Ackerman Institute for The Family
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Ackerman Clinic
The Ackerman Institute's Clinic, licensed by the New York State Office of Mental Health, is where Ackerman provides all of its direct services to families. In the last year, the Clinic served more than 3,600 families, largely from low-income and underserved communities. The Clinic serves all kinds of families, including married and unmarried couples, traditional nuclear families, single parent families, families headed by gay couples, families in which the parents are straight and the children are gay, intergenerational families and stepfamilies. The families are of diverse ethnic, religious and racial backgrounds, representing every socio-economic level. The Clinic is committed to recognizing diversity in all of its forms and working with all kinds of families in ways that are sensitive to their specific cultural and economic backgrounds.
Training Programs
The Ackerman Institute's advanced and rigorous training programs in family therapy serve approximately 1,600 mental health professionals at the Institute and at workplace sites, including social service agencies, hospitals, family courts and community centers.
The Ackerman faculty represents the fields of social work, psychology, family therapy and psychiatry. Many faculty members also direct clinicial research centers and projects that deal with contemporary issues that affect families. And, we maintain professional partnerships with educational institutions and schools, medical centers and social service and medical health agencies.
Ackerman has also provided international training, and maintains partnerships with several international institutions from Japan, Argentina, Chile, Israel and Mexico.
Social Work & Diversity Program
The Social Work & Diversity Program is dedicated to expanding diversity in the field of family therapy. Although the number of minority families in the U.S. continues to grow toward a predicted 48 percent of the population by 2050, nationally only four percent of family therapists are people of color. Ackerman offers social work students of color the opportunity to intern at Ackerman and enroll in the postgraduate training program with scholarship support. Our graduates hold leadership positions in community-based agencies serving diverse populations.
Ackerman Institute Centers
The Ackerman Institute houses four thematic centers
that respond to the changing needs of families. The knowledge and insights gained from the research undertaken in the centers are incorporated into Ackerman’s training programs and disseminated to mental health care professionals locally, nationally and internationally through lectures, workshops and publications. The Centers are:
Center for the Developing Child and Family focuses on strengthening parent-child and family-school relationships in families with infants, toddlers, pre-school and elementary school children
to support developmental competencies, school readiness and school success. The Center has just launched a new project to meet the unique needs of families who have children with autism and other developmental disabilities.This project builds on the Institute’s mission to provide family therapy training to mental health professionals and to expand family-centered services to schools and community agencies.The initiative is the result of increasing demand for treatment for this particular constituency, current efforts to develop best practices in family therapy, and the critical need to train professionals to embrace family strengths and promote adaptive coping and
family well-being.
Center for Children and Relational Trauma provides treatment for children and families coping with a range of traumatic problems, including sexual abuse, violence, the death of a parent or sibling, or family separation. It also provides a venue to develop new treatment protocols, the results of which are used to train mental health professionals in a systemic model that integrates family and individual therapeutic work.
The Center for Families and Health provides clinical services to couples and families who are experiencing acute, chronic or life-threatening illnesses, or coping with the death of a loved one.In addition, the Center offers training to medical professionals, family therapists and allied health care professionals, as well as consultations with health care facilities and staff.
Center for Substance Abuse and the Family works with families to determine how substance abuse (including alcohol and drug use) has affected them adversely and strategize how to reverse this
process.The Center also provides family therapy training for mental health and medical professionals in hospitals and medical centers so these individuals can integrate the family therapy approach into their substance abuse treatment.
Where we work
External reviews
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Founded in 1960, the Ackerman Institute for the Family is one of the most highly regarded training facilities for family therapists in the United States. With the underlying belief that strong, healthy families are the basic building blocks for prosperous, healthy communities, the Institute has been a leading force in the field for the development of innovative couple and family therapy models and community-based family interventions and for training clinicians and front-line staff on how to implement these interventions.
Our mission is to provide:
• Innovative couple and family therapy services through our on-site Clinic (licensed by the State of New York Office of Mental Health).
• State-of-the-art training programs for mental health and other professionals on-site, in community settings, and internationally.
• Cutting-edge research initiatives that focus on the development of new treatment models and training techniques.
Through a dynamic interaction of intervention development, treatment, training and research, Ackerman directly serves families, supports front-line mental health care professionals at social service agencies and health care facilities, and enriches the growing body of family therapy knowledge and evidence-based practices with innovative perspectives.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
The Ackerman Institute for the Family was founded in 1960 with a mission to develop cutting-edge and effective models of treatment for families in distress and to train clinicians in the implementation of those models. We are unique in our focus on communities and the context surrounding an individual facing difficulties. We are also a forerunner in developing and constantly testing therapeutic models of family therapy to move away from individual psychodynamic models of treatment. To this end, the Ackerman Institute's principal activities are:
Treatment
Ackerman's on-site clinic is at the center of all of our service programs, training initiatives and research projects. Highly trained therapists help families from all ethnic, economic and religious backgrounds, as well as heterosexual and same-sex families and couples. Therapy is provided by psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers on our faculty and by clinicians in postgraduate training and supervision. Our goal is to harness and strengthen family resources, and help family members work collaboratively towards solutions. One of the truly unique characteristics of the Ackerman Institute is its commitment to recognizing diversity in all of its forms and working with all families in ways that are sensitive to their specific needs. Ackerman is the only post-graduate training institute with a clinic licensed by the New York State Office of Mental Health.
Training
Ackerman's training programs serve mental health professionals on-site and at community-based workplace sites, which include social service agencies, hospitals, family courts and community centers. We offer an advanced two- to three-year postgraduate externship for psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers, and a one-year or semester course on family therapy theory and practice. In addition, we offer 32 day-long education workshops for mental health practitioners.
Research
The Ackerman Institute's faculty members are experts in their fields and highly motivated to develop issue- or population-focused projects through research, training and field-building activities. Ackerman's research is about finding out what interventions work best in a given context and what approach for a particular problem yields the strongest results for children and families. Our proven practices are shared with other experts in the field and brought back to trainees in our post-graduate training program. Each project has a unique focus that incorporates treatment, training and research for special populations.
Through these integrated activities and responsive programming, the Ackerman Institute has been a major force in expanding the field of mental health's understanding that the problems of the individual are best understood and solved in their social context, the context of the family and the community.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Ackerman Institute for The Family
Board of directorsas of 09/21/2022
Ira Sallen
Stephen Sokoloff
Salomon Smith Barney, Inc.
Sheri Sandler
No affiliation
Linda Dishy
No affiliation
Jeannie Ackerman Curhan
Mermaid Inn
Arnold Syrop
Arnold Syrop Associates
Thomas G. Kahn
Kahn Brothers
Clyde Brownstone
Gift Box Corp. of America
Robert C Ruckh
Ernst & Young
Martha Fling
Drake Libby LLC
Deborah Werner
Private Practice
Leslie Roberts
Private Practice
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? No