Angela's House
Driving along Montauk Highway in East Moriches, there’s a friendly-looking yellow home just off the road near the bypass. It seems like any other except for the charming sign identifying it as “Angela’s House.”
Inside, first glance reveals a typical home, extremely welcoming. The walls are adorned with murals, boasting bright colors and cute animals. A Christmas tree lights up a corner of the living room. Playground equipment dominates the backyard. Read More
Angela Frances Policastro, all 8 pounds, 9 ounces of her, slipped silently into the world on a Wednesday afternoon 13 summers ago. “She was blue, very blue,” said her father, who was watching his daughter’s delivery.
The mother was awake in the delivery room at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip. “I was thinking, of course, that I had the perfect baby,” Angie Policastro said the other day at home in Hauppauge. “I ate perfectly during my pregnancy. I wouldn’t even eat cream cheese because it has preservatives in it. Then Angela was born.” Read More
After Bob Policastro’s 13-month-old daughter, Angela, died more than a decade ago from brain-damage, he decided to devote his life to helping medically frail children.
Now Policastro, the founder of Angela’s House in East Moriches, the only house on Long Island that cares for brain-damaged children 24 hours a day, will be able to further his mission. He was given a $100,000 grant from the UPS Foundation Friday to build a respite home. Read More
“Angela’s House,” the first of its kind group home in Long Island, was dedicated on Friday, June 30, by Independent Group Home Living (IGHL) at 165 Montauk Highway, East Moriches, New York, 11940.
The residence will provide housing for seven medically-frail and technology-dependent children from Long Island, ages three to eight. The families have battled with distance, traveling to homes or hospitals upstate to see their children. As of now, they will be able to have their children much closer to home. Read More
After their daughter Angela was born severely brain damaged 11 years ago, Robert and Angie Policastro searched for a nursing facility near their home in Hauppauge that could care for her.
The closet nursing center with room for their daughter was in New Britain, Conn., a 2 1/2 hour drive from their home. Angie, 40, said their only placement option was in Albany, which was even farther away. Read More
New York State Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg (left) with his wife ellen stand at the welcoming banner at Angela’s House in East Moriches with Robert and Angie Policastro. The first group home on Long Island to provide 24-hour nursing care for medically frail and technology-dependent children, Angela’s house is the product of a ten-year effort by Robert Policastro, Angela’s father. Read More
Most of them are children who cannot feed themselves, sustain eye contact or show convincingly that they know their own mothers’ faces. Sometimes they seem to know them, sometimes they don’t. In another age, most probably would not be alive.
There are thousands of kids like them, kids whose lives were spared thanks to the miracle of modern medicine – but with strings attached: feeding tubes, tracheostomies, brain damage, lives so fragile they will be in the hospital more often than not, or need 24-hour nursing care, for the duration. Read More
Pedrom Palazzo is a 5-year-old boy who has spent more time in hospitals than he has at home. Though he cannot hold a toy, or speak, or see, he recognizes the voices of his parents when they visit him at the Cardinal Hayes Home for Children in upstate Milbrook, two hours from his East Meadow home. Read More
The most dedicated professionals cannot always understand 11-year-old Jacklyn Messina the way her parents, Lucille and Karl, do. Jacklyn has the mental capacity of a 1-month old, and she is blind, but her parents know when she is in a good mood, and they know when her braces are pinching her legs, and they know a thousand things that have no words but which, taken together, form the outline of the personality of their only child. Read More
On August 30, 1989, Bob and Angie Policastro's daughter, Angela, was born. She had suffered severe brain damage during birth leaving her very medically frail, requiring nursing care.
The Policastros received tremendous support while in hospital but they realized there were few services available to help them if they were to leave. The few services that were available were very fragmented and difficult to coordinate. Read More
