Grants Newsletter August 2014

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Health Evolution Better Care at Lower Cost | page 3

Questions about setting up a fund in The Trust? Contact Bob Edgar, VP for donor relations, at (212) 686-2564.

helping girls and women Patricia A. White, our program director for children, youth, and families, joined The Trust in 1987, after working at the South Bronx Overall Development Organization and the New York City Council Against Poverty. She trained as a social worker and has lectured at several universities.

Much of your work involves making grants to programs for girls and young women. What inspires you?

I grew up with five brothers. I was 16 before I had a sister, and strangers often assumed I was her mother. That offended me.

My mother and father never got to study beyond ninth grade, but they taught me to find opportunities to excel. In college, I joined the National Board of the YWCA USA. I’d seen discrimination firsthand, and I liked that the Y was committed to eliminating racism. I also worked in a state social services agency in the South, helping female-headed households—mostly white. I’ve seen how poverty hurts girls and women of all races.

How has this grantmaking evolved?

New York’s demographics have changed, and so has The Trust’s approach to helping girls and women. When I started here in 1987, leveling the playing field was the issue. Now we make bigger grants that take a broader view, including

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For 90 years, The Trust has been making donors’ charitable dreams come true by funding the nonprofits that make the City and its suburbs great places to live, work, and play.

physical and mental health as well as economic and career opportunities. Despite advances, there’s still great inequality.

Girls and young women have critical decision-making points: In middle school, when interest in math and science is often snuffed out; in high school, when they start to make choices about careers; and if and when they become young mothers. Step in at the right time, and you can change their lives.

Describe a grant that helps girls at a critical juncture.

Our board just approved $160,000 to Girl Scout Council of Greater New York. Several years ago, we helped it start a program introducing career paths to girls in struggling middle and high schools. Now we’re helping teachers take over the program to keep it going. Much of this grant comes from the Mildred Anna Williams Fund, set up in The Trust nearly 75 years ago (see below). We’re privileged to have funds like this. n

A Good Life, a Gift for Those Who Struggle Mildred Anna Williams traveled around the world twice after World War I, collecting paintings, bronzes, and furniture with her husband, Henry, a successful importer and exporter of wood and marble.

Williams never forgot that her childhood hadn’t been easy, and she set up a fund in The Trust to “support activities conducive to the welfare of girls.” It started with $2 million after her death in 1939, has supported dozens of nonprofits with hundreds of grants, and is now worth more than $23 million.

In June, we used the Williams Fund—with other

MOM IN TRAINING: Pregnant at 14, Annette Hankins ran away from home.

After having her second child, Hankins moved to Inwood House, where she learned how to better take care of her children and herself. Now 19, she will be a freshman at Borough of Manhattan Community College in the fall. MILDRED ANNA WILLIAMS: portrait at left.

funds—to pay for these grants: $90,000 to Sanctuary for Families to help victims of human trafficking; $146,000 to Inwood House (see page 7), to guide single young mothers in making smart decisions about education, health, and future relationships; and $55,000 to Day One, to improve how social workers and school counselors work with teen girls to prevent date rape, and to push for legislation against sending abusive raunchy texts, or “sexting.”

While we doubt Mildred Anna Williams could have imagined a problem called “sexting,” we believe she’d be pleased by the ways she continues to help. n

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Better Care at Lower Cost

or 9-year-old Oscar Rivera Mendez, like so many New Yorkers, asthma is costly, disruptive, and frightening.

Since he was diagnosed with it shortly before his first birthday, asthma has sent Oscar to the emergency room 15 times. But these days, he has an ally—Mariana Sanchez, a bilingual community health worker sent to his apartment by a.i.r. nyc, a nonprofit that helps asthmatic kids in Harlem and the South Bronx stay healthy. Sanchez has visited the Mendez family eight times since 2011, and Oscar hasn’t been to the ER in that period. Nor has his little brother, Theo, who also has asthma.

