New Alternatives for Children (NAC): Adoption and Kinship Support – Permanency Resource Center

Address: 825 7th Avenue, 5th Floor New York, NY 10019
Contact: Samantha Callaghan, LMSW
Phone: (646) 367-8417 (office) / (646) 531-0608 (cell)
Email: Scallaghan@nackidscan.org or AKS@nackidscan.org
Website: https://nackidscan.org/programs/the-family-permanency-center/
Brochure: Adoption and Kinship Support brochure 2024
Office Hours: 9:00AM-8:00PM

Eligibility: Serves non-parent caregivers of children with no formal legal designation, legal custody, legal guardianship, and post-adoptive families, residing in New York City (Bronx, Kings (Brooklyn), New York (Manhattan), Richmond (Staten Island), Queens counties)

The NAC Adoption and Kinship Support Program offers supportive services to adoptive and kinship families. Our program operates on a completely voluntary basis, and our services extend to the entire household. We provide assistance in both English and Spanish across all five boroughs. Currently, we have no waitlist.

What do we do?

NAC Adoption and Kinship Support Program offers families formed through adoption or guardianship, a place where they can find the support, advocacy, information, and a range of professional health and social services needed to help them create or maintain a successful and permanent home.

Our goals are to:

• prevent post-adoptive and post-guardianship dissolutions/disruptions
• provide assistance to families so that children may be cared for in their own homes with their adoptive parent(s) or legal guardian(s)
• strengthen post-adoptive and post-guardianship families

While the programs share similarities, they are specifically designed to meet the needs of children at various stages of the adoption/kinship process.

• Post Adoption Legal Network (PLAN)
• Provides pre-adoption and post-adoption services

Post Permanency Support Program (PPSP)

• Children and families who are within 90-days of exiting the NYC foster care system via adoption or kinship guardianship; and
• Children who have already been adopted or exited foster care to kinship guardianship via the NYC foster care system and their families.

Family Permanency Center (FPC)

• Adoptive Families who have finalized the adoption of their child. This includes private placement adoptions and international adoptions.
• Kinship Families who have no formal legal designation, custody or legal guardianship/KinGAP of their child.

Benefits

• Post-adoption/post-guardianship services offer valuable guidance and essential support to families.
• Connect and share experiences with fellow parents through support groups, social activities, family events, and community gatherings.
• Address common issues in adoptive/kinship families by promoting healthy family relationships.
• Services aid parents in understanding their children's behavior, enhancing their coping capabilities, and identifying appropriate strategies to meet their children's needs.
• Assist in maintaining connections with siblings and accessing support from their past.

What does the assigned social worker do?

• Case management and in-home support
• Provides comprehensive psychosocial, family-centered needs assessment, and trauma assessment screening
• Information and advocacy
• Crisis intervention: social workers engage with families to provide immediate support, help in deescalating stressful situations, and develop action/safety plan to address a range of ongoing challenging issues
• Individual and Family Counseling and psychoeducation on kinship/adoption related issues
• Submits referrals to current NAC programs and/or community providers based on family need
• Offers on-site and off-site parent workshops, trainings and monthly support groups
• Lifebook Work- an adoption storybook is a scrapbook and keepsake that illustrates a child’s journey to his or her adoptive home. It is used as a source of information as well as a way to open up the discussion of adoption with a child.
• Monthly off-site art therapy self-care group partnered with Art Therapy Outreach Center

A New York State Office of Children and Family Services Program