The Changing Organization of Public Child Welfare Services in New York City

Brenda G. McGowan, DSW, Ruth Harris Ottman Professor of Family and Child Welfare, Columbia University School of Social Work

Child welfare is the oldest field of practice in social work, and New York City has one of the oldest child welfare systems in the country. Yet, there are big differences in the way child welfare services are organized in different states. All were geared historically toward providing foster care for children whose parents were unwilling or unable to provide adequate care, often for reasons of poverty. Some jurisdictions relied heavily on the provision of care through voluntary, non-profit agencies, whereas others organized services through state or county agencies.

From Private to Public Service Provision

In 1895 the State Department of Charities and Corrections in New York began developing contracts with private agencies, many of which were organized under religious auspices, to provide foster care for children in need. It was not until the early 1940’s that the City created the Bureau of Child Welfare in the Department of Welfare, which began to monitor the contracts with voluntary agencies and, over time, initiated direct child welfare services provided by public employees.

Lawsuits Spur Change

This pattern of services persisted relatively unchanged until the 1970’s when the system began to be exposed to numerous class action lawsuits, exposés of children’s horror stories in the press, research studies and critiques, and reports of blue ribbon commissions initiated by various public officials and community groups.

The first major challenge to ACS (Administration for Children’s Services), then termed Special Services for Children (SSC), came in 1973 with the filing of the Wilder v. Sugarman suit (later Wilder v. Bernstein) by the Children’s Rights Division of ACLU. This suit, which was filed against SSC and all the voluntary foster care agencies responsible for approximately 90 percent of children in care at that time, charged system wide discrimination against black, Protestant children, due primarily to the custom of placing children in agencies under the auspices of their religion.

The NASW-NYC committee on child welfare services reviewed the allegations in the case. After careful study, the committee decided to file an Amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs and raising the many other failings observed in the child welfare system at that time. This was not an easy decision for the Chapter because a number of the directors of the voluntary agencies named in the suit were NASW members, but it was clear professionally that there was an ethical obligation to oppose the system-wide pattern of racial discrimination that was uncovered.

Lawsuit Resolution Involve MSWs

In 1986 the City finally signed a consent decree in this case, agreeing that all children would be placed in the best available foster care program on a first come, first served basis, regardless of religious affiliation, and an independent court review panel was established with professional social work participation to monitor the implementation of the consent judgment. Later, in the implementation process, ACS created a special unit of child evaluation specialists, all of whom were mandated to have MSWs. They were charged to review the cases of children entering foster care and decide on the best available placement for them. Interestingly, the decision to recommend that staff have a MSW was made by lawyers representing the plaintiffs in this case, and not by ACS. Unfortunately, the Social Service Employees’ Union has opposed other efforts to create special civil service titles for workers with MSWs.

Creating a Professional Core

Unlike New York, a special title for MSWs in child welfare is common in many other states. The lack of special titles for MSWs in ACS has made it difficult for the agency to recruit large numbers of professional social workers. However, the Satterwhite Child Protective Training Academy, named for a social worker who was the Academy’s first director, was opened in 1986 to provide intensive training to child welfare and day care staff.

Although the initial impetus for the Academy was a sex abuse scandal in day care, its primary focus has become child welfare. An important component of its mission is the Professional Development Program, which selects and provides funding for ACS employees to attend graduate schools of social work; this further expands the professional core at ACS.

Best Practices and Competency-Based Training

Recent research that I conducted with Professor Charles Auerbach from the Wurtzweiler School of Social Work suggests that, despite the frustrations these MSW graduates often face at the agency in terms of opportunities for promotion and respect for their professional judgment, they are generally very committed to the client population served by ACS and plan to stay at the agency for many years.

Consistent with these initiatives, it has been possible, over time, to observe changes in the role of professional social workers at ACS. Many of the top administrators are now MSW graduates. When new program plans such as the move toward neighborhood-based services are developed, they are frequently grounded in the best available child welfare research. One now hears frequent talk of the need to implement “best practices” at the front-line. And the Academy’s current focus on competency-based training for new caseworkers and supervisors is consistent with the best of current curriculum guides for professional training.

The Context of Competing Social Values and Tensions

Will this shift solve all of the current problems in ACS? Of course, not. The child welfare system in the City, as well as across the country, is subject to many attacks because it is forced to operate within a context of competing social values: family privacy vs. children’s rights, and child protection vs. family preservation. These tensions are embodied in the federal and state laws designed to protect children from the harm that can be inflicted by parents and to protect children and parents from the potential harm that can be inflicted by state intrusion into family life. Moreover, there is very begrudging public support for adequate funding of child welfare services designed to support poor families. Consequently, child welfare service providers are often scapegoats for failures that reflect ambiguous social policy, not poor intentions. But with increasing professional presence at ACS, we can expect to see more vigorous advocacy for improved services and increased community collaboration.

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