With Donations and Grants Down, Social Service Agencies Feel the Pinch

August 21, 2009, The New York Times — At a social service agency on Staten Island where budget cuts forced the layoff of a driver, the staff scrambles to arrange transportation to Brooklyn for an elderly homeless woman whose family has agreed to take her in.

In Midtown Manhattan, a woman who has lost her job worries that she will not be able to send her granddaughter to an after-school program at the settlement house that helped the girl’s father and two uncles. And in Washington Heights, an agency is hard-pressed to prevent evictions after laying off half of its legal services team.