McMahon Services Adolescent Unit

New York, NY

Each year, Good Shepherd Services' foster boarding home program, McMahon Services for Children, works with more than 600 New York City children who have been removed from their birth families or caretakers because of possible abuse and/or neglect. Referred by the NYC Administration for Children's Services (ACS), these children are placed in safe, temporary care with trained, supportive resource (foster) parents who work with agency staff to ensure that each child's educational, social, medical, developmental, spiritual, and recreational needs are met. At the same time, we provide birth parents with parenting workshops, comprehensive substance abuse services, information, resource referrals, and child visitation activities to help them address the issues that contributed to the removal of the child from the home. Our FBH program works towards family reunification and reconciliation, and only when it is not in a child's best interest due to safety issues do we seek the successful placement of a child in an adoptive home or prepare him or her for independent living. As the city-wide child welfare system moves to a neighborhood-based approach to the delivery of foster care services, Good Shepherd is concentrating its efforts on the communities of Harlem and East Harlem (Community Districts 10 and 11), Manhattan and the Kingsbridge/Tremont section of the Bronx (CD's 5, 6 and 7).