local schools, ones that have their own psychologists and social workers, can help identify reputable therapists, she added.

While telehealth services offer some advantages, “it is often the financial gains rather than quality care” that is the priority, she said. In-person counseling is generally more effective than on-screen, she added.

Besides YES and North Shore, agencies families can contact to help find a community-based therapist include the Nassau County Helpline, at 516-227-TALK (or 8255), and the Long Island Crisis Center‘s 24/7 hotline, at 516-679-1111, LoPresti and Rivera said.

Central Nassau Guidance and Counseling Services based in Hicksville also has therapists available, and works with families on a sliding scale if they have financial difficulties, CEO Jeffrey Friedman said.

Adapting to diversity

Some agencies are seeking to adapt to Long Island’s increasingly diverse population.

North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center has intake staff who speak fluent Spanish and other staff members who can translate Creole and Arabic, Rivera said.

Another agency, the Hispanic Counseling Center, with offices in Hempstead and Bay Shore, focuses on Latino children, youth and adults. Its Mental Health Clinic offers bilingual and bicultural mental health counseling, and refuses services to no one, CEO Claudia Boyle said.

In response to the growing demand, the group is boosting its efforts to hire more therapists, she said.

In Suffolk County, the nonprofit Rise Life Services in Riverhead opened a mental health clinic in November 2021 that includes treatment for children after it saw a growing demand for therapists for that age group, said Tracey Anderson, operations director of clinical services and behavioral health.

Their anticipation of “a high demand for mental health services for youth was certainly on point,” she said. “The demand is even higher than we expected. “

The nonprofit Family Service League, which works throughout Suffolk County, has seen the need for more therapists first hand and through its DASH hotline helps families connect with them, said Kathy Rosenthal, senior vice president at the group.

“We are finding youth with higher rates of anxiety, depression and other mental health challenges, and, tragically, an increase in young people attempting and dying by suicide, she said.

The number of teenage suicides her group responded to in Suffolk tripled between 2020 and 2021, going from four to 12, she said.

Families can contact FSL’s hotline DASH at 631-952-3333. They can also contact the Suffolk County Response Crisis Center at 631-751-7500 for help in finding a therapist.

Groups representing private therapists said families should not give up on seeking their help. The Suffolk County Psychological Association‘s website allows families to plug in their hometowns, insurance and other information to try to match them with a therapist, said Ann Eckardt Erlanger, past president of the group. The Nassau County Psychological Association has a similar website mechanism.

Rivera also said families should keep trying to get their children help, despite the obstacles.

“There is hope and an opportunity for healing,” she said.

WHAT TO KNOW

• Families in Nassau and Suffolk say they have become frustrated while seeking private therapists who often won’t take insurance and have wait-lists or no available appointments.
• Long Island nonprofits say they offer affordable mental health therapy for teens and young children — without long wait-lists.

The nonprofits are encouraging parents to contact them at a time when depression, anxiety and suicide rates among young people have climbed because of the pandemic and heavy social media use.

Nassau Nonprofit to Use $3.9 million grant to Target Maternal Mortality, mentions Birth Justice Warriors, our collaboration with Hofstra, June 30. 2022

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Jul 5, 2022 | In The Media, Newsday

A Nassau County nonprofit has received a $3.9 million state grant to help underserved women at high risk of maternal mortality in eight Nassau County communities, officials said Thursday.

The five-year grant awarded to the Long Island Federally Qualified Health Center will fund programming for women in Elmont, Freeport, Glen Cove, Hempstead, Long Beach, Roosevelt, Uniondale and Westbury — areas with significant populations of at-risk women.

Statistics show African-American women are five times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, said David Nemiroff, president of Long Island FQHC, one of 26 organizations across the state to receive the Perinatal and Infant Community Health Collaborative grant from the state Health Department.

Nemiroff said Long Island FQHC, which has 10 facilities to help low-income, underinsured and uninsured residents, will partner with community groups such as the Women’s Diversity Network and other health care providers in an effort to reach women, educate them about healthy lifestyles and provide better access to health care.

The assistance will continue for at least two years after the woman has given birth.

“We’re excited to finally be able to focus and make a dent in these health care disparities,” Nemiroff said at a news conference with community leaders outside the LI FQHC facility in Roosevelt.

Dr. Tarika James, chief medical officer at Long Island FQHC, said many of the conditions women deal with are treatable and preventable if detected early, such as hemorrhaging in the days after delivery.

“We have to educate providers and clinicians to look for those signs more early in the pregnancy and we have to educate patients about what to look for and what to observe about themselves in order to get the help they need in a more timely way,” James said.

In 2018, 51.2% of women who died of pregnancy-related causes in New York were Black, non-Hispanic, even though only 14.3% of births statewide were to Black women, according to state Health Department data.

Experts have said some of the reasons for this disparity include discrimination, health care providers not paying attention to the concerns of their patients, lack of follow-up care and inadequate patient education about potential complications.

