The puzzle pieces on the wall of what will be the new nearly $5 million, 10,000-square-foot autistic services facility at 164-14 Cross Bay Boulevard in Howard Beach are meant to be symbolic, said Andrew Baumann, CEO of nonprofit New York Families for Autistic Children (NYFAC).
“Autism is a puzzle; it’s about finding the missing pieces,” he said.
The Ozone Park-based nonprofit, which provides services for more than 300 families in Queens and Brooklyn, hopes to help those families find those missing pieces in the form of new programs that their facility—scheduled to open in June—will provide.
Renovations at the new site are expected to take 90 days, with NYFAC officials slating June 1 as the official ribbon-cutting ceremony that will mark the opening of the facility.
Between support, training, clinical and recreational services, NYFAC, founded in 1998, currently offers at least 18 different programs for families. The added room at the new two-floor facility on Cross Bay Boulevard will allow the agency to add new programs such as art, music and drama for children with autism.
The $4.9 million in funding for the facility—split between city, state and federal funding sources—includes $2.5 million from the Queens delegation to the council, $1.5 million from Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s budget, $300,000 from Congressman Gregory Meeks, $200,000 appropriated by former state Assemblywoman Audrey Pheffer prior to her stepping down last year, and $200,000 from state Senator Malcolm Smith.
Baumann called funding the facility, a project in the making for the last six years, a joint effort on local, state and federal levels.
While NYFAC currently provides support groups and informational session workshops for parents and professionals, the nonprofit’s current facility in Ozone Park, Baumann said, does not have the space necessary to do much more than that.
“I can’t have kids here; we don’t have the room for it. So the new building is going to be completely dedicated to the kids that we serve,” he said.
It took NYFAC roughly 15 months to iron out the details on the property deal involving the Cross Bay Boulevard facility—formerly the site of now-closed Chinese restaurant Danny’s Schezuan, which was owned by Danny Chan, a close friend of Baumann’s.
The nonprofit closed the deal on the property last June. Chan, who last owned the property, donated a piano for the music center, which will be dedicated to the Chan family.
NYFAC plans to use the additional space provided by the facility to house adult programs, children’s programs, speech therapy, socialization and music classes, first aid, a sensory room for occupational therapy, and a full working kitchen to teach home economics. That’s just the first floor.
The second floor will provide space for an instructional room, computer room, meeting room, board room, and administrative offices, among others.
Also featured on the second floor will be a TV studio to web cast instructional videos, presentations, lessons for kids, training programs, or even shows that children sing or act in at the center.
“We want to make our community a big part of this building, so community involvement is key to us,” said Baumann.
Adding additional programs such as those, Baumann said, would go a long way towards providing assistance to local families with loved ones struggling with autism.
“One in a hundred kids get diagnosed in with autism,” he said. “Whether you’re in Queens or elsewhere, it’s a big issue.”
With the current facility, NYFAC sends employees to local homes three to four days a week to work with autistic children, where they teach them activities in daily living—which are basic social interactions such as learning to shop at a store.
From a parent’s point of view, Cheryl Marsh, NYFAC’s executive director, whose own daughter, Tori, was diagnosed with autism, pointed out that the struggles that come with raising a child with autism are many, which make any extra support vital for families to cope.
“The word is ‘more’,” Marsh said. “Every child has tantrums, but our children have them longer and much more intense. Every child goes to doctors, [but] we have specialists for everything. Everything is just more, and it can be extremely overwhelming.”
“The beauty of NYFAC is that we’re all together,” she added. “When your child is the one that is rolling on the floor and screaming, nobody is going to look at you, nobody is going to judge you…we’re in this together and we understand. When we first started NYFAC, we did it ourselves, and there was nothing. Now we can give back to the people that come after us.”
By Jean-Paul Salamanca
Forum Newsgroup Photo by Jean-Paul Salamanca
jp-salamanca@theforumnewsgroup.cm