Asthma, a chronic lung disease, costs New York State $1.3 billion in medical bills and lost productivity, according to New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. It’s also the leading cause of missed school days for children in poor communities. Health workers like Sanchez teach families to watch for warning signs of asthma attacks and to eliminate triggers. In the Mendez household, that meant a.i.r. nyc lawyers getting the landlord to clean up mold in their building. This kind of outreach could save taxpayers and managed-care providers millions of dollars in doctors’ visits and ER bills, not to mention adults’ lost wages.

Across the country, the Affordable Care Act is starting to reward medical providers for care that prevents emergency room visits. It also emphasizes funding community health centers instead of paying for specialists.

The Trust is helping New York make this transition. One immediate goal: to get doctors and nurses to team up with health and social workers who are the primary contacts for many families. With our grant of $60,000, a.i.r. nyc is forging agreements with insurance companies so they will pay for visits like those that have changed Oscar’s life.

“Our grants encourage nonprofits to find ways to work with insurers, improving the quality of care while cutting everyone’s costs,” says Len McNally, The Trust’s program director for health and people with special needs.

Five other new grants (listed at right) are encouraging groups to save money as they adapt to managed care. n

nycommunitytrust.org

CARE FOR ALL: A patient is examined at Harlem United’s Willis Green Jr. Health Center. A grant to Primary Care Development Corporation helps streamline care at this and other publicly funded providers. BREATHING BETTER: (cover photo) Oscar Rivera Mendez, 9, has avoided trips to the ER with help from a.i.r. nyc health worker Mariana Sanchez. Photo by Amy Wolf / The Trust

More Health Grants With $100,000 from The Trust, the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged is streamlining patient records, admissions, and billing. And $140,000 helps mental-health provider Child Center of New York accommodate more walk-in visits and bring together doctors, nurses, and caseworkers to care for struggling families.

Meanwhile, $110,000 each to the Community Health Care Association of New York State and Primary Care Development Corporation is being used to develop better ways to track patients and calculate costs. They also will test new methods to care for people with chronic diseases. The Institute for Family Health—with 13 centers in Manhattan and the Bronx providing primary, prenatal, dental, and mental health care—is using $100,000 to test a team approach to managing chronic health problems.

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Keep Away from the Edge Trust grants prevent hard-working New Yorkers from falling into crisis

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erving food, parking cars, cleaning homes, caring for the elderly—low-wage jobs abound in New York. But they barely pay the bills.

Even with two jobs, or two earners in a household, millions of New Yorkers are one injury or layoff away from bankruptcy, hunger, or homelessness. The Trust makes a priority of giving our neighbors a safety net during hard times, and four new grants are part of this effort: Since 2009, grants totaling $5 million to The Bridge Fund of New York City have helped thousands of working poor New Yorkers stay in their homes during crises by providing no-interest loans for back rent and budget counseling. A new $600,000 grant will help families in 20 neighborhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. Supporting a family during tough times can not only avoid the trauma of eviction and homelessness, but can save the City far more. Housing a family in a shelter for a year costs more than $38,000.

East New York has the most homeless shelters of any neighborhood in Brooklyn and most residents pay more

than 40 percent of their income in rent. Partnership for the Homeless will use $75,000 from The Trust to connect families with legal help to fight foreclosure and evictions in East New York.

A Better Balance: The Work and Family Legal Center helped draft and pass paid sick leave and pregnancy accommodation laws. Our $75,000 funds workshops, fact sheets, social media outreach, and a hotline to make sure workers across the City understand their rights.

Earned-income tax credits can be a life-saver for low-income New Yorkers, but workers paid in cash have trouble getting these credits because of difficulty documenting their incomes. As a result, the State audited 80 percent of self-employed cash-earners.

With a $90,000 grant in 2012, the Financial Clinic, a group helping the working poor become financially stable and plan for the future, launched a campaign to simplify this system and get tax credits for cash-earners. Another $90,000 from The Trust will continue this work. n

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by The Trust

ther issues? Set up a fund. Call Jane Wilton at (212) 686-2563.

New Grants The full list of grants approved at the June board meeting can be found in the Latest News section of our website, nycommunitytrust.org.

STOPPING VIOLENCE: Five grants of $35,000 each help community groups expand a program called Cure Violence, which uses former gang members to stop street disputes from escalating into deadly violence. The program is run in public housing developments by Crown Heights Community Mediation Center (shown above), Life Camp, Man Up!, New York City Mission Society, and Save Our Streets South Bronx.

