| Releases & Statements
For Immediate Release,
January 30, 2005
Contact: Frank Sobrino,
Press Secretary
O: (212) 669-4193 C: (646) 250-4322
Thank you, Chair de Blasio for calling
for this important inquiry. I apologize that a prior engagement
will prevent me from staying for the whole hearing.
I want to emphasize how important
it is, with Commissioner Mattingly here today, to seize this opportunity
to move forward with the process of reforming the child welfare
system.
Commissioner Mattingly, you are highly
respected in the child welfare community, and you come to us with
a great deal of experience and expertise. We are counting on you
to make the changes that are clearly necessary to better protect
our children.
The brutal killing of Nixzmary Brown
was a wake-up call that shouldn’t have been necessary. Not
when dozens of children die each year of suspected abuse and neglect.
Over the past four years, my office
has conducted an on-going analysis of the child welfare system.
This analysis has uncovered an alarming lack of communication
and coordination between ACS and other government agencies, a
high rate of caseworker turnover, and a troubling inability to
use past cases of child abuse as a basis for preventing future
cases.
In fairness, we must acknowledge that
Commissioner Mattingly and Mayor Bloomberg have responded to the
wake-up call with a renewed commitment to reform. They have announced
a number of measures to address the failings of the system, among
them new protocols for communication and coordination between
ACS, the Department of Education, and the NYPD. These measures
are a step in the right direction. I encourage the Mayor and the
Commissioner to include more agencies in the reform process.
It seems that, in too many child fatality
cases, ACS fails to communicate effectively with other City agencies
that have important information to convey, or fails to act on
the information properly. In the case of Dahquay Gillians, for
instance, the Department of Probation had pertinent information
about the ongoing drug use of Dahquay’s mother and conveyed
that information to ACS, but ACS did not conduct adequate follow-up.
Mayor Bloomberg and
Commissioner Mattingly should take additional steps to review
and improve communications and coordination between ACS, the Department
of Probation, the Department of Corrections, the Human Resources
Administration, and other relevant agencies.
Along the same lines, ACS must gain
access to the State’s Domestic Violence Registry in order
to screen all members of potential adoptive or foster households
for incidents of domestic violence.
ACS routinely removes children from
homes that it deems unsafe without taking this step to ensure
that their new homes are actually safer. According to the agency’s
own records, in fiscal year 2004 alone, there were over twelve
hundred reports of New York City children in foster care being
abused or neglected.
Screening foster and adoptive homes
for domestic violence would help prevent such cases. The harrowing
fact is that in up to sixty percent of homes affected by domestic
violence, there is also child abuse.
I have offered to help ACS coordinate
with the State to gain access to the Domestic Violence Registry.
Mayor Bloomberg and
Commissioner Mattingly should also expand efforts to address the
critical issue of caseworker turnover. High turnover means that
child welfare cases are often passed from one caseworker to another
with little continuity of care, and the ones who suffer are the
children who get lost in the shuffle.
I am encouraged by the announcement
that ACS will hire 325 more child protective service workers in
order to decrease caseloads. Overloaded and under-prepared caseworkers
cannot always make the acute and timely judgments necessary to
protect the life of an abused child.
A high caseload, however, is likely
not the only factor contributing to low caseworker morale. The
fact is, this is one of the most difficult jobs in the city. I
applaud ACS for announcing new measures to increase training and
supervision, but I recommend that it take further steps to determine
what can be done to decrease burn-out, boost morale, and ultimately
reduce turnover.
Finally, ACS must do more to learn
from the mistakes of the past. Past cases should be treated as
an important piece of the puzzle when making a determination in
current cases.
When my office conducted an analysis
of child deaths from 2002, we found that, in half the cases reviewed,
ACS failed to properly investigate prior reports of abuse or neglect,
assess the safety of homes and foster homes, and identify dangerous
adults in those homes. Such lapses continue to plague the system.
ACS could begin to address the problem
by conducting a thorough, systematic review of all closed cases
involving failed contract foster care agencies, if it hasn’t
done so already, in order to ensure that the cases were handled
properly.
These measures, along with the initiatives
the Mayor has already announced, will help ensure that ACS is
able to fulfill its mission of protecting our most vulnerable
children.
###
|