As part of the new program in Nassau County, community health workers will be hired and conduct outreach to find women and assist them with a variety of services, such as access to healthy foods, educating them about the importance of avoiding tobacco, alcohol and drugs, and following up on medical appointments.

James said women also will learn how to advocate for themselves and speak up to doctors if they feel something is wrong.

Martine Hackett, director of public health programs at Hofstra University and co-founder of Birth Justice Warriors, which works to reduce maternal and infant mortality numbers, said some people are surprised to learn Nassau County, viewed as a wealthy suburb, has a serious problem with maternal and infant mortality.

But she pointed out the county is separated and segregated into areas with a lot of resources and residents in good health and others with few resources and residents in poor health.

“Where we live has a strong influence on our health,” Hackett said. “And this is especially true for the most vulnerable in any society — pregnant women and infants.”

The Suffolk County Health Department also received a Perinatal and Infant Community Health Collaboratives grant, to continue services in Babylon and Islip townships and expand into Brookhaven and Riverhead townships this summer.

Photo: David Nemiroff, president of Long Island FQHC, is joined by area health care leaders in Roosevelt on Thursday. Nemiroff said the nonprofit will partner with community groups and other health care providers in an effort to reach women, educate them about healthy lifestyles and provide better access to health care. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca

Jennifer Rush Joins Guidance Center

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Jun 23, 2022 | In The Media, Newsday

Newsday, June 20, 2022

Jennifer Rush of Huntington has been hired as associate director of the North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights. She was vice president of residential and clinical services at Berkshire County Arc in Pittsfield, MA.

How to talk to kids about the Texas school shooting

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | May 26, 2022 | In The Media, Newsday

Newsday, By Beth Whitehouse, May 26, 2022, featuring Kathy Rivera, Executive Director/CEO, North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center

Click here to watch a powerful video posted with this article.

“Am I safe?” 

That may be the first reaction of school-aged children when they hear about Tuesday’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Texas that left 21 people dead. “Most children want to know, ‘Am I going to be OK? Are you going to be OK? Is this going to happen to me?’,” said Mary Pulido, executive director of the Manhattan-based New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. 

Long Island social workers and psychologists offered advice for parents: 

See what your child knows. Ask if they’ve heard any news that they want to talk about, and if so, what they heard, advised Kathleen Rivera, executive director and CEO of North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center, with offices in Roslyn, Manhasset and Westbury. “Let the child use their own words to tell their own story. Sometimes you need to know what you’re working with before you can take proper action,” she said. Correct misinformation and talk to them in ways appropriate for their age. 

If you think they haven’t heard about the shooting, you may wonder whether you should bring it up. While you know your child better than anyone, experts generally suggest introducing the topic. With cellphones and TV ubiquitous, chances  are if they don’t hear about it from you, they will hear about it from someone else when you aren’t there to help them manage their reaction, Rivera said. You don’t need to be detailed, experts said. Kids understand the concept of good and evil.

Emphasize that many people work every day to keep them safe. Tell them, “Days, months, and years have gone by when you are OK and adults have protected you,” said Don Sinkfield, vice president of The New Hope Mental Health Counseling Services in Valley Stream. Outline in concrete terms that it’s your job to protect them, and that many people — from the President of the United States to their local police department to their individual teachers — are protecting them as well, experts said. “You can’t promise them something that is false — ‘it will never happen again,’” Rivera said. But remind them that their school has plans for how to keep them safe; you could review those plans, but don’t contradict the school’s protocol, experts said. 

Don’t have the conversation at night. A lot of parents connect with their children at bedtime. That may not the best time to broach the topic, said Laurie Zelinger, a child psychologist in private practice in Cedarhurst who spent 19 years as an elementary school psychologist in the Oceanside School District. “If you have a child who is particularly anxious or sensitive, have the conversation early in the day,” she advised. Give them a chance to absorb the information and ask questions. 

Keep children away from constant news. “Please turn off the TV, stop the social media apps,” Rivera said. “Stay present with your child.” 

Be conscious of your own reaction and how you are expressing it. “It can have a trickle-down effect,” Rivera said. This shooting happened on the heels of the mass shooting in a supermarket in Buffalo, so adults are feeling vulnerable as well. “We didn’t have a chance to recalibrate,” she said. 

If your child is afraid to go to school and really needs a day to stay home for a day, that may be OK. “Right after a tragic event, kids can have acute stress. You want to be able to help kids resurrect a feeling of safety, and they will feel safer at home,” said Zelinger, who is also the author of the children’s book, “Please Explain Anxiety to Me” (Loving Healing Press, 2014). 

This is not a “one and done” conversation. “As a parent, you have to do a temperature check on your child,” Rivera said. They might be OK today, but not tomorrow. Parents should look to community resources, she said. “We are a phone call away.”

Gillibrand Seeks Funds to Reduce Deaths among Pregnant Women

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Jan 27, 2022 | In The Media, Newsday

By Robert Brodsky, Newsday, January 24, 2022

Black women in Nassau County and across the country are facing a “mortality crisis” that has left women of color three times more likely to die during labor or in the first year after giving birth compared to white women, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said at a news conference Monday in Roosevelt.

Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) wrote this week to the leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations Committee, calling for the fiscal 2022 funding bills to include $7 million for evidence-based training programs to reduce bias in maternal health and for $25 million to establish a program that delivers integrated health care services to pregnant women and new mothers.

“This is a crisis and it is a result of long-standing inequities in our health care system that we must address,” Gillibrand said outside of the Roosevelt Family Health Center. “We can’t accept the idea that black families and children losing their mothers is business as usual. We have to do more to support black women.”

The United States, experts said Monday, has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the developed world — approximately 700 pregnancy-related deaths each year — with the numbers driven largely by high death rates among Black mothers. CDC studies have found that two-thirds of those deaths were preventable.

Meanwhile, the overall maternal mortality rate in New York State is 10% higher than the national average, with the risks growing even higher during the COVID-19 pandemic, health officials said.

In Nassau, the highest maternal mortality rate is in Roosevelt, followed by Hempstead and Westbury, said Dr. Nellie Taylor Walthrust, co-founder of the Westbury-based Birth Justice Warriors, a group that advocates for pregnant women.

Experts Monday attributed the disparity among Black mothers to a lack of affordable housing, proper health care and nutrition, along with discrepancies in medical care for women of color.

“Whether you analyze the research or listen to the experiences of black women, you’ll find a strong pattern of unequal treatment by health care providers during pregnancy and labor,” said Dr. Martine Hackett, the other co-founder of Birth Justice Warriors.

Gillibrand’s letter called for the allocation of $25 million to establish a Pregnancy Medical Home Demonstration Program that would deliver health care services to pregnant women and new mothers. She also supports adding $7 million for Implicit Bias Training Grants for medical and nursing school students to reduce bias and errors in judgment or behavior.

Dr. Tarika James, chief medical officer of the Long Island Federally Qualified Health Center, said comprehensive improvements are needed in the care of Black mothers, including standardization of care, improved patient education, and addressing “social barriers that prevent patients from getting much-needed services in a timely way. All of those things … can make a big difference in our community.”

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.

These Long Islanders go over-the-top on indoor holiday décor, and admit it, Published in Newsday, December 20, 2021

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Dec 20, 2021 | In The Media, Newsday

Decorating for the holidays is a national pastime and a drive around Long Island this time of year is a brilliantly lit eyeful. But what goes on outside homes — the lights, the sleighs, the reindeer — sometimes pales compared to holiday decorating inside. It’s individualistic, often meaningful and occasionally over-the-top.

Why do people do it? “I think a lot of holiday decorating is born of nostalgia … because it recalls memories of childhood and family,” says Hadley Keller, the digital director of House Beautiful. “Plus,” she adds, “for the past few years, I think we’ve all been driven to find more joy in our surroundings at home, leading to an upped ante with holiday decorating — a phenomenon we dubbed ‘Christmaximalism.’ “

Walter Dworkin, 77, of Westbury, is a major holiday decorator himself and an expert on vintage holiday collectibles who has written a book on the subject. “Tradition is a key word,” he says. People do it, “for the enjoyment of passing on traditions from one holiday to the next. It’s an escape from our busy, hectic lives and an inviting way to share nice memories and happiness.”

Speaking of inviting and sharing, three Long Islanders welcomed us into their homes to see their takes on going a-l-l out for the holiday and told us their stories. Fa-la-la-la indeed.

The staircase at the home of Jo-Ellen and Ira Hazan is always sweeping and dramatic, but come the Christmas holiday, well, it’s nuts … as in nutcrackers. For about two decades, Jo-Ellen has been collecting nutcrackers of every variety, and size: Statues of Liberty, “Wizard of Oz” characters, a ballerina, golfers, a fisherman and even a Hanukkah nutcracker, (both for her husband — an avid fisherman who is Jewish). She says, “When I see a nutcracker, I say to myself, ‘No I don’t need one more,’ but then I get it. Nutcrackers are like a magnet for me.”

The set up: Each season, Jo-Ellen carefully unwraps her nutcrackers which have been packed away in the attic. “I’m like ‘oh yeah’ I remember this one’ and I’m glad to see them. It brings back the feeling of when my kids were little,” she says of her two adult sons. “I place them and then I sit at the bottom and look up the stairs and move them around a lot. I try to mix them up by size — a big one first, a small one next.”

Why she does it: “I’m obsessed with holiday decorating, but it’s a good obsession,” she says. When people visit, “it puts a smile on their face. They say, “Oh my God, how long has it taken you to collect these? I feel accomplished, happy and joyful.” And she explains, “My mother always said to keep tradition and have stopgaps otherwise life can just roll one day to the next. I’ve taken that to the nth level.”

Helene Fortunoff, retail jewelry trailblazer, dies at 88

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Dec 7, 2021 | In The Media, Newsday

Newsday, By Tory N. Parrish, November 9, 2021

Helene Fortunoff believed in the value of hard work, at any age.

