Learning to Trust

Photograph by Arthur Elgort

For more than a century, some of New York City’s most vulnerable children have made the journey north to a former farm in Westchester County to acquire the skills and attitudes they need to become successful adults.

Every year, some 400 children and adolescents stay at the Children’s Village, a 150-acre residential treatment center in Dobbs Ferry, hoping to heal and straighten out their fragile young lives. Many have been neglected or chronically abused. They may lack functional or supportive families, and often arrive at the center fearful or in deep despair.

The center offers them not only counseling and treatment programs, but also stability, caring, and hope.

“One of the biggest problems is a sense of betrayal and abandonment” among many incoming residents, says Linda M. Stutz, vice president for development at Children’s Village. “Helping such kids to trust and to deal with relationships in a healthy way is critical.”

Founded in 1851 in New York City as the New York Juvenile Asylum, the institution first focused on helping immigrant children who were living on city streets. In 1901, it bought a large farm in Dobbs Ferry and built its central facility on that property, winning praise for its homelike therapeutic environment.

Today, Children’s Village also has nine other residential or community-based programs in the New York metropolitan area, which provide children and youths ages 5 to 20 with a range of services as varied as outreach to street kids, crime prevention, abuse counseling, and job training. About $2-million of its $40-million annual budget is raised from private donations; the rest comes mostly from contracts with city and state agencies.

Here, a staff psychologist observes as one of the children at the center uses puppets in a session of play therapy.