Children of Bellevue, Inc.

About Children of Bellevue

For over 60 years, Children of Bellevue has been dedicated to funding the development and sustainment of innovative programs that improve the health and well being of pediatric patients at Bellevue Hospital Center, America’s oldest public hospital. Each year, more than 25,000 children and teens from all five boroughs of New York City come to Bellevue for urgent medical treatment, psychiatric care, routine medical and developmental care, and child abuse intervention.

Bellevue Hospital has been leading the way in child advocacy and compassionate care with the opening of the nation’s first children’s clinic in 1874. Children of Bellevue, a nonprofit organization, advances this legacy by raising over one million dollars annually for ground breaking programs that have proven, life changing results:

• Child Protection: Protocols developed and established at Bellevue, are now fundamental to protocols used nationwide in the identification and treatment of child abuse and neglect.
• Child Life: Field of pediatric medicine created at Bellevue and is now the standard of care in Pediatrics nationwide. Helps children cope with the pain and fear associated with illness, medical treatment and hospitalization.
• Child & Adolescent Psychiatry: Children 3 to 18 years of age receive comprehensive mental health care within In-Patient and Day Treatment settings. First to establish a public school within a public hospital. Recently opened Psychiatric Emergency Room for children and adolescents is state-of-the-art and unique in the city. New psychiatric wing to open in 2012.
• “Reach Out & Read”: Second RO&R site in the nation. NYU/Bellevue study proved success of program and fostered program’s growth with close to 4 million families now served nationwide. Program promotes literacy as a component of pediatric primary care, strengthens critical bonds between parent and child, increases language development and school readiness.
• “Video Interaction Project”: Program to empower parents to take an active role in their child’s development by strengthening critical interactions and bonds through playing, teaching and reading. Published scientific research proves reduction in physical punishment, increased interactions and maternal empowerment, and reduction in maternal depression and stress.