September Is Kinship Care Month In NY State

September Is Kinship Care Month In NY State

September is Kinship Care Month in New York State! This month is an opportunity to recognize the commitment of thousands of kin—relatives or close family friends—across the state who step in to care for children when their parents are unable to do so. While the number of kin becoming formal foster parents has increased—currently about 25% of all foster care placements—most often children living with kin are not in approved foster homes.   

Children live with kin for many of the same reasons that lead to placement in foster care with non-relatives, namely neglect, parental substance abuse or mental health issues, physical abuse and other safety concerns.  Because of this, children often arrive to a relative’s home having experienced trauma.

Kin provide safe, stable homes for the children who come into their care, and enable them to stay connected to their culture and family tradition. That connection has been shown to minimize the trauma to the child and result in better outcomes, including improved mental and behavioral health.

At the Schuyler Center, we have long worked, through partnership with the NYS Kinship Navigator, to ensure that kinship families are provided with the supports they need to care for their children. In our work as co-lead of the CHAMPS-NY campaign, we are continuing that work, and advancing policy and practice change to better support kinship families, including through increased awareness of the benefits associated with becoming approved relative foster homes, should that be in the best interest of the child and their family.

CHAMPS builds on research that shows loving, supportive families—whether birth, kin, foster or adoptive—are critical to the healthy development of all children. And here in New York, we believe it is critical that all those families—birth, foster, kinship and adoptive—are supported so that children remain safe and find stability and permanency in their family.

This September, as always, let us take a moment to thank the kinship caregivers in our communities and commit, as a state, to do our best to ensure they receive the support they need.

For additional information on benefits and services available to kinship families, visit the NYS Kinship Navigator website or call their toll-free helpline at 877-454-6463.

To learn more about the CHAMPS-NY campaign, visit their website.[/vc_column_text]

Schuyler Center Welcomes Matilda Gragg

Schuyler Center Welcomes Matilda Gragg

The Schuyler Center welcomes Matilda Gragg as our newest Research Coordinator.  Matilda is an AmeriCorps VISTA Fellow at Siena College and will be working with policy staff on research, data products and communication material designed to expand SCAA’s collaboration capacities in the areas of health, family economic security, child welfare and early education.  Matilda’s work will help increase our understanding of the needs of low-income New Yorkers. Matilda’s mission, like SCAA’s, is to provide a voice for those who might not otherwise have one.

Matilda graduated cum laude from Appalachian State University (ASU) with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a minor in Criminal Justice. While attending ASU, Matilda conducted research alongside the university’s forensic psychologist, studying demographic variables and discriminatory attitudes in conjunction with rape myth acceptance. As a research assistant, Matilda discussed varying methodologies on how to decrease victim blame and investigated how jurors make verdict decisions in sexual assault trials.

We hope you welcome Matilda when you see her at our meetings and conferences.[/vc_column_text]

History Expedition Family Day Hosted by Albany Institute of History & Art

History Expedition Family Day Hosted by Albany Institute of History & Art

Join the Schuyler Center and the Albany Institute of History and Art for a special day of family fun on Saturday, September 21, 2019! Travel back in time and learn about the world of Alexander Hamilton, The Schuyler Sisters, and how their legacy of civic-mindedness manifested in the work of the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy. Enjoy hands-on history, art activities, a costume station, and a museum scavenger hunt. Then, get ready to clap and sing as our own Christopher Thompson emcees the famous “Hamil-Tunes” karaoke event!

Schedule of Events:
10AM-4:30PM: Discovering History scavenger hunt
10AM-4:30PM: Art Making
10AM-4:30PM: History Dress-Up Station
10:30AM-12:30PM: Write a letter to the Schuyler Sisters
1PM-4PM: Hamil-Tunes: an American Singalong

Go to the Albany Institute’s Facebook Event page for more information!

*Graphic credit goes to the Albany Institute of History & Art[/vc_column_text]

Our own Dede Hill presents for the United Way of New York State Conference

Our own Dede Hill presents for the United Way of New York State Conference

In late July, our Policy Director, Dede Hill, along with colleagues Ron Deutsch, Executive Director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, and Pete Nabozny, Policy Director of The Children’s Agenda, presented for the United Way of NYS on the role New York’s working family tax credits play in reducing child poverty, and suggesting reforms to make these credits even more effective.  Participating in the United Way conference is just one of the many ways we are collaborating with United Way around efforts to strengthen refundable tax credits – and is the next chapter in a long history of collaborating on this issue.  In fact, in the 1990s, United Way of NYS and Schuyler Center together led the successful effort to enact New York’s trailblazing Earned Income Tax Credit law!

Presentation slides: – July 18, 2019 – United Way of New York State Education Conference.  Presentation by Schuyler Center, Fiscal Policy Institute, and The Children’s Agenda

Schuyler Center’s connection with Hamilton

Schuyler Center’s connection with Hamilton

A cynic could think that Schuyler Center’s “Hamilton fever” is opportunistic. They wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Many of us on the staff are head-over heels Hamilton fans, harboring dreams of receiving a personal invitation (and tickets) from composer/playwright/actor Lin Manuel Miranda himself.

In fact, Schuyler Center’s connection with Alexander and Eliza Hamilton is real, as is our pride in that connection. It is not a stretch to say that the Schuyler Center is carrying on some of the finest aspects of our foreparents’ legacy – particularly that of Eliza.

Let’s jump to the end of the show when Eliza sings with quiet pride about what she considers to be her greatest legacy: “the orphanage, the orphanage.” Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, widowed abruptly at the age of 47 when Alexander Hamilton was killed by Aaron Burr in a duel, would live for another fifty years, reaching the age of 97. When Alexander died, Eliza was left impoverished, and with several of their seven surviving children still young. And yet, she did not withdraw from her engagement with the world. Instead, she became a leader in her own right – devoting much of her time and resources to charitable work to aid orphans and individuals experiencing homelessness. Among her proudest achievements – at least according to the musical – was founding New York’s first orphanage.

Schuyler Center’s founder, Louisa Lee Schuyler, seems to have been cut from the same cloth as her great-grandmother Eliza. She was fully engaged in the world, and her life’s work was to improve the health and well-being of individuals living in poverty. What gives us even greater pride: Louisa leveraged her talent, wealth and privilege not to simply help individual families endure poverty or illness, but to reform and build systems to reduce and prevent poverty and ill health. She did that by forming “citizen brigades” – groups of New Yorkers who toured the state’s almshouses and then went to Albany and other seats of power, told the story of the horrid conditions they observed, and demanded reforms. As SCAA Executive Director, Homer Folks remarked after Louisa died “She didn’t build a Schuyler Home for Children; she preferred to influence and develop community and State.”

Today, when we are in the Capitol grossly outnumbered by hundreds of lobbyists representing impossibly well-resourced corporate clients, we sometimes despair of how we will get New York leaders to prioritize the needs of politically powerless children and low-income families. At these moments, we draw strength from our legacy – of Louisa and her “citizen brigades” telling the story of the alms-houses with unflagging persistence and determination, not stopping until they achieved real change.

*photo credit goes to Proctors[/vc_column_text]