Nassau University Medical Center to temporarily take over services for Nassau's domestic violence victims, county says

Nassau County officials vowed that services for women and children would not be interrupted after the end of operations Friday of the nonprofit that ran the county’s only domestic violence shelter, blaming the organization for poor performance and mismanagement of funds.

But current and former leaders of the organization, The Safe Center LI, said those assertions were false and came months after they alerted county officials to budget problems that forced them to curtail and then halt client services.

"Nassau County will step into the void on a temporary basis with the assistance of Nassau University Medical Center to make sure there is no interruption in service," said a statement attributed to County Executive Bruce Blakeman emailed late Friday afternoon. A spokesman for Blakeman, Chris Boyle, did not comment.

The county and Child Advocacy center are still operating out of the Bethpage offices formerly occupied by Safe Center at least until the end of the month, officials said.

In interviews, Safe Center board member Stephen Bondi called the county’s assertion of financial mismanagement "a lie," and executive director Josh Hanson said there had already been interruptions in service at the domestic violence shelter and another Safe Center project, the Child Advocacy Center, which coordinated child abuse prosecutions.

The county statement also said that Manhattan-based Safe Horizon, the nation’s largest nonprofit provider of victim services, had been offered "the county contract" but had not yet agreed to take over services previously provided by Safe Center. Safe Center leaders said it had operated under multiple county contracts, not one.

Safe Center had for years run the county’s 17-bed domestic violence shelter, hotline and other services, including advocacy response, and hosted its Child Advocacy Center.

In 2023, the last year for which Safe Center’s audited financial statements were available, Nassau provided $2.9 million of the organization’s $7.7 million in revenue. But the organization ran successive deficits from 2021 through at least 2023, according to tax filings.

Its leaders have said they warned high-ranking county officials about budget problems last fall and won their support for reassigning contracts to Safe Horizon as they wound down operations, though that plan appeared to founder last month when the county solicited interest from other organizations. "To treat this as decisive action by the county is incredibly inaccurate and self-serving," Hanson said. "We’ve been telling them since September" about financial problems and possible closure, he said.

  According to Safe Center’s website, which had been reduced by Friday night to little more than a list of phone numbers for people in need of help, that hotline number, 516-542-040,"will now be answered by" the state’s Domestic and Sexual Violence Hotline. 

Some people familiar with the county’s request for interest process have said that Nassau University Medical Center was among the organizations under consideration. On Friday, an NUMC spokesman emailed a statement attributed to Matthew Bruderman, chairman of NUMC’s public benefit corporation Nassau Health Care Corp., that said, "NUMC is uniquely positioned to provide these services due to the broad range of our capabilities and expertise. Together, working with County Executive Blakeman and his team, we will ensure there are no gaps in services during this period of transition."

Cindy Scott, a longtime advocate who formerly helped lead Safe Center, said the county’s claims about services that were "not up to standards" were false. "They were accredited by the National Children’s Alliance and certified by the New York State Office of Child and Family Services," she said. "There’s been scrutiny on a regular basis by all of those certifying organizations."

Nassau County Legis. Seth Koslow (D-Merrick), a former Queens prosecutor who in January announced a run for county executive, said in a statement emailed by a representative Friday that Safe Center’s closure was "not due to service quality or mismanagement as Blakeman falsely alleges, but because the center was left unsupported and financially abandoned by his administration. To now shift blame and play politics with the safety and dignity of women facing domestic violence is deeply disturbing."

Safe Horizon’s CEO, Liz Roberts, has said her organization would take over Safe Center’s core services but that a partial takeover — if some services were contracted to another group — might not be financially viable because it would lose economies of scale.

"We’re saddened that last-minute changes in the county’s contracting process means there are more conversations to be had about feasibility and long-term commitment for these services," a Safe Horizon spokeswoman, Laura Davies, wrote in an email. "We hope we can find ways to be helpful to survivors and families as the process unfolds."