In the 1950s, the retail trailblazer established the fine jewelry division in what was then a small group of Brooklyn housewares and home furnishings stores called Fortunoff, which later became a Long Island institution.

The former president of Fortunoff Fine Jewelry and Silverware Inc., Helene Fortunoff felt it was important to expose her six children to what it took to run a growing family business.

“I took my children to work as soon as they were able to crawl on the floor,” Newsday quoted Helene Fortunoff saying in March 2010, when she was a panelist at a Hofstra University roundtable discussion on running family-owned companies.

“They worked in storerooms. At about age 12 they would be out on the floor. We put a suit” on one of the Fortunoff sons, she said. “People would come up and say, ‘There are child labor laws.’ I guess you could say I dragged them, but it was a worthwhile experience.”

Helene Fortunoff died Monday in Miami Beach of a respiratory illness, her family said. She was 88 years old.

She was a retail pioneer, at a time when women serving in business leadership positions was rare, said her daughter Esther Fortunoff-Greene, of Old Westbury.

“She was a groundbreaking woman who shared her knowledge with other women to help make all women able to succeed in the working world. And, of course, she did say you could have it all because she had six children and she worked full time,” Fortunoff-Greene said.

Fortunoff was born Helene Finke on March 2, 1933, to Samuel and Tillie Finke in Paterson, New Jersey. She had one sibling, a brother named Leon.

A high-achieving student, she graduated from New York University cum laude with a degree in business administration in the early 1950s, Fortunoff-Greene said.

In 1953, she married Alan Fortunoff, whose parents, Max and Clara Fortunoff, had started the Fortunoff business in Brooklyn in 1922.

Helene Fortunoff established the jewelry division at Fortunoff in 1957.

In 1964, the company moved its eight Brooklyn stores to Long Island, consolidating them into a 150,000-square-foot superstore with three levels in Westbury, which became the flagship of the business.

Alan and Helene and their children, which then numbered four, moved from Brooklyn to Old Westbury in 1965.

By 2003, there were six Fortunoff stores in New York and New Jersey, including a store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan that was the flagship of the jewelry division.

Fortunoff’s annual revenues were more than $400 million, according to a Newsday article published in June 2002.

The high-end jewelry business flourished, and had its own manufacturing division, Fortunoff-Greene said.

Jewelry sales eventually accounted for about one-third of Fortunoff’s revenues, she said. Much of that was due to Helene Fortunoff’s foresight in sourcing unique products globally, she said.

“She traveled the whole world and brought back great products for the stores. … She took our team to Thailand, India, Hong Kong. [We went to] Italy twice a year,” she said.

With Helene Fortunoff at the helm of the jewelry division, Fortunoff was “recognized by National Jeweler in 2003 as the 24th-largest jewelry retailer in the United States with just five jewelry departments,” the Fortunoff family said in a statement.

Helene Fortunoff was also a self-taught jewelry designer.

Newsday featured her in a Jan. 3, 1970, article about her design process.

“The attractive 37-year-old wife of Alan Fortunoff, head of the stores of that name, never had any formal design training until she tried a hit-or-miss approach to creating jewelry about 12 years ago,” Newsday reported.

Helene Fortunoff believed “in natural obsolescence like the garment industry,” she said in the article.

“A woman buys a $200 coat and gives it up in one or two years. Why not the same with jewelry?” she said.

After Alan Fortunoff died in 2000, Helene Fortunoff succeeded him as president.

She retired after the business was sold in 2005.

Fred Reffsin became acquainted with the Fortunoffs during the 1990s, when he was president of high-end watch company TAG Heuer.

“They were big customers of the brand,” said Reffsin, 64, of Norwood, New Jersey.

Helene Fortunoff’s impact on the retail industry through her position with Fortunoff, an iconic company, was significant, he said.

“She was a real, authentic, tough business person, but fair. Always was warm and welcoming … smart, very smart, and a great merchant,” said Reffsin, who also worked for the Fortunoff company as a watch consultant after the business was sold.

Helene Fortunoff married Robert Grossman in 2006, and they moved to Miami Beach about 10 years ago, Fortunoff-Greene said.

The Fortunoff business filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008 and 2009, the year it closed.

Helene Fortunoff’s volunteer work included serving as a past trustee of the North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center and a past chairman of Hofstra University’s board of trustees.

She is survived by her husband, Robert. In addition to Fortunoff-Greene, Helene Fortunoff’s surviving children are Andrea Fortunoff, Rhonda Hampton, Ruth Fortunoff-Cooper and David Fortunoff. Her son Louis Fortunoff died in 2012.

She is also survived by nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Her brother Leon Finke predeceased her.

The funeral will be at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday at Temple Sinai of Roslyn, 425 Roslyn Rd. (vaccination and mask required). To livestream, go to venue.streamspot.com/2f55cc72.

Donations in Helene Fortunoff’s memory can be made to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University, the North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center or the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research.

