Children are the first and most deeply traumatized by homelessness, loss, violence and disaster. They are the family members least able to withstand the emotional battering of poverty. Children born into poverty experience psychiatric problems at a significantly higher rate than children who are not poor. However, children who receive appropriate therapeutic intervention early in their development are much more able to experience success later in life.

ABC established New York City's first mobile mental health crisis and disaster team for children in 1996. Fast Break is a mobile mental health clinic that serves children who have not had access to traditional psychotherapeutic services.

Headquartered at Echo Park, Fast Break helps children and families cope with severe emotional pain. Fast Break’s mental health staff also responds to crises and disasters which have included school shootings, suicides, church fires, plane crashes, the terror attacks, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, accidental deaths and murders by providing mental health assessment, counseling, support and therapeutic childcare.

Fast Break’s services include psychiatric, psychological, educational evaluation and treatment interventions in a wide array of modalities including play therapy and individual, group and family counseling as well as cognitive-behavioral and psycho-pharmacological treatment. ABC's team of psychiatrists, psychologists and psychiatric social workers can be summoned by parents, mental health workers, police officers, school personnel, any caring adults or the children themselves. The mental health staff goes to where the child is, whether that is at home, at school, in a police station, in a playground or in the street, and works with insight, devotion and compassion to provide immediate, substantial and long-term relief.

In the last year, Fast Break served 184 individual children along with their family members.

SWOOOSH

Two new initiatives are appreciably expanding Fast Break and both are born out of ABC’s conviction that the benefits of early intervention are powerful and lasting.

Chosen by the New York State Office of Mental Health as the one and only Manhattan program for young children, Fast Break SWOOOSH will screen 2,000 children a year in Head Start and day care centers. The team works closely with teachers and families to help in the early identification of young children in need of therapeutic intervention. In conjunction with these screenings, Fast Break SWOOOSH has also instituted a Mental Health Consultation and Training Program which engages classroom teachers in an interpretation of challenging behavior that focuses on children’s strengths. Together, strategies are developed to increase the frequency of the kinds of positive classroom experiences that improve the likelihood for present and future school success.

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