Resources

Choose Love For Home
Choose Love for Home gives families a healthy way to grow together. Using neuroscience and positive psychology, children and parents can learn to better understand themselves and each other. Through a series of self-guided videos, activities, and “dinner table discussion topics,” Choose Love for Home teaches families how to manage their emotions, communicate in healthier ways, and create a nurturing environment focused on the things that matter most.

Sesame Street in Communities
The Sesame Street in Communities website is a wonderful resource for families to access up-to-date, current information on helping children cope with a variety of stressors today.  Topics include grief, violence, handling tantrums, exploring emotions, and school readiness, just to name a few.  The website provides age-appropriate activities, videos, songs, and games.

Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media rates movies, TV shows, podcasts, books, and more to help families make decisions about the appropriateness and suitability of the entertainment choices they make for their kids. They offer an extended library of age-based ratings and reviews.

Books are a wonderful tool to help kids learn more about themselves and others.  Books help children develop empathy.  Books help children feel and think.  Through the characters, children can watch how others solve problems.  Books also help adults approach tough, emotional topics and provide an opportunity for children to open up with questions and dialogue.  

Merakey
Merakey is a preventive service agency that provides an array of services to meet the individual needs of each family.  Services are designed to promote positive change, alleviate the impact of crisis situations, empower students and families, and connect with community resources. 

Cornell Cooperative Extension
The Cornell Cooperative Extension of Orange County offers a variety of programs that support families in creating and maintaining nurturing environments to raise children and build resilience. They provide parent workshops on a continuous basis throughout the year.  Previous topics include Discipline is Not a Dirty Word, Resilience, Raising Tweens and Teens, and Children and Media. They also offer the Relatives as Parents Program (RAPP). 

Mental Health Urgent Care
Mental Health & Substance Use Urgent Care provides walk-in care for mental health and addiction for adults & children in the Hudson Valley. Adults and children struggling with addiction or mental health concerns can walk in to the Access: Supports for Living Urgent Care. Everybody is welcome, regardless of insurance or ability to pay. You don’t need an appointment or a referral.  A compassionate team will welcome you or your child to the Urgent Care, work with you to figure out what’s happening, and begin a plan for recovery.  
 

Choose Love
Choose Love for Schools™ is a no cost, next-generation Character Social Emotional Development (CSED) program for Pre-K through 12th grades, designed to teach students, educators and staff how to choose love in any circumstance thereby creating a safer, more connected school culture. Choose Love For Schools incorporates neuroscience and positive psychology to teach mindfulness, character, and emotional intelligence.  These essential life skills and tools make students better learners, more desirable employees and happier, healthier, human beings.

Centervention 
Centervention is a website that provides free Social-Emotional Learning lessons and activities that can be completed in the classroom.

CASEL
The Collaborative for Academic, Social , and Emotional Learning is a nonprofit, nonpartisan leader in SEL that evaluates programming, curates research, informs legislation, and partners on implementation. Their mission is to help make evidence-based social and emotional learning an integral part of education from preschool through high school.  Their website is full of research that demonstrates the benefits of SEL, resources to help implement SEL, and news, articles, and helpful webinars. 

Resilient Educator 
Resilient Educator shares content that helps teachers be an educational superhero to students- all while taking care of themselves too. The website includes information for Teacher Self-Care and Well Being and Elevating Responsive Teaching: Poverty, Trauma, and Resilience.