ADOLESCENT
SERVICES
“When we work to
include the excluded we all become whole.”
 SCO Family of Services Services is committed to ensuring that
every adolescent and young adult living in New York City
has a family to call their own. We provide educational and
family support services to help families stay together. We
offer an array of out-of-home programs to provide adolescents
with temporary respite while we help them to prepare for
reunification with their families or placement with a foster
or adoptive family. In some cases, we help young adults to
prepare for independent living or placement in long-term
supportive care with the support of their families and other
caring adults. We work diligently to help all youth strengthen
attachments to their family and community.
| “As
we prepare young people for independence and
self-sufficiency we never lose sight of the need
to build family ties that recognize and support
the value of interdependence.” |
SCO Family of Services provides programs and homes
for adolescents in need of temporary respite and, while in
our care, helps these young people to obtain the independent
living skills they will need as they approach adulthood.
At the same time we work diligently to help the youth strengthen
attachments to their family and community.
SCO Family of Services's group residences for adolescents
are located in New York City and Long Island communities
that are familiar to the young people, and close to their
families, places of worship, schools and friends. These
homes are supported by the agency's network of professionals
who are on hand to assist the teens in developing independent
living skills. Substance abuse prevention programs as
well as professional counseling for educational, medical
and mental health needs are readily available.
At the Independence Inn I in Williamsburg,
Brooklyn, homeless teenage boys find a home, guidance and
direction. Through a year long program, these young men learn
to set realistic goals and, working toward independence,
to access community-based services to achieve those goals.
At Independence Inn II, 18 homeless young women,
six of whom have babies, live and participate in a similar
program. Located in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Independence
Inn III provides shelter and support services for
eight homeless adolescent girls and their babies.
 SCO Family of Services's Bethany House Program was
founded as the agency's first program for teen mothers
and their babies. Participants in the program come to live
in residence homes and apartments with their babies as
they finish school and learn life and job skills that will
allow them to go out into the world and become self-sufficient
women who can care for their children. The Bethany House
Program includes two larger residences with each housing
11 mothers and their babies. The program also has three
smaller apartment-sized sites which provide housing for
two mothers at each apartment and their baies and there
are two Agency Operated Boarding Homes providing services
for three mothers and their babies at each location. These
smaller residences provide a transition to independent
living for mothers and their babies throughout Brooklyn
and Queens.
SCO Family of Services also coordinates a number
of innovative educational and  social
service programs for adolescents in New York City and Long
Island. They include the Enhanced
Independent Living Program, an Adolescent Substance
Abuse Program designed to help teens in foster care
make the transition to independent living and alternative
schools such as the New Beginnings Center which
provides students with academic classes, workshops and activities
in an effort to later re-integrate them into regular schools.
Please see “ Educational Programs”.
Brooklyn & Queens & Long
Island
- Agency Operated Boarding Homes
Six small family homes for 36 young people
- Supervised Independent Living Apartments
Six locations for 14 youths
- Group Residences for the Hard-to-Place
Four homes serving 46 adolescents in need of a uniquely accepting and healing
environment.
- Specialized Group Home & Apartments
Provides a continuum of community based residential programs for 24 youth
who identify themselves as gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or transgendered.
- Extraordinary Needs Group Residences
Two community-based residences with special education programs
designed to help young people transition from institutional
settings to family care or supportive housing programs.
- Mother-Child Residences: Bethany Programs
Six residences for teenage mothers and their babies which include group homes
and apartments.
- Homeless & Runaway Youth
Programs/Independence Inns
Three transitional living centers, one for 20 young men, a second for 18
young women,
six of whom are young mothers with babies, and the third for eight young
mothers and their babies.
| “At
any moment in time in New York City there are a number
of teenagers who have no where to go and no one to
take care of them.
We have made these children our
children.” |
- Adolescent
Substance Abuse Prevention Program
194 adolescent boys and girls who are living in foster care benefit from
this program. SCO Family of Services's prevention strategy is threefold:
help families and youth deal with their immediate substance abuse and alcohol
related problems; provide after-care support that keeps them free from the
threat of alcoholism and substance abuse, and provide youth with creative
alternatives to substance abuse.
- Enhanced Independent Living Services
Serving 550 teenagers in foster care, this program strives to prepare teens
in foster care for the responsibilities of adulthood. The Independent Living
Support Program is designed to help these teenagers, who will soon be on
their own, to create independent and meaningful lives.
- New Beginnings and the Educational Retention Program
Community-based
school programs designed to help New York City High School
students overcome personal and educational challenges and
return to High Schools in their home communities.
Please
see “ Educational Programs” page.
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