Around Town

‘We Never Want To Say No’: State Eliminates Funding for Kids In Crisis, Jeopardizing Services

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One day after school last week, a New Canaan teen phoned the Kids In Crisis 24/7 hotline because a friend here in town appeared to be suicidal. Familiar with Kids In Crisis because of its TeenTalk program at New Canaan High School, the adolescent connected with caseworker (and TeenTalk counselor) Ed Milton. Within minutes, he met with the troubled youth, performed a full assessment, secured a psychiatric evaluation and resolved the issue by referring to an outside agency. The interaction between a New Canaan teen and Milton—a fixture at NCHS who has earned his position as a trusted adult for scores of local adolescents, such as the friend in this case, by connecting and engaging with them—emerges far more frequently than locals may know. Through TeenTalk last academic year, Milton served 149 NCHS students in individual counseling sessions, according to Kids In Crisis, and cases can touch on everything from family conflict and domestic violence to depression, alcohol and substance abuse, peer and social issues such as bullying, divorce, depression, stress, anxiety and suicide—sometimes resulting in youths spending a night in a bed at the organization’s Greenwich campus (families to this point have not been charged for the service, as the state has been helping by paying a per diem—more on that below).

Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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Ty Groff winning Connecticut region punt pass kick 2015 for 10-11 age group

Oct 3,2015

 

Congratulations to New Canaan’s Ty Groff on winning the Connecticut “Punt, Pass & Kick” contest’s 10- and 11-year-old age group. You can see Ty’s effort in the video above. In the NFL’s “PPK,” scores take into consideration distance as well as accuracy, so under the rules, how far the ball travels is calculated and then distance from the center line is subtracted. Ty threw 93 feet, punted 61 and kicked 65 and 5 inches, for a total of 219 feet and 5 inches. ***

Officials with Bank of America confirmed for us that their lease on the brick building on the corner of Locust Avenue and Forest Street expired on Sept.

Around Town

‘Smart, Strong and Special’: New Canaan Camp To Bring Together Girls from Neighboring Communities

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The idea for Camp LiveGirl—that’s a short ‘i’ in ‘Live,’ a verb—came to the West family over the winter. Transformed after hosting a Fresh Air Fund girl from Queens, N.Y. last summer, mom Sheri and dad Brian gathered the kids (Conor, then an 8th-grader, Olivia, 6th and Donovan, 2nd) to discuss how else they could make a difference, now that their Fresh Air Fund guest, Janiyia Rodriguez, had aged out of the program. “We all felt very grateful, but we were cognizant that there are plenty of Janiyias out there, and as a family, we brainstormed about some way we could touch more lives,” Sheri recalled on a recent morning. What was born at that family meeting will materialize next Monday, as 30 middle school-aged girls from Bridgeport and Stamford join 20 similarly aged New Canaan girls for a unique, weeklong camp designed to empower, educate and engage its participants through multiple sports, identity- and confidence-building exercises, camaraderie, healthy living instruction and inspiring and informative speakers. Dubbed ‘LiveGirl’ because the Wests call their daughter ‘Liv’ for short, the camp is not only a deeply personal effort led by Sheri West that follows months of planning—it also results from a coordinated effort across a large swath of the New Canaan community.