Protecting children & protecting their families

The debate in child welfare has become polarized: intervene in families’ lives more often to protect children, or abolish the child welfare system because it perpetuates racially disparate outcomes and violates parents’ rights. The debate has reached a fever pitch. Some say, if you care about child safety, then you are perpetuating our country’s history of racism and oppression; others say, if you care about parents’ rights and the integrity of families, then you are oblivious to the horrors some children face. There is truth on both sides — and this is the moment to hold these truths together.

Child welfare agencies like NYC’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) must constantly be working to both protect children and to address the systemic racial disparities that exist in child welfare. Failing to do either has devastating consequences that we never take lightly.

Unfortunately, there are children who face abuse and chronic neglect that threatens their safety and could suffer a life-long impact on their well-being. Our extraordinary Child Protective Specialists see and respond to this every day. That’s why, to protect the safety of children, ACS is continuously working to ensure our Child Protective Specialists are equipped to identify children whose safety is at risk, including through increased training and enhanced supervision, along with expanding real-time coaching on cases that involve heightened risk of injury to children.

At the same time, there are too many instances where a family is reported to the state unnecessarily, reports that ACS must respond to by law. We know that these reports to the state have a disproportionate impact: one study found that the families of nearly 1 in 2 Black children in New York City has been the subject of an ACS investigation. The result is a system inflicting undue stress for largely Black and Brown families.

This is why we are focused on educating mandated reporters, which include medical professionals, teachers, and human service professionals, on how to connect families to supports they may need, without making any unnecessary reports to the child abuse hotline. For example, with our colleagues at the DOE, we have already trained staff from the city’s more than 1,800 public schools. We will also be working with our colleagues in the Legislature to take steps to eliminate false and harassing reports to the hotline.

Another way we are working to ensure child safety while addressing racial equity is by connecting families to resources. In the large majority of cases that come to our attention through the state’s child abuse hotline, we are able to help parents keep their children safely at home while connecting families to community-based services, like income supports, mental health counseling and substance abuse treatment. As a result, we are increasing the use of our Collaborative Assessment, Response, Engagement and Support approach (CARES), an alternative child protection response that involves a non-investigatory track.

Our use of CARES is up 75% this year compared to last year. On reports where there is no immediate or impending danger to children and where there are no allegations of serious child abuse, our child protective specialists with CARES partner closely with families to assess child safety and family needs, encourage families to develop their own solutions to their challenges, and identify supportive resources to help care for and protect their children. Simply put, with this approach, families receive the help they need without a traditional investigation and there is no determination that an individual may have abused or neglected a child. We are in the process of expanding our capacity to offer CARES in the coming year.

But to truly achieve child safety and equity, and reduce unnecessary intrusions into families’ lives, families must know how to access these types of resources without ever touching the child protection system. ACS is enhancing access to voluntary and free services and supports for families and communities, through both ACS providers and those of our sister agencies. We are spreading the word so communities and families know these are available.

Finally, to address the systemic flaws that exist in child welfare and to promote equity, we believe it is vital that parents know their rights when ACS is at their door. We are building off our recent pilot that provides parents with more information upfront, and we are committed to providing parents with written materials at their door that will help them to better understand their rights when they are the subject of an allegation of child abuse or neglect.

We are grateful to our colleagues at ACS who are committed to continuing to improve our work and to not succumb to the false choice between safety and equity because New York’s children and families deserve both.

Williams-Isom is deputy mayor for Health and Human Services and Dannhauser is ACS commissioner.