Parenting, the Second Time Around

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Sep 9, 2021 | In The Media, Newsday

By Beth Whitehouse, Newsday, September 7, 2021

When COVID-19 took the life of 36-year-old Krystal Colman in April, Christina Colman, 60, of Coram, inherited a precious gift: her grandson Kacen, 2. 

Colman was hospitalized with the coronavirus at the same time as her daughter, both in Stony Brook Hospital just after Easter. Krystal previously had pleurisy, an inflammation of the membranes that surround the lungs. When the elder Colman heard a “Code Blue” — which signifies a hospital emergency in a certain location — she said to her nurse, “That’s my daughter’s room.” Says Colman: “I wasn’t there when she took her last breath. I was beyond shocked.” 

Colman, who works as an office assistant at Stony Brook Hospital, immediately went to court to get custody of her grandson; she plans to raise him with the help of another of her daughters, Jasmine, 31, an elementary school nurse. 

“I’m not going to tell anyone that every day is peachy and sunny when you’re trying to raise a 2½-year-old,” Colman says. It’s especially challenging when mourning the loss of a daughter at the same time the child is mourning the loss of his single-parent mother. “It’s overwhelming.”

But through word-of-mouth, Colman heard of a grandparent caregivers’ support group run by the Cornell Cooperative Extension in Riverhead. The group offers PASTA classes — it stands for Parenting the Second Time Around. The eight-week curriculum offers support to those being thrust into the new role and discusses child development, discipline and family law legal issues.

“It’s been a while since a lot of the grandparents have had 2-year-olds, 8-year-olds, teenagers in their home,” says Dinah Torres Castro, a bilingual family well-being educator for Cornell Cooperative Extension. They need to feel they can do this, she says. 

HELP THROUGH PANDEMIC

Cornell also collaborates with the Amityville-based not-for-profit Hope For Youth to offer family engagement activities through a kinship caregiver grant. In August, the group resumed in-person events such as movies and field trips; a family picnic was held Aug. 30 at the Suffolk County Farm, just before Grandparents’ Day on Sept. 12. “Those things are very important when you’re going through these kinds of situations,” Colman says.Sign up for Newsday’s Family newsletter

The North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center also runs a free program called C-GRASP, Caregiver-Grandparent Respite and SupportProgram, for grandparents who are caregivers due to abandonment, substance abuse issues, incarceration or mental illness, says Nellie Taylor-Walthrust, director of the North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center’s Leed Place in Westbury. C-GRASP is run in conjunction with the Town of North Hempstead for caregiver residents 60 or older, she says.

It’s important for grandparents to see they’re not alone in what they’re doing for their families, and to be alerted to resources available to them. Grandparent caregivers often feel isolated, Taylor-Walthrust says.

“They have given up their retirement to take care of children. They don’t have a lot of social opportunities themselves.” The pandemic made their isolation and challenges worse, says Taylor-Walthrust.

“Many of them are not technologically savvy,” she says, needing guidance, for instance, with helping children to log on to their Chromebooks during at home schooling. They also initially had challenges getting food, and C-GRASP volunteers helped get supplies delivered to their doorsteps.

A CHANCE TO TALK

The hardest part for grandparent caregivers can often be financial, Torres Castro says. Extra mouths to feed, school supplies, doctors’ appointments — “it can be very costly,” Torres Castro says.

Melinda Stephenson, 45, an insurance verifier, and her husband, Dexter, 50, a care coordinator, of Hempstead are currently caring for five of their grandchildren, ages 8, 7, 5, 3, and 1 — after already raising seven children of their own. “Financially, it’s sometimes a struggle to take care of them, but we do it,” she says. She’s been able to talk to Torres Castro about such issues, she says.

The opportunity to talk to others is also valuable for Colman. “That’s not my greatest strength, talking about my daughter. When I start talking about my daughter, I turn into mush,” Colman says. Her daughter and grandson had already lived with her, so she feels Krystal’s absence even more strongly. Her grandson will often want to spend time in his mother’s former bedroom, Colman says.

Colman has done some virtual events and looked forward to meeting the other families in person with Kacen at the Aug. 30 family picnic, which she expects to help them move forward with healing.

“People need people. We’ll be able to hug each other, and if we can’t, we can at least hold hands. We’ll be able to laugh together, cry together, share together.”

By Beth Whitehousebeth.whitehouse@newsday.com @BethWhitehouse1 

Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.

Top Photo Credit: Christina Colman, 60, of Coram, sits on the porch with her grandson Kacen, 2. Credit: Raychel Brightman

New exec director at mental health nonprofit applies her life experience to help others, Newsday, July 6, 2021

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Jul 6, 2021 | In The Media, Newsday

Kathy Rivera became the first woman of color to take the helm of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center when she assumed the executive director role last month at the Roslyn Heights-based nonprofit.

The organization provides mental health services for Nassau County’s children and young adults. Newsday recently spoke with Rivera, 47, of Fresh Meadows, about the pandemic’s impact on youth mental health and how her upbringing as a first-generation Asian American shaped her work. 

