Forestdale is delighted to announce that it has been awarded five multi-year Preventive Services contracts by the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). These 3-year awards, which begin July 1 and total over $29 million in funding, support counseling, employment, housing, material assistance, and educational services for 500 additional Queens and Brooklyn families each year.
Forestdale collaborates with ACS, and other human service agencies, to serve families who are experiencing instability and are seeking to stay together, avoid foster care placement, and provide a safe home environment to meet their children’s developmental needs. ACS is funding a greater variety of preventive methods to better customize the approach for each family.

You can help pave the road to a brighter future for a young person healing from trauma.
Over the past year, Forestdale has been hard at work, assisting Queens’ families and communities to reach their potential. Without partners like you, we wouldn’t be able to implement programs that support over 2,000 youth & families annually, with the same extensive impact.
This year, our Appeal focuses on young adults leaving the Foster Care system. After family trauma and separation, these bold and resilient young people are building new lives, finishing school, starting careers, finding hope.
Our comprehensive life, career, and education coaching programs have led to college graduation, stable housing, and new jobs for many youth ages 16-24. We are now expanding to include youth as young as 11 years of age. Please help us reach even more young people as they take steps to land at a future of adult success.

Forestdale works to strengthen and reunite families rapidly and efficiently whenever possible, and innovate new ways to help the people we serve. In 2017, we began our Home Away From Home (HAFH) program, funded by ACS, to expand the number of new, quality foster homes and increase support to existing ones. We were thrilled to have the Mockingbird Family Model, focused on intentional community building for foster families, highlighted in the most recent Chronicle of Social Change. The Mockingbird Family Model (MFM) builds intentional communities (hubs) of foster parents to help each other with advice, friendship, transportation, and respite.

Forestdale is proud to be the first agency in NYC to offer this model.