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Child & Family Services
Preventive Services
- Concrete services (i.e.: day care, homemaking, budgeting, advocacy, etc.), casework counseling, and referral services are provided to eligible families in order to avert placements of children outside their homes, enhance family functioning and/or expedite reunification of children in care with their biological families. Eligible families include those at some risk of foster care and pregnant and/or parenting adolescents. Referrals to preventive services can be made by calling 227-7789.
- PINS Diversion Program
Information and Intake – 516 – 227-8404
Services are provided through contract agencies, to families in crisis whose children might be experiencing truancy, gang involvement, running away from home, and substance abuse issues or other unmanageable behaviors in order to prevent/avert the filing of a Pins Petition and placement out of the home.
Foster Care Services
- Foster and Adoptive Resource Development – 516 -227-8291 and Homefinding– 516 - 227-8284. These units recruit, train, study, approve/certify, develop, retain, and re-approve/re-certify foster and adoptive families. To inquire about becoming a foster and/or adoptive parent, please call 516 – 227-7613.
- Foster care
Direct and/or referral services are extended to place into foster care children referred by Preventive Services, Child Protective Services, the Department's Information, Resources and Referral Unit, or the Courts. These units work intensively with the children and their foster parents to stabilize the placements, to assure that all of the children's needs are being met, and to establish productive birth-parent/child visits. These units also extend immediate concrete, casework counseling, and referral services directly to birth parents in an attempt to reunite them as soon as possible with their children and to lessen the time the children spend in foster care. Those children and families not reunited quickly, despite intensive efforts, receive continued concrete, casework counseling, and referral services as long as extended foster care is necessary. Ultimately, these units effect the safe reunification of children with their birth families, free for adoption children who cannot be safely returned to their birth families, or refer older teens for Independent Living services where neither reunification nor adoption are possible. These older teens are provided with opportunities to develop independent living skills with emphasis on education and/or vocation and to establish permanent family connections. - PINS Placement (Persons In Need of Supervision)
This unit coordinates contracted agencies' foster home, group home, and residential treatment center services for court placed PINS youngsters who require residential services and/or therapeutic foster care due to their higher levels of needs and/or asocial behaviors. - Review and Support
This unit determines eligibility for cases and periodically reviews case documents to insure compliance with laws, regulations, and mandates. Staff also coordinates Service Plan Review and Permanency Planning Review conferences and monitor youngsters placed for diagnostic evaluations. This unit manages and oversees all audits and reviews of Children & Family Services cases and coordinates NYSOCFS Connections system for Nassau County. - Institutional Liaison
This Unit acts as liaison to contact agencies that provide placement services to Nassau County foster children, making referrals and visiting the facilities to insure appropriate care is provided to Nassau County children. The unit monitors contract compliance, reviews contracts for accuracy, facilitates new contracts when needed, and records and tracks any reports of institutional abuse involving Nassau County foster children. The unit also monitors Nassau County children, in NYSOCFS custody, who were placed in group homes and residential treatment centers as Juvenile Delinquents.
Adoption Services
- Adoption
Casework counseling, referral, and concrete services are provided directly to children freed for adoption and their foster and/or adoptive families until adoptions are legalized. This unit effects adoption subsidies where appropriate and prepares the documentation required for the legalization process. Direct and referral services are provided to match children with adoptive families in cases where the foster family is not adopting, to maintain the Prospective Adoptive Parent's Registry, to register freed children with the NYSAS Adoption Registry and with Children Awaiting Parents (CAP) Book, to administer the Subsidized Adoption Program, to respond to the Adoption Information Registry, and to handle post-legalization issues. - Adoption Subsidy
Direct and referral services are provided to match children with adoptive families in cases where the foster family is not adopting, to maintain the Prospective Adoptive Parent's Registry; to register freed children with the NYSAS Adoption Registry and with Children Awaiting Parents (CAP) Book, to administer the Subsidized Adoption Program, to respond to the Adoption Information Registry, and to handle post-legalization issues.