Northside Center For Child Development Inc

On any given day, we have as many as 500 children and families coming through our doors. Children and families come to Northside for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they come to talk to their social workers, or have a psychological evaluation, or practice language skills with their speech therapist. Sometimes they come to express their feelings and concerns through art, music or dance. They come to hone their karate skills or thrash out their understanding of difficult books with their Northside reading therapist, or with the help of our Librarian, choose new books. They come for assistance with their homework, while their debate with our psychiatrist the merits and limitations of medication. They come to develop and enhance motor skills, and they come to learn how to socialize with their peers. They come to our school to achieve those things that cannot always be achieved in other educational settings, and they come to discover, to learn to communicate and to grow.

Northside Center fosters the healthy development of children and families and seeks to empower them to respond constructively to negative societal factors including racism and its related consequences. Through comprehensive, high quality mental health and educational services, coupled with research, children and families are aided in developing to their full potential.

At the end of the [Second World] war, two young psychologists with doctorate degrees from Columbia University, one an assistant professor at the City College of New York and the other a psychological consultant doing psychological testing at the Riverdale Children's Association, decided to try to do something about the lack of services for troubled youth in Harlem. Kenneth Bancroft Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark approached nearly every social service agency in New York City with a modest proposal. They urged the established agencies to expand their programs to provide social work, psychological evaluation, and remediation for youth in Harlem, since there were virtually no mental-health services in the community. Each agency they explored the proposal with rejected it....The Clarks "realized that we weren't going to get a [child guidance clinic] opened that way. So we decided to open it ourselves."

-- excerpt from Children, Race, and Power, Kenneth and Mamie Clark's Northside Center, by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, 1996

Behavioral Health Clinics

Our Clinics provide therapeutic interventions for children of all ages and their families and some adults. Using an array of treatment and support modalities children and families are aided in developing their strengths to facilitate and enhance growth and development.

110th Street Clinic

At our 110th street clinic there is an abundance of both educational and treatment services. Some of which include: diagnostic evaluations; individual, group, and family therapy; crisis intervention; tutoring and homework help; afterschool recreational and cultural activities; and parent education groups.
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Central Harlem Services (CHS)

Central Harlem Services of Northside Center for Child Development, a strength-based perspective is at the core of the development and implementation of comprehensive mental health services.
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Harlem-Dowling On-site Clinic

Northside provides a small on site behavioral health clinic to selected foster children and families of Harlem via its relationship with Harlem-Dowling.

Therapeutic Early Childhood Center (TECC)

The Therapeutic Early Childhood Center provides early intervention services to children as young as 9 months old. Children with special needs receive services from a full spectrum of professionals, including special education teachers, social workers, psychologists and speech/occupational/and physical therapists. Rounding out this comprehensive team is a full-time nurse, a consulting psychiatrist and both music and art therapists. The Therapeutic Early Childhood Center provides specialized educational and clinical intervention that emphasizes the individual growth of both the child and care-giver.

The Susan Patricof Early Head Start and Head Start Programs

The Early Head Start and Head Start programs at the Northside Center are designed to provide individualized comprehensive infant/child development and parent education services to 206 low-income infants, toddlers, preschoolers, pregnant women and their families in the East Harlem, and Central Harlem Communities.

After School Program

The After School program provides Northside children with an additional place to learn and grow as well as ensuring a safe, fun place to be after school. All children are provided with Homework assistance and have access to computers , recreation and many other activities that stimulate body and mind.

Library

Founded 30 years ago, the Children’s Library was named after the late Jane Allen Emil, who brought warmth and devotion to hundreds of children during her long tenure as a reading therapist at Northside. It has over 4,000 books and offers children a wonderful resource for study, thinking reading and learning.

By strengthening the family unit; giving individual attention to the needs of each member and the family as a whole, and by helping families understand and address the impact of societal forces on their lives, children and families can develop to their fullest potential and achieve a sense of mastery and power over their lives.

Northside, fulfills a function that is broader than clinical and educational; it encompasses community education, action and advocacy.

Our vision is to be a change agent in the development of treatment modalities, educational approaches and public policy affecting children and families.

When Thelma Dye-Holmes, who holds a doctorate in clinical psychology, took over as executive director of the Northside Center for Child Development in 1994, she transformed a $3 million dollar agency in the red into a $12 million agency with a profit margin. One of New York’s oldest and most respected mental health agencies, Northside serves over 1,500 children and their families annually. “I have a most fulfilling job because everyday I get to do something to make a child’s life better and I work with wonderful people who are equally fulfilled by…helping children,” Dye says.

With more than 20 years’ experience in her field, she has been a consultant for various schools, foster care agencies, mental health clinics and hospitals. She has presented papers at events organized by the American Psychological Association, Children’s Defense Fund and the American Orthopsychiatric Association.

A lifetime advocate for children and their families, Dye has served on several related committees, including the Mayor’s Children’s Week Committee, and is a member of the board of directors of Covenant House in New York, The Coalition of Voluntary Mental Health Agencies, Citizen’s Committee for Children of New York, Inc., Black Agency Executives, and the Urban Issues Group.

Chairman
Michael Goldstein

President
Susan Patricof

Senior Vice President
Wallace D. Gossett, Esq.

Vice President
Carolyn Wright Lewis

Vice President
Jennie Emil

Secretary
Gilbert H. Boas

Treasurer
Joel D. Zychick, Esq.

Howard C. Amron
A. Marie Betancourt
L. Susan Branche, Ph.D.
Joan Bronk
Robert M. Burger
Heather M. Butts, Esq.
Michael J. Dolan
W. Anthony Edson
Blair Effron
Neil Friedman
Phyllis Harrison-Ross, M.D.
Gregory A. Horowitz, Esq.
Howard Kagan
Harold J. Kingsberg
Margaret Loeb
Steven G. Scheinfeld
Jonathan Schulhof
Anna Ponder
Richard J. Rubino
Joseph R. Varet

Kenneth B. Clark, Ph.D., Board Member, Emeritus
Mamie P. Clark, Ph.D., Board Member, Emeritus

Countries

United States

States

New York

Contact

1301 5TH AVE

NEW YORK, NY 10029-3119

Phone: (212) 426-3410

www.northsidecenter.org

EIN: 13-1656679