In 1887, Crestwood Children’s Center was founded by the son of two of the founders of Hillside Family of Agencies. This year, Crestwood celebrates its 125th anniversary. Hillside celebrates its 175th.
Since 1998, the groups have joined forces. Their mission: To provide comprehensive services to children and their families. Crestwood’s role in that mission is to serve children under 14 years old with mental health or behavioral issues.
It hasn’t always been that way, though.
The past
On July 23, 1887, Dr. Edward M. Moore opened a temporary shelter on the shore of Lake Ontario to help babies suffering from a type of cholera known as Infant Summer Fever. At that time, the disease had an 85 percent mortality rate, but 32 of the 36 babies treated at what was then called the Infant’s Summer Hospital that hot, dry summer went home with their mothers in August.
What would in 1991 become Crestwood Children’s Center went through many changes before then, including a switch to year-round child care in 1926, a facility expansion in 1938 to help deal with the growing polio epidemic, a change to a focus on mental health in 1958 and a move to Scottsville Road in Chili in 1959.
In 1998, Crestwood became an affiliate of Hillside Family of Agencies.
Barbara Conradt, who joined Crestwood in 1979 and became president in 2003, said that when the Chili campus was first opened, it was not unusual for a child to remain in residential care there for up to five years. Those children were only able to see their families for a short time on weekends.
“The notion was that the child needed to be segregated from the family, that we would provide treatment, and that we would send the child, cured, back to the family,” Conradt said. “I think over the years people have recognized that while that was the state of the industry in the ’50s and ’60s, that's not what works for families now.”
The present
Today, 26 children live on the Scottsville Road campus, most of whom go to school and receive family therapy there. Their average stay is now seven months, and families are welcome in the cottages at any time.
“We used to think we needed to provide everything for the child here, and now I think we recognize that a child who’s in residential care here is best served if their ties to the community are not cut,” Conradt said.
In 1887, Crestwood Children’s Center was founded by the son of two of the founders of Hillside Family of Agencies. This year, Crestwood celebrates its 125th anniversary. Hillside celebrates its 175th.
Since 1998, the groups have joined forces. Their mission: To provide comprehensive services to children and their families. Crestwood’s role in that mission is to serve children under 14 years old with mental health or behavioral issues.
It hasn’t always been that way, though.
The past
On July 23, 1887, Dr. Edward M. Moore opened a temporary shelter on the shore of Lake Ontario to help babies suffering from a type of cholera known as Infant Summer Fever. At that time, the disease had an 85 percent mortality rate, but 32 of the 36 babies treated at what was then called the Infant’s Summer Hospital that hot, dry summer went home with their mothers in August.
What would in 1991 become Crestwood Children’s Center went through many changes before then, including a switch to year-round child care in 1926, a facility expansion in 1938 to help deal with the growing polio epidemic, a change to a focus on mental health in 1958 and a move to Scottsville Road in Chili in 1959.
In 1998, Crestwood became an affiliate of Hillside Family of Agencies.
Barbara Conradt, who joined Crestwood in 1979 and became president in 2003, said that when the Chili campus was first opened, it was not unusual for a child to remain in residential care there for up to five years. Those children were only able to see their families for a short time on weekends.
“The notion was that the child needed to be segregated from the family, that we would provide treatment, and that we would send the child, cured, back to the family,” Conradt said. “I think over the years people have recognized that while that was the state of the industry in the ’50s and ’60s, that's not what works for families now.”
The present
Today, 26 children live on the Scottsville Road campus, most of whom go to school and receive family therapy there. Their average stay is now seven months, and families are welcome in the cottages at any time.
“We used to think we needed to provide everything for the child here, and now I think we recognize that a child who’s in residential care here is best served if their ties to the community are not cut,” Conradt said.
Conradt said some parents come in to help their child get up in the morning, take them to school, or help cook meals.
“There was a lot of blaming of families for kids' problems,” said Hillside Family of Agencies Chief Operating Officer Clyde Comstock. “Our perspective now is that kids are best raised in the context of their own families.”
Crestwood is currently one of only two agencies in Western New York offering residential care to children under 14, but it doesn’t stop there. It also offers day treatment programs with one teacher and one teacher’s assistant for every six children from school districts across the county.
More than 120 students are currently in day treatment programs, and more receive weekly counseling services. Neighborhood-based family resource centers across the county offer parent education, early childhood services and general support.
Comstock said Crestwood’s variety of services allows for treatment options custom tailored to families.
“One of the particular skills at Crestwood is working with a child and family to figure out what is the real need and jointly coming up with a path to get to the solution,” Comstock said.
Hillside Family of Agencies and its affiliate Crestwood Children's Center also recently acquired Family Finding, a six step process that allows children to reunite with family members and other supportive adults who may be estranged from or unknown to youth in Crestwood's care.
Comstock said some children have had up to 30 placements, and the new service has already introduced children to siblings they didn’t know they had.
Both Conradt and Comstock credit much of Crestwood’s recent success to being a part of Hillside. They said Hillside’s comparatively massive budget allows the smaller organization to maintain robust marketing, financial services, and HR departments that it otherwise couldn’t afford.
“We can build more talent in a department than any one organization could by themselves,” Comstock said. “We share that together.”
“We get the value of being part of a large organization, and yet we're still able to operate as an independent organization,” Conradt said.
The future
Comstock and Conradt said some of the biggest changes on the immediate horizon for Crestwood will come as a result of health care reform.
According to Comstock, about 40 percent of Crestwood’s funding comes from Medicaid, and it’s difficult to predict how that funding will be affected in the near future.
“We're in the beginning stages of a transformation of our industry,” he said. “The entire child service delivery system is going to change, probably within one or two years.”
Comstock and Conradt anticipate that within a few years, children will be referred to Crestwood with the expectation that they’ll be there for a few months, then receive outpatient services in the community.
Conradt said that, because Crestwood is so specialized, its beds will likely remain filled, but with an increased turnover rate, more children will be able to receive treatment.
“Because they’re thinking of it as a month or two-month placement instead of a year-long placement, people will be much more likely to use or to use it as a respite,” Conradt said.
The finances, however, may get complicated. Comstock said that the agency may need to agree to provide care for a fixed amount, and that, “if it costs more than that we lose. If it's greater than that then maybe we can keep that to reinvest in other services.”
“It's going to be a bumpy and slippery ride between now and then,” Comstock said. “I think when we get there it'll probably be OK, but getting from here to there is proving to be very difficult.”
