When a child gets cancer, everyone in the family's orbit mobilizes around that child. The brother or sister standing in the hallway, healthy and terrified and suddenly invisible, is the kid almost no one is built to catch. For 26 years, a small program in Rockville Centre has existed for exactly that kid, and it has never charged a family a dollar. This fall its annual gala raised more than $425,000, the most in the organization's history.

The biggest night in 26 years

More than 200 people filled the Seawane Club in Hewlett Harbor for Arts After Dark, the annual benefit for SIBSPlace. Between dinner, live and silent auctions, a set from the Jazz Senders and a performance by the New York Vibe dancers, the night broke the organization's fundraising record. For scale, a recent edition of the gala cleared $300,000 and that was itself a strong year.

The evening honored Kenneth and Susie Falcon of Rockville Centre for their years of support for children and families on Long Island. Dr. Arti Datta, the founding artistic director of Mudra Dance Studio in Muttontown, received the Helene Wrenn Memorial Award.

What SIBSPlace actually does

SIBSPlace, short for Survivorship in Brothers and Sisters, was founded in October 2000, which makes this month its 26th birthday. It operates out of 510 Merrick Road in Rockville Centre in partnership with Mount Sinai South Nassau, the Oceanside hospital, and it serves children carrying a weight most adults never notice: a sibling with cancer or another serious illness, or a parent with a devastating diagnosis.

The mechanism matters here, because it is the part a healthy family never sees. When a diagnosis lands, the sick child gets doctors, nurses, social workers and every ounce of the parents' attention. The well sibling gets rides to other people's houses, hospital waiting rooms and the strong suggestion to not be a problem right now. Kids in that position often learn to bury what they feel, and buried is where it does the damage. SIBSPlace was built on the idea that the healthy kid in a sick house is a patient of a different kind, and that reaching them early is prevention, not luxury.

The program does that work through group and individual counseling that leans on art, music and play rather than asking an eight-year-old to narrate their grief across a desk. Mental health staff run the sessions. There is a summer program, Camp SIBS, and there are support groups for the parents, who are stretched past their own limits trying to be two places at once. Joanna Formont, the organization's executive director, said the point of nights like this one is that the children served get a safe place to put feelings they cannot park anywhere else, with direct support behind it.

Why the record matters

Free is the whole model. A family paying for a child's chemotherapy is not a family that can take on a therapy bill for the siblings, and SIBSPlace's answer has always been that they should never have to. That only works if someone else writes the checks, which is what a record gala actually buys: another year where no Long Island family gets a bill for taking care of the kid who is holding it together in the hallway.

Families do not need to live in Rockville Centre to be seen there, and they do not need a referral from Mount Sinai South Nassau. If someone in your life is parenting both a seriously ill child and that child's brothers and sisters, the program is reachable through its site and through the hospital, and the price will be the same as it has been since 2000: nothing.