Q. How did you get interested in the field of social work?

There has been a history of mental health issues in my immediate family. I have … witnessed domestic violence, food insecurity and housing instability. So from a very young age developmentally, I was exposed to that. So it was not surprising that as I got older, in recognizing what my own needs were growing up and experiencing all of this, I knew I wanted to find a profession where I could help communities that struggled with issues that I struggled myself with.

Q. How did your upbringing as a Thai American with immigrant parents shape your understanding of what you do?

In the Asian culture in general, mental health is often frowned upon. … What I experienced going back to my childhood [shaped] what I recognize [in] a lot of our communities that we serve. Parents sometimes don’t seek help because they fear it is a reflection of them as being a bad parent. It can feel embarrassing to ask for help, and so they don’t. . . . So [it’s] realizing that how not getting the right … help at the right time can really cause lifelong damaging changes and fracture a family.

Q. Has your organization seen a rise in cases during the pandemic?

We have gotten more calls for our triage unit from local hospitals and urgent-care centers where children are at risk of an inpatient hospitalization. … We’ve been finding more and more calls coming in and actually even for some younger kids. At one of our sites, we even are treating a 4-year-old [for mental health]. … We’ve definitely been getting calls from parents as well, really worrying about the social impact of the pandemic, the isolation, just the overall mental well-being of their own child and asking for their child to engage in therapy. So we’ve been seeing it from families, too, more so than in the past.

Q. How do people go about getting services from your organization?

Anyone who needs our services can just be a phone call away. … Our payer mix is a combination between self-pay, commercial insurance to Medicaid. And for those who have a struggle where the service may not be covered but yet they need it, we find a way to raise funds and cover those costs.

Q. Anything else you want to add?

One thing that I want to give the pandemic credit for is the exposure of the mental health crisis in our children. Again, it did not cause it, it exposed it, and it enhanced it. And I think that it helps naturalize it — being able to talk about it without the stigma.

Please click to watch the video

North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center

• The nonprofit was founded in 1953 and served 2,590 clients (from birth to age 24) in 2020. 
• Rivera said her organization has seen a roughly 45% increase in intakes from pre-pandemic times to now.
• The agency serves Nassau County but at times accepts residents in Queens, Brooklyn and Suffolk counties through its maternal depression program, Rivera said.

By Dandan Zoudandan.zou@newsday.com

These 7 Sons Share the Same Career Paths as Their Fathers, By Beth Whitehouse, Newsday, June 16, 2021

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Jun 18, 2021 | In The Media, Newsday

Rich Shlofmitz was the first in his family to become a doctor — and his son Evan is the second. At 6 a.m. on any given weekday, the duo will touch base at St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn before they start their day treating heart patients there. 

“I came from the projects in East New York,” says the senior Shlofmitz, 66, who is chairman of the cardiology department at St. Francis. “I knew I wanted to do something important with my life.”

Rich’s dedication to medicine made an impression on Evan, 38, when he was growing up in Manhasset. “It was an easy choice for me to follow in his footsteps,” says Evan, also a cardiologist and director of intravascular imaging at St. Francis.

Here are the stories of seven Long Island sons who are in the same line of work as their fathers — and may even work side-by-side with them.

Years ago, when Jonathan Cooper, 71, a social worker from West Hempstead, ran a support group for children with special needs at the North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, he would bring several of his five kids to interact with the group socially. So, it was no surprise to him when three of his sons followed him into the counseling field.

Aaron Weintraub, 42, his son from his first marriage, works with social skills groups and at a summer camp for children on the autism spectrum in Connecticut. Jacob Cooper, 31, of Massapequa, is a clinical social worker in private practice, and Raphie Cooper, 26, lives at home and is in his second year of social work school.

“It was always about service,” Jacob says. “That was really ingrained in us.” Jacob says his father always encouraged them to value a population that other people might look away from or stigmatize.

Aaron’s job is the closest match to his father’s. “As adults, I’ve had the chance to talk with him about how we both plan our curriculum and help each other with ideas and inspiration to try new things,” Aaron says.

For Father’s Day, the elder Cooper plans to fly to Chicago, where he grew up, with Jacob to show his son the area. “I want him to see that. Those were formative years for me,” Johnathan says.

“Whenever I had off from school, I’d shadow my dad around the hospital and got to see the impact he made on patients,” Evan says of his childhood. “He set the bar high with his innovation and work ethic and his unique way of practicing medicine.” Now that Evan is a peer, he will bounce ideas and approaches off his father, he says.

On the flip side, the elder Shlofmitz says his son’s involvement with clinical research got him motivated to start doing research as well. “I owe a lot to my son,” Rich says, including keeping him up on cutting-edge technology. “I’m so proud. The best part is watching his interaction with patients and staff. Everybody loves him.”

And who knows? There may be a third generation of Shlofmitz cardiologists — Evan and his wife, Lisa, who live in Port Washington, are expecting a baby girl in August.

