The Children's Aid Society

City Challenge

City Challenge is an alternative high school for juvenile offenders ages 12-17. It is part of the Youth Leadership Academy, a New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) leadership training facility. City Challenge accommodates up to 50 youth at one time and serves upwards of 180 youth per year.

In 1996, Children’s Aid was invited by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to develop a community-based aftercare component for these youth. The result was the The Children’s Aid City Challenge Aftercare Collaboration, a partnership among OCFS, Children’s Aid and the New York City Department of Education. The program supports youths’ efforts to reintegrate into their communities. It assists families by providing a stable and supportive environment that allows youth to return home and stay out of the system. Most youth reside with their families throughout New York City while reporting five days a week to the facility in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

In 2001, The Children’s Aid Society opened a Boys and Girls Club program at City Challenge. It became the first such club within a New York State juvenile delinquency facility. With a recidivism rate of only 50 percent, compared to a citywide 81 percent, the City Challenge Program has become a proven example that a youth-development approach, paired with family-focused work, is a step in the right direction for these youth.

Children’s Aid offers City Challenge participants the following services:

• Comprehensive medical care
• Intensive family case management
• Parenting Institute
• Afterschool Boys and Girls Club programming
• Job readiness through the Neighborhood Youth Employment Program

In 2006, the Children’s Aid City Challenge Aftercare Collaboration was a recipient of The Annie E. Casey Foundation's Family Strengthening Award.

For more information, please call (718) 789-2899.