Senator Gillibrand Honors The Children’s Village as an Angel in Adoption™
The Children’s Village is honored to be recognized as Senator Gillibrand’s honoree for the Angels in Adoption award for outstanding advocacy of adoption and foster care issues.
The Angels in Adoption award is being given by The Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute (CCAI), a nonpartisan organization dedicated to raising awareness about children in need of permanent, safe, and loving homes. The award ceremony takes place at a gala today in Washington, D.C. and is being attended by President and CEO Jeremy Kohomban and three staff members who have contributed substantially to our success. Senator Gillibran’s nomination
The Children’s Village provides a wide array of services through its 11 locations throughout New York State. These include education through both residential and day schools, counseling for families and youth, shelters, adoption, foster homes, immigration services, housing, a community center, outreach programs, and more. In 2014, they served 9,550 youth and families. The organization focuses on the New York Metropolitan Area, with locations in Newburgh, Valhalla, Dobbs Ferry, Yonkers, the Bronx, Harlem, Flushing, Bayside, Jamaica, Staten Island, and Suffolk.
Although historically famous for its group foster homes, the Children’s Village has made an enormous leap in recognizing the current deficiencies in modern foster care and adoption practices. President and CEO Jeremy C. Kohomban has helped lobby President Obama and Congress for foster care finance reform, testifying before the Senate Committee on Finance in May of 2015. He had the courage to admit that group homes like his own campus in Dobbs Ferry are an inadequate solution to the problems that disconnected, homeless, and at-risk youth face. His organization engages in programs that put the welfare of the children above federal funding, which, under the current provisions in Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, is only given for current residents in group foster homes, and not the at-risk youth who can be saved from ever enduring such hardship. The Children’s Village aims to keep families together, reunite children with relatives, and find loving homes for those who have no immediate relations, rather than committing them to facilities that can easily leave their inhabitants dependent on social services and unable to function independently in society.
From their efforts to help disconnected youth, to community outreach programs, to summer camps, and so much more, the Children’s Village consistently reminds the entire foster care community that the children come first. Under the careful guidance of Dr. Kohomban, the Children’s Village does an exemplary job of supporting the New York Metropolitan Area’s families and at-risk youth.