Peter Lombardo’s late wife was the catalyst for Mike Lombardo joining in his father’s electrical business. The elder Lombardo, 65, launched his eponymous electrician company in Deer Park in the 1980s; his wife was his business partner, handling payroll and accounts.

Their son, now 31 and living in Farmingville, initially wasn’t interested in becoming an electrician. But when his mother got cancer, she showed Mike the ropes so he could take over her position. She died in 2015.

If that event hadn’t transpired, Mike says he wouldn’t have earned his own electrician’s license. “Not a shot. That’s not to say I don’t like it, but there’s just no way. Nope. I would probably have done something in banking or finance.”

The pandemic has been a boon to the company’s business. “Everybody was home, so they were doing home improvements,” Peter says. Many people put in pools that needed wiring, he says.

At some point, Peter hopes Mike will take over the business completely. “I look forward to the day when he says, ‘Dad, I got this,’ and I’ll go on my merry way.”

It was Luis Rosa’s wife who spurred her husband and son working together as well. When Amazon opened a facility in Shirley, she suggested that all three of them apply for jobs, and the trio was hired on the overnight shift Sundays through Wednesdays.

Sometimes they are unloading, other times they are scanning and stowing packages. They drive to work together, and they eat together on breaks.

“Working with my son has been one of the best things I’ve ever experienced. I’ve seen him grow up as a kid, and then to see him working with me, it’s such a great experience,” says Luis, 42. William, 19, says he looks up to his dad: “I always see him working really hard, and I want to work just as hard as he does.”

The toughest part for the duo was adjusting to the new work schedule. “My parents go to bed at 5 p.m.,” says William, who on the other hand, likes to sleep as soon as he gets home from work. The family lives in Mastic Beach, along with William’s two siblings and his sister’s two children. “Sometimes they’re making noise in the house,” he says.

At one point in the pandemic, the whole family had COVID-19. “I just can’t wait until all this is over,” William says. “It’s been really hard on us. Luckily, we didn’t get it that bad.”

When Lee Gaddy, now 64, of Wheatley Heights, joined the New York City Police Force in 1981 and was assigned as a housing officer, it was “the best thing that could have happened to me,” he says. His son, Sean, 36, echoed his dad’s words when talking about his own experience as a Nassau County police officer, now assigned to the department’s Police Athletic League program working on community sports programs to engage kids.

For Father’s Day this year, the family plans to barbecue before Luis, William and Margarita, 40, head to the job.

“Growing up, obviously watching my dad go off to work, it was always interesting to hear his stories over the dinner table,” Sean says. “My dad, he was big on telling me to take the Civil Service test. I thank him to this day. I never would have done it without him putting it in front of me. It’s the best thing I ever did.”

This isn’t the first time the younger Gaddy has mirrored his father, says Lee, who retired after 22 years in law enforcement and now works for the Copiague School District as a security person. “Sean is well-liked, like me. He played high school sports, just like me. I’m happy because I think he has that type of attitude I had coming on: Do the right thing.” 

Sean recently had his first child, and he plans to spend his first Father’s Day in part by wearing matching shirts with his newborn during a breakfast visit to Lee’s home. He also hopes to follow in his father’s footsteps as a parent: “I hope to be what he is to me with my son,” Sean says.

Teen creates 175 art kits for children to learn about Picasso, Impressionism, Newsday, May 6, 2021

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | May 6, 2021 | In The Media, Newsday

“It’s a fun way to relax,” said Gwen, of Locust Valley. “It’s almost like a therapy, to sit down and do some artwork.”

Gwen wanted children on Long Island to have the same opportunity to unwind and express themselves creatively. They just needed the supplies to do it.

So once again heading to Michael’s, Gwen bought watercolor paints, paintbrushes, colorful pencils, markers, paper and yarn. She’s assembled 175 art kits and donated them to the North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights, a not-for-profit children’s mental health agency.

Gwen made four different versions of the kit, distributing the supplies where they each fit. The “watercolor and Impressionism kit” contained a lesson plan on painter Claude Monet and a brief history of Impressionism. The “mixed medium kit” had a picture of an owl to be colored in and an inspirational quote. 

The “collage kit” included facts on artist Pablo Picasso. The most recent kit she’s made contained a canvas, acrylic paint, a paint brush, painter’s tape and a Sharpie pen, so that kids can create geometric shapes.

“I remember coloring as a kid was so much fun to do in art class,” said Gwen. Now, she prefers collaging and painting.

“I wanted to merge both what I liked to do when I was younger, and what I like to do now, and make it good for the younger age group,” she said.

When she first started putting the kits together, Gwen envisioned giving them to children. When she was done, she realized that may not be her only audience.

“Really, any age could do it,” she said. “Any age could have fun with this.”

The North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center serves clients from birth to age 24, according to its website. It provides services that address mental health for children and their families throughout Nassau County, said Lauren McGowan, the director of development. That includes programs on suicide prevention, depression and anxiety, specifically geared toward youth.

