On our latest episode of the Long Island Wins Show on OWWR Old Westbury Web Radio (owwrny.org), Long Island Wins’ Online Editor, Christian Bonawandt, is joined in the studio by Executive Director Maryann Sinclair Slutsky and special guest Patrick Young, program director for CARECEN and resident blogger on Long Island Wins’ website.
The show focused on the newly arrived children from Central America who have come to Long Island. The topic made major headlines last summer, when there was a noticeable increase in children arriving at the southern U.S. border from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. They came fleeing horrific violence inflicted by rising gang activity and to reunite with family members already living in the U.S.
Long Island has received the third largest number of children of any region in the U.S., with 3,286 resettling here—almost half of all the children resettled in New York State.
We discussed the various needs that the children have, focusing on legal services and support for legal services. We also talked briefly on their educational needs and physical and mental health care services for the children. We also detailed the many organizations that have been working to provide those services.
Long Island Wins partnered with the Health and Welfare Council of Long Island to produce a resource guide to service providers for the newly arrived children on Long Island, which is available here in English and here in Spanish.
The Long Island Wins Show broadcasts every Thursday at 12 p.m. from the OWWR studio on the SUNY College at Old Westbury campus (owwrny.org). Tune in on April 16 at 12 p.m. to hear more about immigration on Long Island and how it affects you and your community. Be sure to reach out to us and let us know if you would like to be a guest or would like to hear about a specific immigration topic.
Listen to our entire conversation below.
