North American Family Institute
Website : http://nafiny.org

Company Information
North American Family Institute, Inc. (NAFI) is a non-profit human service agency whose mission is to create diverse and innovative services to help individuals grow and change in order to better their lives and the world around them. Since 1974, North American Family Institute has successfully provided community-based treatment services for adolescents in a variety of settings. Today, NAFI operates over 90 community-based programs in ten states from Maine to Florida. In New York, NAFI offers three(3) community-based programs to help underserved and underrepresented populations: Westchester Wraparound, Family Wraparound and Parenting With Love & Limits (PLL).

NAFI’s Westchester Wraparound, based in Westchester County, New York, applies a very community-based service approach to foster care by offering specialized treatment for up to 22 adolescents with special needs currently in out-of-state residential placements. The program gives youth the opportunity to experience a stable environment that is community based, least restrictive and responsive to his/her clinical and cultural needs.

Westchester Wraparound differs from traditional therapeutic foster care by offering comprehensive home-based support through a mental health-oriented Family Support Team using a Wraparound approach. The Wraparound approach begins with the strengths and needs of the youth to create an "institution without walls" to wrap services around the youth. The team insures that each of the youth in the program receive daily support from licensed clinicians and expert paraprofessionals. Participating foster parents are highly professionalized to provide round-the-clock supervision and are trained to use flexible and innovative interventions and approaches that safely aid and guide youths in their care.

NAFI's Family Wraparound Program is all about prevention and family preservation. Family Wraparound works collaboratively with the Westchester County Department of Social Services in supporting relative caretakers, biological parents and children in court-directed custody cases. Family Wraparound will preserve the family placement as an alternative to traditional foster care placement; empowering the caretaker and biological parents to gain strategies, skills, and services. Family Wraparound is committed to helping the children and families they serve to identify their needs, vision and fulfill their goals as individuals and as a unit.

Parenting with Love and Limits® (PLL) is an evidence-based family education, skill-building and therapeutic intervention model which has demonstrated effectiveness in significantly reducing aggressive behaviors, depression, attention deficit disorder problems, externalizing problems and substance use while also reducing recidivism and improving family communication.

PLL contracts include one for Prevention and one for Re-Entry. Prevention works with parents and children together to keep children out of the child welfare system. The Re-Entry model works with children, families, residential facilities and the juvenile justice system to facilitate a child's early re-entry back to the community and the family.