Neighbors

Peninsula Counseling Center receives grant for child counseling program

Posted

A program that has enjoyed a decades-long run of success at Peninsula Counseling Center in Valley Stream had new life breathed into it after it received thousands of dollars in grant money earlier this month.

The Joan Baum Friends Program has been organized by PCC for over 30 years, reaching out to students in the Lynbrook, East Rockaway and Hewlett-Woodmere school districts. This month, Town of Hempstead Supervisor Kate Murray, Senior Councilman Anthony J. Santino and Councilman Bruce Blakeman announced they had secured a grant of $17,498 grant for the program, which seeks to connect elementary school students who are struggling socially with friends and mentors in their school district.

“We match teen volunteers from the high school in each district with a younger student in the elementary school of the same district who are really just looking for a friend,” Audrey Goodman, the coordinator of the Joan Baum Friends Program, said. “The younger students really just need someone who they feel like they can connect to and have a meaningful friendship with.”

The program has worked “extremely well,” Goodman said, and she is not the only one singing its praises.

“I am thrilled that we are able to support the Peninsula Counseling Center’s efforts to offer positive support for our local youth,” Murray said when announcing the grant. “The Joan Baum Friends Program provides young students with an outlet to connect with student role models who help steer them through troubling times and challenges.”

“We applaud the Peninsula Counseling Center and the student mentors for their efforts in helping children in need of extra support,” Santino said. “We’re proud to assist an organization that serves the needs of our community’s youth,” Blakeman added.

“We do a lot with Peninsula Counseling Center,” said Karen Aquino, a social worker from the East Rockaway school district who works often with the center. “We send students there for counseling for all kinds of things and I always have nothing but good things to say about it. They really do a great job and care about the welfare of the kids that we send to them.”

The over 130 students enrolled with the program suffer from no one issue in particular, but instead suffer from different difficult social issues.

“This isn’t just for one type of ailment,” she said. “This for anyone who feels like they could use a little help, they could use a friend. We work with students who are new to the district or even new the country, students who are going through a divorce or other issues at home, only children or children who just feel isolated, they all can benefit from this.”

Goodman said a large part of the program’s success is the meaningful connection that the two students make. That comes in part from the careful matching process that pairs two participants.

“First we meet with the younger student who has expressed an interest in our program or who seems like they could use a friend,” she explained. “We speak with them, their family, their teachers, to find out what exactly they’re struggling with, what their needs are.”

Meanwhile, high school students who wish to enroll as a friend for a younger classmate fill out an application and let counselors know their own interests, strengths and reasons for wanting to join the program.

“After we meet with the younger child and we have an idea of what kind of services they need or what would benefit them, we go back to our application pool and find an older student who we think would work well with them, and we match them together.”

After being matched, the two students spend roughly an hour a week together, building friendships they way children their age typically do.

“They do homework together, talk, play games, really whatever they want to do,” Goodman said. “The whole key is building a meaningful and special friendship between the two of them. They spend most of their time one-on-one, and there are group activities as well so they can really get to know one another.”

The nearly $18,000 in grant money will go a long way, Goodman said, in helping the center reach out to as many children as possible.

“I think the best way to sum up how we’ll use the grant money is to get as many students, older and younger, involved with the program as possible,” she said. “It’s been around for a long time and we’ve seen a lot of great results from it, so the more kids we can have under the umbrella, the better.”