Insights from NYC Office of Children and Family Services

An update from our CEO Chelsea Tobin, who is on a Churchill Fellowship. To stay up to date with her learnings, sign up to an occasional newsletter.

As I wrote last week, my visit to New York confirmed that no matter where you are in the world, we are dealing with similar challenges when working with and supporting those affected by domestic and family violence.

That was reinforced again at a meeting I had with the New York City Office of Children and Family Services (NYCOCFS). They provide a range of services for young people, including domestic violence services, with a lot of their responses based on the Safe and Together model.

They work with children and young people affected by trafficking and homelessness, many of whom are in that situation because they have been affected by intimate partner violence. An interesting comment they made was that there is a lot of judgement about young people – e.g. people talk about kids ‘running away’, when in reality they are often leaving an unsafe situation.

Challenges for young people affected by domestic and family violence in New York

The NYCOCFS team shared my concern that it’s often 15-23 year olds who get lost between children’s services and adult supports. They noted that the support they receive often depends on which door they go through – e.g. a homeless shelter vs refuge vs an outreach program. As they explained, it’s often easier to present as homeless because it’s not easy to disclose that upfront – so they don’t always get the support they really need.

Another reason why young people slip through the cracks of services is that they may accompany their parent into a refuge or sanctuary, meaning they often end up being with mums and babies. This can see them disengage – which isn’t surprising, as they lose connection with their community and biggest support network. Sometimes these older children can’t even go into shelters with their parent, as having older youth and younger children in one refuge might be deemed inappropriate. And of course, they cannot be left unaccompanied in a motel either.

It was interesting to note that access to hotels or motels is challenging both in NYC metro and in rural areas. As New York is a ‘sanctuary city’, many of the beds formerly available are now being taken up by asylum seekers. In addition, some municipalities have local laws that won’t allow for long-term stays at hotels or motels. Meanwhile, in regional and rural areas, there may only be one or two motels, which are well known in the community and therefore not necessarily a safe option. Young people also face increased challenges thanks to New York’s freezing winters, with an additional legacy from COVID resulting in a lack of affordable and safe housing stock. Just as we see in Australia, the lack of a credit history, especially for victim survivors who may also have experienced significant financial abuse, makes finding alternative accommodation hard.

What makes a successful support program?

There are several things that NYCOCFS is trialling to help bridge these gaps, including the concept of a “host home”, where young people are matched with someone who has an extra room. It’s akin to an exchange student scenario, but the person hosting agrees to be a mentor or coach, not a parent relationship, and there is an outside agency that provides additional support.

We finished the conversation by me asking for their thoughts on what makes a successful support program for young people. Some of the things they identified included:

• Making sure they have peers or advocates who can mentor and guide them – ideally people who culturally reflect them and have lived experience, as violence doesn’t only affect those who are Anglo-Saxon and identify as male or female. This is especially relevant for culturally diverse or LGBTQIA communities.
• Programs need to be highly staffed, especially for vulnerable young people who have been trafficked or sexually exploited. NYCOCFS is trialling a model where there are no more than four young people living together and someone is always there for them to talk to or engage with, night and day. This program is achieving great outcomes, albeit on a small scale, with some of these young people graduating and going to college, which doesn’t often happen for people in this scenario.
• Adopt an attitude of radical acceptance – be prepared to be patient, offer alternatives and be ready to have conversations and welcome them back, no matter how long has passed. That’s different to the traditional model of telling young people what to do. Accept that young people may make different choices than you might like them to but be there to help pick up the pieces, no matter how many times they walk away.
• Treat people in need of support no differently than other young people when it comes to education and learning opportunities.
• Put effort into creating a truly welcoming environment – in physical and emotional terms – for both those needing support and for staff.
• Recognise the developmental differences in younger people and provide training for those caring for and working with them in what trauma is, how it impacts people and how it can present. It need not be the social worker but could be the cleaners or the maintenance people – anyone who the young person might develop a relationship with should be trained to look out for signs that someone isn’t doing as well as they could and link them to support.
• Consider how you can integrate animals into the living environment or even the facility they might visit for support. Young people will often disclose to dogs and cats things they wouldn’t share with a human.
• Offer as many choices as possible and empower the young person to make that choice. Explain what you can offer, the pros and cons of each and let them be the decision maker – because often they have been disappointed many times.
• Build in or create ways for young people to do things for others, no matter how small. Providing opportunities for them to channel their altruistic influences will help them feel like they’ve done something good and feel better about themselves.
• Find ways to help them build their networks and community and learn how to create positive relationships with people, so they don’t feel so isolated.

These are all practical ideas that I can see would make a difference to the support that could be offered to young people.