2007-2008 message from the President and Executive Director

Edwin Gould Services For Children and Families has undergone significant changes during the last six years. There have been tremendous improvements in terms of the infrastructure and outcomes for our children, adolescents, families and consumers. In addition, we were selected as one of 9 agencies from among 30 to participate in the New York City Children’s Services pilot program called Improved Outcomes for Children (IOC). To the Board of Directors, senior management, staff, foster parents, donors and all supporters who have contributed to these successes, we say “thank you.”

In addition to our donors and supporters, these improvements were made possible by the following New York City Children’s Services and New York State Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities (OMRDD) initiatives: Reinvestment for Children and Adolescents; Improved Outcomes for Children, Adolescents and Families; Recruitment, Retention and Training of Foster Parents; Extraordinary Care Giver Training Program and Health Care Enhancement III. The New York City Children’s Services initiatives provided an infrastructure to respond to the challenges of New York City’s vulnerable population in terms of reducing the length of stay in foster care, minimizing lateral moves of children from foster home to another foster home and reducing the use of residential services in order to place them in family-like services. The OMRDD projects resulted in additional training opportunities for staff, improved staff retention and decreased health care costs for our OMRDD employees.

Although we have been successful and enhanced our programs, a culture change is required to address the outcomes and time centered services, a change that says time and time again that for our children, one day in foster care away from their families is one day too many, and one more move is one move too traumatic for our children and adolescents.

There is a disparity in the foster care services between the current culture of performance and the desired culture of time centered performance. To address this gap, this year we completed our strategic plan for the years 2008 to 2011, including a Vision Statement of being an “Agency of Choice” and a “Reliable Partner” to our service population, Board, staff, and funding sources. Our strategy is based on a time centered, child/family service delivery system that goes beyond what the funding sources require for our children, adolescent and families, and includes a number of non-financial indicators such as employee, client and foster parents satisfaction surveys. As we plan to implement the New York City Children’s Services initiatives for the next 10 years, we hope that the non-financial indicators will provide information about the major trends and issues that are likely to affect the future service development and environmental factors such as the agency’s employees, client and community involvement.

We continue along our path of organic growth of services with approval to implement another Developmental Disabilities Program (IRA), and provide Medicaid Service Coordination Services (MSC). The year 2008 will be exciting and challenging as we compete for New York City Children’s Services initiatives to be implemented in July, 2009, and we plan for our relocation from Rector Street to a location that will address the growing needs of our clients, staff and funding sources. Edwin Gould is repositioning for the future, by building on its past, enhancing the present and working diligently to provide quality services to the children and families. To our clients and funding sources, we make a commitment to maintain an environment which fosters time centered performance and accountability.

Again, we express our gratitude to our Board members, staff, foster parents, funding sources and donors, for their past, present and continued support of our children, adolescents and families.