The Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service seeks to empower families and individuals with disabilities to achieve greater economic self-sufficiency and fuller, more rewarding participation in the community through programs that nurture and protect children, strengthen and protect families, and enable individuals with physical, emotional and developmental disabilities to achieve their potential.

Description and/or History:
BCCS provides several programs. Our adult rehabilitation services provide adults with mental retardation, physical and developmental disabilities, mental illness or other disabling conditions with job training and job placement opportunities.
Mental Retardation Services provides a day habilitation program that helps developmentally disabled adults integrate into the community and a
Residential Habilitation program that teaches independent living skills to developmentally disabled adults living with their families or in their own homes.
Project Moving On (PMO) is a day treatment program for adults with serious mental illness. The East New York Clubhouse and MetroClub are peer-driven support centers for people with mental illnesses who are seeking employment or housing. Transitional Living Community (TLC) is a temporary residential facility that provides homeless women suffering from serious mental illness as well as medical and social difficulties with social support and therapeutic services. The Adolescent Employment and Education Program (AEEP) provides older adolescents diagnosed as seriously emotionally disturbed with an array of educational and vocational services..

The Bureau operates three childcare centers and a network of home-based childcare providers in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, which serve infants and children through age 10 from low-income families. The two most recent enhancements to the program (solely funded with private support) are an After-School Literacy Program and a Visual Arts Education Program. The latter, in collaboration with Studio in a School, provides five professional artists who deliver weekly instruction to 510 children.
Family Centers, located in East New York and Bedford-Stuyvesant, work toward improving family functioning, teaching parenting skills, and preventing child abuse and neglect. The Gary Klinsky Children's Centers provide academically enriching after-school instruction. The Brooklyn Bureau manages sites at four schools serving children in kindergarten through 6th grade

For 135 years, the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service has helped children reach their potential, families become stronger, and adults lead productive, fulfilling lives.
In 1866 the agency was founded during the aftermath of the Civil War to help homeless children living in extreme poverty in Brooklyn. In 1868 the agency opens a vocational training center specifically for girls. In the next 25 years, the center helped more than 10,000 girls receive training and become self-sufficient. "Seaside Home for Mothers and Children at Coney Island" was opened in 1876 to combat the appalling death rate in cholera epidemic among poor children in Brooklyn. In 1878 the agency organized programs to feed, clothe and provide shelter to hungry, desperate families, and to provide emergency work for adults in impoverished families. In 1900 the agency began distributing pasteurized milk to children in poor families. The program continues until 1910, when the City of New York assumed responsibility.
Today the Bureau has a staff of 680, 20 sites throughout Brooklyn and more than 500 volunteers.

Contact person: Frank Sala, Director, Volunteer Services, (718) 310-5621, (email)

Address:

285 Schermerhorn Street Brooklyn, NY 11217 (See a map)

Directions:

The nearest subway stations are as follows: Hoyt-Schermerhorn Station - A, C, G trains - and walk one-half block east; Nevins Street Station - 1, 2, 4 and 5 trains - and walk two short blocks to Schermerhorn Street, make. . . (more)   Nearest Metro/Subway Stop: Hoyt-Schermerhorn Station - A, C, G trains ,   Walk distance (in minutes): one   Nearest Bus Stop: 37, 41, 47, 67, 103, 5 minute walk