Edward Reyes (Inwood House/Children's Village) on structural funding issues
Edward Reyes of Inwood House at Children's Village testifies about the growing disconnect between DYCD requirements and available resources, arguing funding formulas based on bed utilization rather than actual service needs leave programs unable to meet complex demands. He calls for funding based on service scope, staffing reflecting youth acuity, and vacancy assumptions built into contracts.
I'm the director for TIL program and crisis shelter for Inwood House at the Children's Village.
I'm honored to be here today to speak about this growing issue and among my fellow colleagues.
We've been working in collaboration with DYCD for quite some time.
And we specialize in just meeting youth where they're most at risk and emotionally vulnerable.
Despite the challenges, we ensure that these youth are safe, cared for, and guided toward independence and, of course, self-reliance.
With this in mind, it's important that we address a critical issue facing New York City's runaway and homeless youth programs, which is a growing disconnect between what DYCD requires
RHOA programs to provide and the staffing and financial resources available to programs to adequately and successfully meet those expectations.
When these contracts and funding formulas focus primarily on bed utilization and minimum staffing requirements,
rather than the actual needs of the young people being served, RHY programs are left attempting to meet increasingly complex demands with limited resources.
This is not a failure of individual programs or frontline workers.
It's a structural funding issue that requires city-level action.
So we feel strongly that there's a need for the following, which is to fund RHY programs.
programs based on the actual scope of services that DYCD requires them to provide and not simply the number of shelter beds available.
These funding formulas should account for supervision, case management, crisis response, housing navigation, education, employment support, behavioral, health, and other required services.
We'd also like to establish staffing expectations that reflect youth acuity and service intensity.
A program serving youth with significant behavioral health issues, substance use, safety, and crisis response needs may require substantially more staffing
than a program serving youth with lower levels of need, even when the number of beds is identical.
We'd like to fully fund adequate staffing across all shifts.
Many people don't realize that when you work in residential services, we're talking about a 24-hour facility that requires 24-hour supervision.
So additional resources are needed for evenings, overnight hours, weekends, holidays, and other periods when supervision and crisis response and supervision demands are particularly high.
We also want to build vacancy and turnover assumptions into city contracts.
Programs should not be forced to operate below safe and effective staffing levels because the positions are difficult to fill.
Employees are on leave or struggle with turnover issues.
In closing, we just like to thank all city entities that are here and giving.
That's an opportunity to speak, and I thank you for your time.