Episcopal Social Services of New York

Government Funding Gaps Jeopardize Programs for Impoverished Families

Episcopal Social Services Fundraiser Highlights Continuing Need for
Wide-Ranging Services for Low-Income New Yorkers

With the national unemployment rate topping 10 percent for the first time since 1983 and as impoverished New Yorkers face new challenges every day, Robert H. Gutheil, Executive Director of Episcopal Social Services of New York (ESS) warned that cuts to critical government funding, coupled with the deepening recession, are jeopardizing important family support programs. ESS is a non-sectarian, non-profit organization committed to creating permanent improvement in the lives of children and adults through a wide array of social services as they confront the effects of poverty.

“Contrary to popular belief,” Mr. Gutheil noted, “government funding does not come close to covering the full cost of ESS programs like foster care, Early Head Start, health care clinics, day care, and family preservation programs. Unless we are able to close the gap through private funding sources, further reductions in government funding will leave the most vulnerable New Yorkers without a safety net.”

Mr. Gutheil made the remarks at a recent benefit reception for the organization, held at the River Club in Manhattan and hosted by ESS Board Member Diana Nouri and her husband Edmond, and supported by a Benefit Committee including Board President Kenneth Kramer, Board Vice-President and Secretary Elizabeth Munson, and Board members Jacquelin Hamilton, Julia Kahr, Malcolm MacKay, Deborah Snyder, and Jennifer Breheney Wallace. The event raised $58,000 to help support ESS’ wide range of programs for disadvantaged and disabled New Yorkers. It also helped to increase awareness about the grinding problems faced every day by very-low-income families, and highlighted ESS’ success in helping the disadvantaged gain independence and self-sufficiency.

“When you help an individual succeed, you provide the building blocks that begin to change the family, and then entire communities,” Mr. Gutheil said.

As an example, Mr. Gutheil cited the agency’s Family Preservation Program which works with more than 100 troubled families each year, intervening before problems get bad enough to warrant removing children from the home. After determining that the home environment is safe, ESS provides family members long-term support including parenting classes, therapy, and counseling, to help them solve their problems and stay together. The program has a 97% success rate.

“Public funding reductions and cuts can significantly limit ESS’ ability to remove a traumatized child from an abusive home. It can also reduce the amount of food we offer to children in our day care and Early Head Start program — leaving them with little to eat because their parents cannot afford to feed them at home,” Mr. Gutheil added. “We depend on private funding to make up these gaps, not only to enhance the basic services and so give our clients the best possible start in life, but to simply pay for the cost of the programs themselves.”

“The best possible start begins very early in life,” according to Helen Davis, Program Director for ESS’ Early Head Start Program in the South Bronx. “We begin helping individuals succeed even before they are born, helping expectant parents access proper prenatal care. We continue to work with these young children during the first three years of their lives – the most critical period in a child’s brain development and socialization – helping them become children who are eager and well-prepared to learn.”

This was affirmed by the mother of one of the Early Head Start parents, Zaina Sulleman, who spoke at the event. “When we had our second baby, my husband and I had to work twice as hard to keep the household going; that meant that we didn’t have as much time to devote to our two-year-old. We saw him becoming much quieter than before, not as talkative; and it worried us a lot,” she said. “But after we enrolled him in the Early Head Start Program, what a difference! He began to talk all the time, he’s curious about everything – it’s almost like he is a different child.”

Mr. Gutheil underscored that experience by predicting how life would change if ESS suddenly disappeared. “Some 500 foster children would be without loving homes. If our daycare program – which serves 800 children – closed, hundreds of poor working parents would likely have to quit their jobs to stay at home to care for their children,” he said. “There would be no full Early Head Start Program in the South Bronx to help children like Zaina’s. And a troubled family that could be helped with counseling and training instead might crumble as children are taken away into foster care.”

On the other hand, he said he still had dreams of what more could be done. “We could build on the successes that we have accomplished so far, if we had the means,” he related. “Our Early Head Start Program helps 76 children each year, but there are hundreds more children of very-low-income families in the South Bronx who need those services. We would like to double the number of public schoolchildren who have a safe, educative place to be on weekday afternoons. And because we can’t afford to give traumatized children in foster care the direct mental health services they need, they may be on a waiting list for community mental health care for up to three months.”

“The need is incredibly great, and we are eager – and able – to help meet that need. We are only limited by the resources we can raise.”