The Safe Center LI, main nonprofit for Nassau domestic violence victims, may close without successor, director says

The Safe Center LI, the main nonprofit serving Nassau County’s survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse, could close by the end of March with no agencies to immediately take over its work, the organization’s executive director said.

"We have weeks, not months, before we shut down," said Joshua Hanson, its executive director.

In February, Newsday reported on a plan by leaders of The Safe Center, which has cut staff and curtailed operations as it faces critical budget shortfalls, to transfer most of its contracts with Nassau County and New York State agencies by March 1 to another nonprofit, Manhattan-based Safe Horizon, the nation's largest nonprofit provider of victim services, which had planned to hire about 30 center staffers and take over its Bethpage offices.

But that plan appears to have foundered after county officials in late February began soliciting interest from other potential providers, a process Hanson and others have said could take months to finish and would not necessarily result in selection of another provider.

The center's potential closing without successor agencies in place could leave Nassau, a county of roughly 1.4 million people, without a domestic violence shelter or victim hotline and dissolve its Child Advocacy Center. Now located at The Safe Center offices, it coordinates support services and provides a safe setting where law enforcement can talk to children and advocates about abuse allegations. That work could continue elsewhere, though Hanson said specially trained The Safe Center staff now do more than half the Child Advocacy Center’s forensic interviews.

In 2023, the last year for which statistics were publicly available, Nassau County had 4,410 victims of domestic violence, according to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services.

"What’s going to happen to the programs that exist right now that are the true safety net?" asked Cindy Scott, a veteran advocate, now retired, who helped create The Safe Center and led one of its constituent agencies, Coalition Against Child Abuse & Neglect, before that. "If those doors close, who’s going to do that? It’s not flipping a switch. You’ve got to have people at the shelter working, you’ve got to have people at the hotline answering the phone 24-7, you need to have somebody facilitating the CAC," or Child Advocacy Center.

Scott said she was hopeful that the county's request for interest could lead to restoration of some services The Safe Center was not now providing, such as a robust education department and counseling services for adults. But she said she was troubled by a plan, relayed to her by nonprofit contacts, that the county would reassign contracts for the Advocacy Center to Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, where it would be based. "The medical model really increases stress for children and decreases the level of support than can happen in a co-located child advocacy center," she said.

Another possible concern is that, in the past, NUMC did not have a board-certified child abuse pediatrician, she said, potentially hamstringing prosecution of child abuse cases. A job listing on NUMC's website lists an opening for that job and says "we’re experiencing some exciting changes, including expanding our services and developing new programs."

Child abuse pediatricians are scarce — there are just 425 in the country, according to a 2024 article in the journal Pediatrics — and The Safe Center now has access to one through a relationship with NYU Langone Health, but that is unlikely to transition with reassignment of contracts for the Advocacy Center, Hanson said.

The Advocacy Center carries about $700,000 in county contracts and about $756,000 in state contracts, according to Hanson and Safe Horizon.

Safe Horizon CEO Liz Roberts said reassignment of those contracts to another organization could make Safe Horizon's takeover of any other The Safe Center programs financially impossible. "We laid out a financial model for taking on these programs that included all the funding associated with the Child Advocacy Center, and I'm not sure it will be viable for us in the long term if it does not include that funding," she said.

"Contracts for victim services tend to be very lean and we were counting on the economics of scale that come with combining several programs together." At a minimum, she said, Safe Horizon would have to look for much smaller offices in Nassau than the Safe Center offices it had planned to occupy.

The public health corporation that runs NUMC is more than $500 million in debt, has asked for a state bailout and run a publicity campaign suggesting it could close without more taxpayer money, Newsday reported in February.

Chris Boyle, a spokesman for Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, did not comment.

NUMC did not comment.

Nicole Turso, a spokeswoman for Nassau District Attorney Anne Donnelly, whose prosecutors are part of the Child Advocacy Center team, said in a statement that office’s "primary concern is always for the children and families affected by crime. Any interruption of service to survivors or vulnerable victims would be extremely harmful."

Karen Male, spokeswoman for the state's Office of Children and Family Services, which licenses residential domestic violence shelters, said in a statement that her office's "first priority is ensuring that vulnerable New Yorkers served by Safe Center continue to receive the services they need without disruption."

Roberts said maintaining a physical base for the Child Advocacy Center was critical. Not having one for the many teams that work on child abuse cases — prosecutors, police, Department of Social Services caseworkers, medical providers — "would lead to a less coordinated investigation and might lead to situations where an abuser can’t be held accountable for what they did or a child isn’t protect from further abuse," she said.

Closing the 17-bed domestic violence shelter would have a more direct impact, Roberts said. "Families who are there right now would have to go somewhere else," she said. "It might mean pulling kids out of school or losing a job. It would mean losing a safe place to stay with little notice for someone who’s already been through a really traumatic situation."

According to The Safe Center's last published audited financial statement, from 2023, Nassau grants supplied $2.9 million of the organization's $7.7 million in revenue. The organization's impact report from 2023 said it served 5,122 clients that year.

Under the plan Hanson and Roberts described in February, Safe Horizon would have taken over its core programs and acquired some of its assets, including a shelter that it operates in Nassau at a location which, for safety reasons, it does not disclose. It could take months for another organization to do due diligence on purchase of the shelter real estate, and because the shelter has been appraised at $1.26 million, many organizations would need a mortgage to fund purchase, which could also take time.

Hanson said that by late fall, as talks between The Safe Center and Safe Horizon progressed, the handoff had support of high-ranking county officials including Department of Social Services Commissioner Jose Lopez and then-Deputy County Executive for Health and Human Services Anissa Moore. "We were told in a meeting that would not be an issue," Hanson said. "This was a simple contract reassignment process." Moore referred a request to comment to Boyle.

The county on Feb. 26 issued a Request for Information for nonprofits that could provide a range of victim services now provided by The Safe Center, including the Child Advocacy Center and shelter but also a 24-hour victim hotline, domestic violence, rape and sexual assault and other services. The request for information posted on the county’s procurement page asked for responses by March 3 with an anticipated "delivery date" of May 1.

"There’s no other agency that can do this in less than three to six months in a way that’s not going to result in massive disruption," Hanson said.

Legis. Debra Mulé (D-Freeport), a former social worker, said the county's contracts with The Safe Center included a provision allowing them to be reassigned without a new request for proposals and legislative vote.

"If what’s being said is correct, that [Hanson] told the county that ‘we’re going to be shutting down,’ then quite honestly, it seems reckless to me that this would not have been done immediately, given the very precarious nature of the clients," she said.

Roberts, of Safe Horizon, said in an interview that she was concerned by "the lack of a clear timeline" from the county. "If there isn’t a provider ready to start services immediately, there will definitely be a gap," she said.