Organization Details:

Founded in 1977 to prevent and combat child abuse and neglect in the East Harlem and the South Bronx communities of New York City, SCAN (Supportive Children?s Advocacy Network) continues to provide extensive, culturally sensitive services for the children, youth and families of these neighborhoods. SCAN?s services are family-focused and asset-based and are delivered by a skilled bi-lingual staff. In order to support families in crisis, SCAN?s programs provide:
? Preventive and intensive preventive individual, family and group counseling and professional psychotherapy focused on domestic issues, substance abuse, AIDS, and post-traumatic stress disorders;
? Community and school based educational programs for children, parents and families focused on literacy, academic achievement, socialization skills, creative and cultural arts, recreation, college preparation and employment skills;
? Advocacy, information and referral services (currently including legal and financial advice and support).

Description and/or History:
SCAN operates 27 programs at 23 community sites and school locations. The organization?s services can be classified into three broad categories: Family Support Programs, Youth Support Programs, and Education Programs. SCAN?s Family support programs will serve 1,000 families this program year. They include the organization?s longstanding NYC Children?s Services (NYCCS) supported General Preventive and Intensive Preventive services in East Harlem and the South Bronx. To support families, SCAN also provides substance abuse prevent and treatment services and services to victims of domestic violence. The agency operates Emergency Food Pantries in East Harlem and the South Bronx, a Home Visiting program, conducted in collaboration with the NYPD serving juvenile offenders and their families, and a truancy prevention program run in collaboration with the NYPD and the Police Athletic League.
SCAN?s Youth Support Programs have been created to enhance the agency?s Family Support Services. Chief among these services are the organization?s Reach for the Stars suite of services. In 1991, SCAN began its Reach for the Stars college readiness program, providing academic support, peer encouragement, and good counsel to young people who have the potential to go to prep school and /or college. Not a typical college readiness program, both the program?s high school and junior high school prep components, target their services at young people who are underachieving in school and who don?t initially think of themselves as ?college bound.? Reach for the Stars helps young people recognize and achieve their potential as students, as family members and as community residents. The program places a heavy evidence cultivation of a positive youth culture among its members. Reach for the Stars functions successfully, in large measure, because of the positive peer support that the program cultivates betweens its members. To date the Reach or the Stars Program has sent over 300 young men and women off to prep school and college and program alumnae and alumni have gone on to careers in medicine, education, business, public administration and law.
SCAN?s Youth Support services extend far beyond the Reach for the Stars Program. The agency operates NYC Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) Out-of-School-Time (OST) programs at 6 locations serving over 1,000 young people and their families. SCAN?s NYS Office of Children and Families (OCFS) supported Advantage Program and its NYS Education Department (NYSED) funded 21st Century Community Learning Center and Extended School Day Violence Prevention programs, add support and services for an additional 1,250 young people. When combined with the services provided at the agency?s DYCD supported La Isla and El Faro Beacon Programs, SCAN is responsible for providing after-school services to over 5,000 young people at 10 locations annually.
Beyond after-school services, SCAN?s Youth Support services include: violence prevention services, anti-gang Generations counseling and support groups, SCAN?s Somos El Futuro leadership development program, and workforce development services including SCAN?s highly success DYCD funded Young Adult Internship Program (YAIP). YAIP provides 90 young people vocational support, 11-week paid internships and job and/or school placement services. SCAN is also operating a summer day camp programming for over 1,600 children this summer at 8 locations.
SCAN?s largest Education Program is the agency?s Supplemental Education Services (SES) tutoring initiative. Through this NYC Department of Education supported program, SCAN provides 100 hours of tutoring in English Language Arts for each enrolled student. The program, which is a part of the No Child Left Behind initiative, provided services to 3,000 young people at 15 locations this past school year.
SCAN?s education programs also include pre-school child care services at two locations; The LaGuardia Nursery and the Eisman Day Nursery. The organizational also provides family literacy services at PS 55 in the Bronx. That program includes reading support for elementary age school children, Adult Basic Education services for parents and program activities that help parents and children unite as learners. SCAN?s SPICE (Supportive Parents Involved in Children?s Education) Program is another SCAN service that focuses on developing reading skills for children just starting school. The SPICE program provides one hour of individual reading instruction, every school-day, to underperforming first grade students at three Bronx elementary schools. Pre- and post-test results show significant gains on standardized reading tests for nearly all the young people enrolled in this program. For middle school students struggling with reading and comprehension, SCAN?s Adolescent Literacy Program provides science-based, intensive literacy support for 50 young people attending either the Academy for Environmental Science or at MS 22 in the Bronx.
All of SCAN?s services in the Family Support, Youth Support, and Education areas are buttressed by both the agency?s citywide and community-specific service networks. As a longstanding member of United Way of New York City, the Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies (COFCCA), United Neighborhood Houses of New York (UNH), the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies (FPWA) and the Neighborhood Family Service Coalition, SCAN has been able to forge important working relationships in the not-for-profit community.
The SCAN-New York Volunteer Parent-Aides Association, Inc. was launched in 1977 to address that period?s ?child welfare crisis? by working at eliminating abuse and neglect among families deemed as most ?at risk.? Working with a largely volunteer staff, SCAN supported 40 families through a Manhattan-based mentoring program in its earliest years.
In 1987, Lewis Zuchman, the agency?s current Executive Director, joined SCAN and the agency?s preventive services focus shifted from an individual casework approach to a community service approach that put a heavy emphasis on strengthening and preserving families, providing the community supports needed for all families to thrive, and affording services that build on the cultural strengths and individual assets of parents and children. This approach continues to be central to SCAN?s work today.
In 1991, SCAN extended this innovative approach in establishing its Family Renewal Center initiative that targeted substance abusing parents at risk of losing their children by affording them substance abuse treatment and companion services designed to support sobriety, build self-esteem and strengthen the family unit. SCAN also implemented several family therapeutic initiatives at that time including: SCAN Family Camping weekends, the SCAN Family Choir, the SCAN Family Literacy project, and the Families Doing Art Together program.
At the start of the 1990?s, SCAN also established a true community-based presence in the South Bronx by agreeing to serve as community sponsor of the Mullaly Academy Community Center. In 1998, in anticipation of a merger that was completed in 2000, SCAN established a similar presence in East Harlem at LaGuardia Memorial House. With these two sites in place, SCAN became a service provider with deep child welfare roots that also has a highly visible, consumer service focused presence in the neighborhoods it serves as a community resource.

Contact people:

Lewis Zuchman, Executive Director, (212) 289-8030, (email) Renee Avery, Deputy Executive Director, (212) 289-8030, (email) Kenneth Thompson, Assistant Executive Director, (718) 293-2793, (email)

Address:

345 East 102nd Street New York, NY 10029 (See a map)

Directions:

Nearest Metro/Subway Stop: 103rd Street-Lexington- No.6,   Walk distance (in minutes): 10   Nearest Bus Stop: M15, 2 minute walk