Agency rises to COVID challenge
For its 50th anniversary, Family of Woodstock was planning to reintroducing itself to the Hudson Valley. COVID-19 squashed those plans, but Family rose to the challenge to continue serving the community.
“It’s been an incredibly chal
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lenging year,” Executive Director Michael Berg said. “We planned a gala and a concert. None of that happened.
“The impact of the virus has been profound on us,” he said. “The programming that we’ve
run has been difficult, but it has continued. All of our shelters have continued. It has been a tremendous effort on the part of our staff.”
COVID protocols have had the greatest impact on Family’s shelters, Berg said.
“We can no longer put two families in the same room,” he said. “But still, you’re living in close contact with people that you don’t know, and it’s scary. Some people don’t want to go to shelters because of that, even though they got food and they got health and they got child care, all those services. We have had some instruction from the state that we should hold a bedroom in case somebody got isolated and exposed. The problem with that is immediately you lose 20 percent of your income.
“You’re dealing with a lot more emotional uncertainty, and that just heightens the tension,” Berg added.
But “we’ve survived,” he said. “Every shelter we’re running has been open.”
Berg said one shelter had to close temporarily in April and another in October because of staff exposure to the coronavirus. “What we did was we put people in motels and we serviced them” he said. “We brought them food. We made sure that they were OK until we had enough staff to bring them all back.
“I think that, over time,
our staff has begun to recognize that they really are essential workers,” he said. “In many ways, we are on the front line.”
Berg said Family has focused on “helping kids that aren’t signing up, going to their houses, seeing if there is a way for us to help them/”
“We’ve been bringing some of those kids to the Hodge Center [in Midtown Kingston] because we have technology there and WiFi there, but it’s a hit-andmiss thing, and particularly for people for which English is not their primary language,” he said. “The school situation has been extremely difficult.”
Berg said Family also has had “a surge of domestic violence survivors in the last month and a half or two months. Initially [in the pandemic], they were hunkered down, but it’s not a stable situation in many cases. We had 20 new cases.”
“We’re all j uggling whatever, and you don’t know what’s coming over the phone next,” he said. “That’s normal for Family, but now it’s increased.”
At the height of COVID’s first wave, many food pantries were closed, and Family’s older volunteers stayed away, Berg said. Still, the agency has distributed 185,000 pounds of produce to pantries and other food programs this year, up from 130,000 last year, he said.
“Emergency food is going to be a huge issue as people start to get evicted and use whatever money they have to just keep a roof over their
heads,” Berg said.
Family of Woodstock was launched in 1970 with emergency shelters. It opened the first runaway shelter between New York City and Albany in 1976 with federal money and created the first domestic violence shelter between Yonkers and Albany in 1980. It now has evolved into a force for child, adult and family services in Ulster County.
But “we don’t advertise a lot,” Berg said. “In fact, one of the goals of the 50th anniversary was to tell people who we are and all that we do.
“We’re talking about having a campaign in 2021 which goes around and tells people about the 22 major programs that we run and all of the areas that we work in: substance abuse, domestic violence, etc.”
Berg said Family is a reactive organization.
“We built substantial programming by listening to what people need and adding components where we can write a grant,” he said. “We do what we say we’re going to do.”
At the heart of Family is its hotline, at (845) 6792485.
“We run the oldest continuously operated emergency switchboard in the country — 24 hours, seven days a week for 50 years,” Berg said. “It’s an amazing commitment to the community, and what it’s saying is there will always be somebody there that is willing to listen, without burdening you with their judgments of what you did,
without telling you what to do. They will just listen and help you figure out what you want to do, what your needs are, what your goals should be. That’s incredibly important.”
A “textmeback” option was added to the hotline a few years ago, and a Spanish language line (available 10 to 12 hours per day, five days a week) was added this year because of COVID.
Family is now an $11 million agency and has become a major employer in Ulster County, with a paid staff of 180.
“Ten years ago, government contracts represented 85 percent of our budget. Now they represent a little less than 75 percent,” Berg noted. “What it reflects is not that we’ve lost any contracts. We actually haven’t. It’s that the agency has grown, the cost of operation has grown, but the government contracts have not grown. The Family, as an agency, has maintained over 60 governmental contracts for over 10 years and we have not lost any of them.
“We’ve been lucky in that we’ve been able to make connections with local foundations that recognize the full extent that what Family’s committing to in the community and supporting it. Without it, we would not have survived,” he said.
He said donations and foundations “are very critical” to Family.
Monetary donations may be made online by clicking the “Donate” button at familyofwoodstockinc.org.