COMMUNITY ANCHOR: North Brooklyn’s St. Nicks Alliance does it all: develops affordable housing, provides child care, and even holds after-school drumming workshops. A grant of $50,000 lets St. Nicks create a system to coordinate services for families and track outcomes.

PRESERVING HISTORY AND AFFORDABILITY: Clinton Hill Historic District in Brooklyn is one of 110 areas in the City protected from rampant and out-ofcharacter development.

Historic Districts Council will use $60,000 to analyze the effect of historic preservation on the City’s affordable housing.

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HEALTHY FOOD: With past Trust grants, City Harvest has helped residents in low-income communities eat healthier by giving away tons of fresh, nutritious food at mobile markets, creating community gardens, and revamping bodega and grocery store produce offerings. With a new grant of $100,000, the group will continue this work. Here, produce shelves in a BedfordStuyvesant supermarket before and after a makeover and training for its staff.

Better Homes for Kids in Foster Care

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ometimes one problem can derail a child’s adoption.

After caring for foster children, Georgette Wellington was ready to adopt. She and 5-year-old Larinee had become close, but Wellington had noticed something upsetting: The girl had a habit of lying.

The foster mom considered calling off the adoption.

But Marie Beuns, Larinee’s caseworker from Graham Windham, one of the City’s oldest and largest child welfare agencies, stepped in.

Using an approach called solution-based casework, she helped the foster mom understand the bad behavior’s cause: the dishonesty was a survival tactic in the girl’s previous abusive living situation. Beuns and Wellington then worked to find solutions. Wellington learned how to communicate that lying is wrong, and to praise Larinee for telling the truth.

“We also created a plan to nip troubling behavior in the bud,” says Beuns. With these tools, Wellington felt comfortable with the adoption, and Larinee found her forever family.

Caseworkers also use this approach to address destructive and ineffective behavior of birth parents who want to regain custody of their children. Before, caseworkers emphasized compliance: “We would just refer parents to services and track attendance at parenting or substance-abuse classes,” says Nosa Omoruyi, Graham Windham family foster care director. “Now, we get at the root of behaviors and find ways to change them.”

Some judges and lawyers appreciate the approach.

“Family court is beginning to ask families to demonstrate

FOREVER FAMILY: Graham Windham helped Georgette Wellington overcome obstacles to adopting Larinee.

how they can better care for their children, rather than just requiring them to complete classes,” says Graham Windham president Jess Dannhauser.

Trust grants totaling $600,000 since 2012 have helped Graham Windham, Good Shepherd Services, SCO Family of Services, Forestdale, and Episcopal Social Services use solution-based casework. Together, these agencies work with more than half the city’s foster care families. n

Other Grants Improving Care of Children • Inwood House: $146,000 expands a program that helps child welfare agencies, including Graham Windham and Forestdale, respond to the needs of young mothers.

• MFY Legal Services: $150,000 for the Kinship Caregiver Law Project, which works to increase legal and social services for grandparents and other relatives caring for abandoned children in the Bronx.

KIDS IN CARE: New York City Public Advocate Letitia James and MFY Legal Service’s Barbara Graves-Poller spoke at a June 16 press conference urging legislation to protect children in the foster care system, as well as the 150,000 children being raised by grandparents and other relatives outside of the child welfare system.

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How do you want to be remembered?

If you want to start a fund to do the kind of work featured in these pages, contact Jane Wilton, general counsel, at (212) 686-2563; or Bob Edgar, vice president for donor relations, at (212) 686-2564.

This newsletter highlights some of the 69 grants totaling $7.3 million that our board approved in June 2014.

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Inside: Car Crash. Layoff.

Eviction, too?

A Donor Helps Girls, for 75 Years Better Homes for Foster Kids STUDENTS TEACHING:Â Our $60,000 grant helps Coro New York Leadership Center train student advisory councils to research education policies and press for solutions.

Recently, the Mayor’s Youth Leadership Council presented suggestions to Mayor Bill de Blasio and school officials.

Photo by Rob Bennett / Mayoral Photography Office