Cindy Bautista wins the Commissioner’s Child Advocacy Award from the Administration for Children’s Services
Association to Benefit Children (ABC) is proud to share that Cindy Bautista, the director of our preventive services program, All Children’s House, was awarded the Commissioner’s Child Advocacy Award by New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). Dr. Jackie Martin, ACS’s Deputy Commissioner, honored Ms. Bautista’s leadership with the following words:
Cindy Bautista has steered ABC’s prevention program through the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic with compassion and steadfastness. […] Cindy’s steadfastness also inspires her entire team to feel competent, confident, and committed. She has built a remarkable team and inspires her colleagues with her wisdom, good judgment, and sense of humor.
Cindy is a leader in New York’s preventive services and a compassionate advocate for the most vulnerable children.
Fourteen years of service for highest-risk children
Cindy joined ABC fourteen years ago as a case planner, and she has been supporting children and families at the highest risk for morbidity and mortality ever since.
The families she works with have complex and compounded trauma. “Sometimes, there was violence and abuse - community violence, domestic violence, sexual abuse - directed either at the child or in the home. Sometimes, the parents have substance abuse issues. Most times, the parents have complex trauma and mental health struggles of their own.”
Cindy highlighted that issues of trauma are often intergenerational. “We tend to parent the way we were parented. For parents who grew up in the shelter system without role models, these experiences affect the way they attune with their own babies.” Her team looks at trauma experienced by both the child and the parent to understand the dyad relationship better.
Successful incubation of the Child-Parent Psychotherapy model
Several years ago, Cindy and her team incubated the Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) model, an evidence-based, trauma-informed therapeutic intervention that strengthens child-parent attachment, parental empathy, and resilience in families. Due to its effectiveness, the use of the CPP model she helped incubate provided the blueprint for replication in all of New York City. ABC continues to be responsible for providing preventive services throughout Manhattan, while trusted partner organizations in the rest of the city are achieving citywide systems change by implementing ABC’s CPP model in their own preventive services programs.
95% of the families served by All Children’s House stayed intact at the end of last program year.
Beacon of hope during the COVID-19 crisis
Cindy’s leadership has never more been apparent than during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. Dr. Martin of the ACS said, “As schools and child care centers opened, closed, opened, and then closed again, Cindy supported her team and families to combat the rising feelings of COVID fatigue. The creativity that she and her team exhibited as they maneuvered the challenges of limited public transportation, staff having to quarantine, securing supplies of PPE, and the infinite questions raised regarding best practices for carrying out in-home sessions and supporting families in the age of COVID was evident at every turn.”
Her team also coordinated with other ABC staff for its emergency food and supply distribution effort, through which it provided more than a quarter of a million meals, as well as diapers, wipes, and baby formula to families at the time of their greatest need.
As her team engaged in these herculean efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, Cindy stood by her families and her team. She made visits to homes and shelters to ensure that the families could get to a supervisor at ABC and that her staff felt properly supported.
A true love of ABC
When asked what motivated her to come to work at ABC day after day for fourteen years, Cindy replied: “ABC’s leaders - Gretchen [Buchenholz] and Eri [Noguchi] - are so supportive of the work we do. They are present at every staff meeting, and they are always there to talk about any cases we have concerns with. ABC is an organization for vulnerable children and families, of course - but it is also for the staff who work here.”
Cindy is a tireless advocate for children. ABC is so proud of her many accomplishments, including her most recent award.