Our Programs
JCCA’s mission is to provide the highest quality child welfare and mental health services to New York’s neediest and most vulnerable children and families to ensure that their safety, permanency and well-being leads to a life of stability and promise.
From residential programs to in-home family therapy, JCCA’s dedicated staff provide expert, evidence-based services to more than 17,000 children and families every year. We provide everything from tutoring and educational programs to work internship programs in order to make sure our children have a shot at an independent, productive future.
Discover the ways in which JCCA’s 37 programs are making a difference for children and families throughout New York City and Westchester.
Foster Home Services
JCCA’s Foster Home Services division places children with foster families, works to resolve issues with birth families and supports foster families—with the goal of providing children with safe, caring, permanent homes.
Family Foster Care/Kinship Foster Care ChildSuccessNYC provides safe, nurturing homes for children while families resolve difficulties that are keeping them apart. Our highly trained foster parents care for more than 800 youth in the Bronx and Brooklyn.
Specialized Family Foster Care: Medically Fragile serves children with serious medical conditions, such as leukemia or diabetes, in specialized foster homes to maintain their health and to find permanency.
Treatment Family Foster Care serves youth with moderate to severe emotional and behavioral concerns, who can remain in the community with specially trained foster parents, in-house mental health treatment and additional support by JCCA staff.
Unaccompanied Minors Program serves up to 30 undocumented young adults who live in long-term foster homes while they work toward legal relief or find sponsors.
Residential Services
Our residential programs in Westchester offer a highly supervised and protected environment in which abused and neglected boys and girls with behavioral and emotional problems find safety and structure while they work to resolve their difficulties and return to their communities as soon as possible.
Edenwald Center serves children who have emotional difficulties, as well as low IQs, autism and other developmental disorders.
Pleasantville Cottage School helps boys and girls with long-term emotional and behavioral challenges.
Pleasantville START is a short-term program for boys and girls who need assessment, residential treatment and intensive intervention.
Behavioral Health and Wellness
Home to JCCA’s large community-based programs, this division includes in-home services to support at-risk foster children and their families through counseling, mentoring and parent advocacy and support.
Brooklyn Counseling Center is a licensed, comprehensive mental health program that helps children, adolescents, and families understand and resolve social, emotional, and behavioral problems in outcome-focused, short-term treatment.
Family Wellness Program provides individualized, flexible support to young people with Medicaid who have mental health, developmental, or medical challenges. JCCA Service Providers will work with you in your home or in your community, on your schedule, so that you can spend the most time doing what matters—caring for your family.
Health Homes is a new way of providing services to help make sure all of your health care needs are met. Your physical, behavioral health care needs will be coordinated by a dedicated care coordinator, who will work with you, all of your providers, and your support system—including your family.
Non-Medicaid Care Coordination works with children who have been diagnosed with a Serious Emotional Disturbance who do not receive Medicaid. This free program provides support, referrals, and care coordination with all of the child’s medical and behavioral health providers.
Parent Advocacy and Support Program empowers parents with services ranging from training and support to counseling.
Westchester Day Treatment Program engages young people in therapeutic, educational, and recreational activities designed to foster skills, build structure, and support academic success.
Youth ACT provides intensive intervention for young people in Brooklyn with significant mental health issues.
Prevention Services
This division’s programs stabilize and strengthen families in crisis when their children are coping with mental illness and stress. Our services of targeted intervention and community outreach touch nearly 4,000 children and families each year.
Brooklyn Families Together is an intensive, short-term family treatment program for troubled youth with severe behavioral problems.
Child and Parent Psychotherapy is an intensive program that assists families with young children who have experienced at least one traumatic event, resulting in mental health, attachment and/or behavioral problems.
The East Flatbush and Mott Haven Community Partnership Programs work to improve access and coordination of resources between residents and service providers that support children and family well-being, and the community’s capacity to thrive.
Helping Hands for Families is an intensive program for families whose children or parents have mental health and/or substance abuse issues.
Second Chances is a specially designed program for families and youth, ages 12-16, currently, previously or at risk for involvement with police or the court. It provides counseling services, support, advocacy and community linkages.
Solution Based Casework utilizes family life cycle theory, relapse prevention therapy (Cognitive Behavior Therapy), and solution-focused family therapy to partner with families; building on the families’ strengths to equip and empower them to manage their children on their own.
Education
Liberation Diploma Plus High School works with students through their journey and provide them with the support and avenues to move forward. Staff, students, and their families create a climate in which students can cultivate the skills needed to evaluate their options so they can make informed, appropriate choices. Liberation’s charge is not to educate and exile, but to educate and liberate. Liberation’s mission is to develop the whole student—academically, socially, and emotionally.
The Early Literacy program provides youth in foster care with in-home, one-on-one tutoring. This program also provides resources and training to biological and foster parents to encourage literacy skills in the home.
Two Together provides free individualized tutoring and mentoring on the Pleasantville Cottage Campus to youth who score below grade level in reading or math or have other learning needs.
Services In the Jewish Community
Compass Project helps high school and college-age teens with learning differences, Autism Spectrum challenges and related disabilities learn important social and academic skills so that they can transition to work and an independent future. It also offers an independent living program in White Plains for young adults on the Autism Spectrum.
Kesher is a day and evening program for Jewish young adults, ages 14 – 19. Kesher teens connect with each other, receive professional support and participate in engaging, fun activities. Kesher provides counseling, substance abuse education, tutoring, recreation and internships to help teens get their lives back on track.
Partners in Caring is a program in which JCCA provides its counseling expertise and cultural sensitivity to children and youth at schools, Yeshivas and a synagogue within the Jewish community.