East Cleveland Neighborhood Center

Teen Services Center and Programs:  Teen Services co-ed programming for youth 12-16 years offers after school programs which provide education and support to low to moderated income teens.  Structured programming focuses on drug and pregnancy prevention, recreation and an open gym, and teen summer camp.  The Teen Center attempts to educate youth on issues that will enhance their development physically, mentally, socially, and academically.  Teen Services exposes youth to other environments outside their own as well.   Nineteen (19) students participated in the Teen After School program daily and thirteen (13) attended irregularly.  Five (5) participated in the Summer Teem Camp program for 2008.  Participation dropped we believed because the summer program was cut back to five weeks instead of our customary eight to ten week program.

 Our Teen Services also provides a thirteen (13) week ATOD prevention education throughout various Middle Schools in the Greater Cleveland community that teaches life skills which promote ATOD resistance skills.  Hundreds of students were reached through our Reconnecting Youth curriculum during 2008.  The communities serviced were Cleveland, Cleveland Heights and Warrensville Heights.                                                           

 Summer Youth Enrichment Services: “Freedom School,” The Neighborhood Center implemented the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools® model for out of school time summer programming in 2008.  Freedom Schools programs provides summer enrichment programming through a model curriculum that supports children and families around five essential components: high quality academic enrichment, parent and family involvement, social action and civic engagement, intergenerational servant leadership development, and nutrition, health and mental health.  Freedom School is literacy based program that boosts student motivation to read, generate more positive attitudes toward learning, and connects the needs of children and families to the resources of their communities.  The CDF Freedom Schools model incorporates the totality of CDF’s Leave No Child Behind® mission by fostering environments that support children and young adults to excel and believe in their ability to make a difference in themselves, in their home, schools, communities, nation and the world. Weekly field trips are also part of the program.  Fifty (50) youth between the ages of 6-11 years of age participated in our Freedom School. 

  The Family to Family Foster Care Program now known as Neighborhood Integrated System of Care carries out the Center’s priorities to assist families in crises; strengthen the capacity of families to improve community conditions and obtain needed resources; and increase access to existing services through collaboration and cooperation among human service organizations.  Abuse and neglect of children have had it impact on the residents of East Cleveland.  In collaboration with Cuyahoga County Children and Family Services, the Center has developed within the city of East Cleveland a network of family foster care that is neighborhood based, and culturally sensitive.  The Center in collaboration with Children and Family Services train and prepare families identified in East Cleveland to receive children in need of placement while the biological parent receives needed assistance.  The program helps to minimize the trauma of separation when children have to be removed from their homes and a familiar environment.  Through direct intervention (wrap-around) staff within the program help with wrapping around the families traditional as well as non traditional social services to prevent families from getting involved with the Department of Children and Families Services (family preservation), or help with the reunification of families.  The program is part of a larger consortium of agencies involved in the child welfare spectrum.  The Neighborhood Center is the lead agency.  Five hundred and eighty-one (581) families were serviced during 2008.

Foster Care and Kinship Care Support Groups

The Neighborhood Center hosts the Kinship Care Support Group formed to provide moral support to grandparents and other kinship (aunts, uncles, sisters, etc.) that cared for relatives are challenged and sometimes discouraged because of the material demands, as well as the social and psychological needs of the children they assumed custody of.  Through the group moral support, encouragement, resource linkages, and education is provided to assist kinship care providers with their social, material and psychological needs.  This group meets monthly with an average attendance of 20 people.

The Neighborhood Center hosts the East Cleveland Foster Care Cluster Group formed to provide moral support to Foster Parents who have opened their homes when children are in need of alternative shelter.  The support group serves to educate, provide resource linkages, and also address their social, material and psychological needs.  This group meets monthly with an average attendance of 15 people.

Tapestry is a program to provide intensive community based activity/programs for families with a child diagnosed with Severe Emotional Disorder.  In partnership with the Cuyahoga County Mental Health Board (14) Family to Family Collaborative of which East Cleveland is one support these families through a social service wrap around process to prevent these youth from going any deeper into child welfare institutions.  The goal is to maintain these youth if at all possible in their communities instead of a residential/institutional environment.  Also the program helps to connect families with other families experiencing common issues.   Twenty-five (25) in the East Cleveland cluster were helped by the East Cleveland Collaborative in 2008.

The City Of East Cleveland Diversion Program

 The Juvenile Diversion Program is prevention and intervention program that diverts youth from the juvenile justice system by providing correction, guidance, strengthening children’s bonds with their parents; establishing clear standards and rules for acceptable behavior as well as teaching skills that foster character development and good citizenship. Volunteer magistrates and a Case Manager from the Neighborhood Center implement the program.  Cases are heard before a magistrate who will impose certain sanctions that must be complied with for one year.  If complied with the juvenile has avoided a juvenile record.

The diversion program allows for a least punitive course on offenses that are status offenses in nature, non-violent and generally an initial offense.  During 2008 (72) youth  received diversion services.