On a recent Tuesday in New York City’s Hunts Point neighborhood, Emily Lopez directs a visitor to the “selfie chair,” a large plastic throne in this new family center’s sunny atrium, perfect for impromptu Instagramming. The walls are painted a crisp white, and sunlight slants down from wide windows near the high ceilings, landing on black-and-white photographs of protests from this waterfront Bronx neighborhood’s rich history of activism. Colorful posters urge visitors to believe in themselves and their community.
“Our space is your space. When someone walks in, we greet them. We’re not taking notes, we’re not asking a lot of personal questions or judging you,” says Lopez, director of this novel support program operated by the family and youth services nonprofit Graham Windham, which has contracted with the city’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) to help stem the tide of child abuse referrals.
ACS is mostly known to Hunts Point residents for its child abuse and neglect investigations, and citywide for a pair of high-profile child deaths in 2016 that led to the resignation of the agency’s then-commissioner, Gladys Carrión. The so-called Family Enrichment Center that Lopez is helping run, though, is a warm-and-fuzzy departure: It’s one of three just-launched, ACS-funded pilot programs that will reach deep into struggling communities to offer a friendly hand to anyone who needs it, with no strings attached.
[For more on this story by Michael Fitzgerald, go to https://chronicleofsocialchang...ntion-services/31094]
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