Laid off from Cayuga Centers.

What Cayuga Centers layoffs have meant for employees

If you worked at Cayuga Centers in the last two years, its own letters to Florida measure what happened around you. The March 2025 letter listed 1,047 employees and the October 2026 letter listed 246, a count that still included everyone on its new notices. That's 801 fewer on the letters in 19 months, a measure of how far the agency shrank and not a count of layoffs. New York Focus reported that about three-quarters of fiscal 2024 revenue came from programs for unaccompanied children, so one funder was big enough to set the agency's size.

A Cayuga closing has now turned twice on a count of children. In 2018 the agency said it couldn't attract enough young people to break even at its residential treatment center. In 2026 the count that mattered was federal, as children in custody fell from nearly 7,000 when 2024 ended to about 1,800 by May 2026, and the Administration for Children and Families gave the falling number as its reason for ending contracts. One staffer in Arlington, in an account no one has verified, told the Fort Worth Report hires expected up to 20 cases and then saw a significant reduction over two years.

Your own story depends on which contract paid for your job. New York Focus ties Cayuga's work with unaccompanied children to federal funding cuts, and the federal statement about "closing and consolidating unused facilities" describes a shrinking program more than a handover. No successor operator for that work or the home-study offices is on record. That report counted at least five nonprofits in the state losing this funding and about 1,000 layoffs planned across them, so the nearest employers doing the same work were cutting too. The Citizen looks at the broader announcement of more than 300 job cuts and ties it to more than $20 million in losses from financial mismanagement and misconduct by leadership, so the two reports come at the same period from different sides, the funder's decisions and the agency's own books.

The January offices sit somewhere less settled. They ran Home Study and Post Release Services, the federal program that checks whether proposed homes are safe, and the word on that contract comes from one employee's unverified account and a general federal statement. The government took applications for the program until October 1, days before these notices, with projects meant to start in March, so the program hadn't gone away even as these offices got closing dates. If home-study casework is your field, it's worth noticing who holds those awards once they're made. Cayuga has pulled back a notice before, in the Bronx in 2023, when a city contract came through. That precedent came from a different funder and it's no forecast, though it does show a Cayuga closing date can move with its funding, which may matter if you're weighing another job before your last day.

The 2025 cuts came from the other side of the budget. Cayuga's complaint then was with state and local contracts that didn't keep up with costs, and it planned to shut some programs and send families to other providers, FingerLakes1 reported, which makes that round a company cutback in the plain sense. Fort Lauderdale shows how the rounds overlapped, since the same suite appears on the March 2025 program-closure letter and on October's. The March letter also said some employees had union representation, and October's says none do, so whether a union agreement applied to you depends on your program and your date.

Money is the other thing to plan around. An audit for the year ending June 2024 flagged substantial doubt about Cayuga's ability to meet its obligations and keep operating, ProPublica's nonprofit record shows, with expenses of about $145 million against revenue of about $120 million. New York Focus reported that the audit also found federal money for unaccompanied children improperly spent on other costs. That snapshot is more than two years old, but it bears on anything you're still owed. If final pay or a package is coming to you, a saved copy of your notice and your last pay stub could matter if a wage question comes up later. Arlington and Chicago staff can find Texas claim rules and Illinois claim rules on our state pages.

A sourced history of Cayuga Centers layoffs

• October 2026 notices closing five home-study offices

  Cayuga's October 5 letter to Florida counted 13 jobs in Fort Lauderdale and 109 agency-wide, with January 4, 2027 as the last day. The Fort Worth Report put 18 in Arlington and named Chicago, our tracker has 14 in Baltimore, and California's report has 12 in Los Angeles.

• April 2026 East Harlem closing and upstate cuts

  PIX11 reported 319 New York City layoffs as Cayuga prepared to close its East Harlem facility. The Citizen said the cuts, Auburn headquarters jobs among them, followed more than $20 million lost to mismanagement and leadership misconduct. New York Focus named Cayuga among providers whose federal funding ended.

• March 2025 program closures in three states

  Cayuga said state and local contracts weren't covering its costs and cut over 200 jobs in New York, Florida and Delaware, FingerLakes1 reported. Its letter to Florida counted 102 at Fort Lauderdale, Miami Lakes, Port St. Lucie and Boynton Beach.

• March 2023 Bronx closing notice, rescinded in July

  The New York Department of Labor shows Cayuga rescinded a notice covering 70 Bronx jobs on July 3, after receiving a city children's services contract through at least June 30, 2025.

• February 2018 residential treatment center closing

  Trustees decided to eliminate the center and lay off as many as 120, Rochester First reported, after $2 million in losses since July. Its CEO said "the numbers just aren't there."

What to do if you're laid off from Cayuga Centers

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Cayuga Centers's biggest hubs: New York, Florida, California, Maryland. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
• Apply for financial and hardship assistance. Unemployment supplements income, but food benefits, health coverage and utility help are often available as well. Here's some of what Cayuga Centers's hub states run: New York, Florida, California, Maryland, and every other state is here.
• Mind the health insurance window. Losing coverage opens a 60-day special enrollment period, and an ACA plan usually beats unsubsidized COBRA. Compare your options before the employer coverage lapses, and read how the COBRA clocks run if you are weighing it seriously.
• Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
• Know which clocks are already running. Severance review windows, COBRA election, visa grace periods, and 401(k) rollovers all run on federal deadlines that started at termination. All five deadlines are here.