Dr. Sue Cohen, the director of early childhood and psychological services, is excited for her clients in particular to use the art kits. Her young clients don’t always have the words to communicate their emotions — that’s where art comes in, Cohen said. Anger can be expressed by scribbling, and fear by drawing what the monster under the bed looks like.

“We use art as a therapeutic tool,” she said. “It’s a great icebreaker to begin to establish rapport with children.”

Cohen added that the art kits arrived at a perfect time for the center: the clinicians had just begun to discuss a safe transition back to in-person therapy sessions and interactive programs, including details such as how to keep crayons and markers clean.

“These individual kits [Gwen] made are perfect because each kit has their own pens, markers and paints,” Cohen said. “As the kids are coming in, they can have a bag designated with their own art supplies, and they can keep them in the office for continued use or take it home.”

McGowan said she’s “delighted” that Gwen has taken initiative and was thoughtful in her approach to helping the center.

“It’ll help our clinicians to communicate better, because kids will open up as they start to feel comfortable and as they’re drawing,” she said. “Art is another modality they can have in their own toolbox, so she’s really given us a gift in that way.”

Gwen dropped off 150 art kits on April 8, and 25 more on April 29. This was a labor of love for her — as she carefully crafted each kit, she said she daydreamed of the moment that she would finally donate them and offer children the same creative outlet that’s helped her through the pandemic.

“Finally getting to hand them over was so exciting,” she said. “I’m excited to be making some more.”

She’s still brainstorming ideas for different art kit themes. McGowan said Gwen’s motivation aligns with the center’s mission to help children in need.

But Gwen’s biggest hope is that children will see that you don’t necessarily have to be a great artist to create something beautiful.

“I hope that younger kids can realize that everybody can be creative and everybody can have fun with art,” Gwen said. “It’s not such a serious thing; you can do whatever you want. It’s something anyone can do and have fun with.”

Click to watch the video interview
Gwen Jones, 17, recently put together 175 art kits and donated them to the North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights. Her hope is that children can use art as an outlet to express themselves, just like she did throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Credit: Howard Schnapp: Photo credit: Peter M. Budraitis Photography

By Rachel Weiss, Rachel Weiss joined Newsday in 2016. She writes and produces local content for newsday.com, including stories on religion and colorful characters from Long Island.

For Children, Isolation Lingers, By Andrew Malekoff, Newsday, April 2, 2021

by North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center | Apr 2, 2021 | In The Media, Newsday

As children return to classrooms and playgrounds, and maybe soon to summer camp, we must not forget that many are still feeling the effects of the social isolation they experienced when school went virtual last year. Learning is still remote for many kids, who continue to be cut off from treasured spaces that nurture positive, developing relationships, caring about others, thinking critically and avoiding negative behaviors.

Even though the physical settings might be restored, many children continue to feel an undermined sense of security. Some will be resilient and bounce back. Others will need extra support from parents and adults in their community.

Mental health workers are seeing young people in their second decade of life who are anxious and depressed. These include both kids who were struggling with their mental health before the pandemic and those who were stellar students with rich social lives who seem to have fallen off the coronavirus cliff.

The unforeseen loss of routine is especially impactful on young folks like these for whom connecting with peers is so integral to their daily life experience. Now, and since the onset of the pandemic, it’s as if the adolescent ecosystem has suddenly been deprived of oxygen and light.

For far too many young people, this is a painful time when an essential aspect of their lives has been suddenly threatened, resulting in lost connections, isolation and longing. This is a lonely time in which the grief they experience is unacknowledged and unsupported by any social ritual, a demoralizing reality that may lead to days and nights of anxiety, desperation and, for some, deep depression and dark thoughts about whether life is worth living even one more day. 

Although this may be a time to draw closer to one’s family, the notion of increasing togetherness with parents at the precise time in one’s life that a young person is striving to become more independent can create an existential crisis. Parental support should include encouraging social connection outside the family, either virtually or in safe face-to-face settings. This does not suggest pushing away one’s child, but rather empathizing with the healthy need for some separation and peer connection. Groups of peers can create the sparks necessary to ignite the warm fires of intimacy that will help see many a young person through this public health disaster.

Adults need to understand the uncertainty and shakiness that kids might be feeling. Reinforce to them that you are there for them, that we all went through a very difficult time and there will be more tough times ahead in life, but that you will always stand by their side. 

What we know is that young people who feel connected are less likely to engage in high-risk behaviors such as self-harm, violence, early sexual activity or suicidal actions. As my friend and colleague Dr. Ariel Botta, a group worker at Boston Children’s Hospital, advised: “Healthy human development and adjustment require both connection and solitude. At this point in history, there is plenty of isolation and a dire shortage of connection.”

The importance of attachment and connection carries on throughout a child’s life and impacts relationships as they move into adulthood. The support you give them is not just for now — it’s forever.

Andrew Malekoff is the executive director of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights. 

Photo Credit: Getty Images/Marko Geber