Strengthening Public Child Welfare

The Infusion of Social Work Skills and Values

Zeinab Chahine, LMSW, Executive Deputy Commissioner for Child Welfare Services, Administration for Children’s Services (ACS)

The 1996 creation of the Administration for Children’s Services (“Children’s Services”) as a freestanding agency dedicated to serving New York City’s children and families was the first step down a long path of successful child welfare reforms in New York City. The catalyst for these reforms was the Agency’s commitment to enhancing staff’s ability to assess service needs, and to prepare them to better engage with and serve families.

As a result of this emphasis on building staff capacity, many of our reform efforts have clearly improved quality case practice and led to better outcomes for families and children. Increased numbers of social workers and a focus on skill development among staff throughout the agency have facilitated high quality assessments and better family engagement, thereby helping us to increase the number of families receiving preventive services and reducing the number of children living in foster care.

Activities to Professionalize the Workforce

Recognizing the need to enhance the level of knowledge and skills of frontline staff, Children’s Services focused on professionalizing its workforce. This effort took many forms, including the integration of social work knowledge, values and skills into the “Core Curriculum,” which comprises the basic training for all levels of our staff, enhanced hiring and promotional criteria, Master of Social Work (MSW) degree scholarships, field placements, and distance learning access for staff.

While we do not have specific numbers on social workers within our workforce, we can draw some conclusions based upon known statistics. Child Protective Services has 762 Supervisor II and 550 Supervisor I staff. Since social work education is a requirement for promotion into a supervisory title, all of these staff possess a MSW or 30 credits toward a MSW. Additionally, certain positions within the Agency now require a MSW as one of the primary hiring criteria. According to findings from an in-house survey distributed in March 2005, we now know that there are also many MSWs throughout all of the agency’s divisions. Moreover, between 1997 and 2005, 553 employees received full MSW scholarships; 687 employees have enrolled in the Hunter College MSW Distance Learning Program; and between 1996 and 2004, 987 employees received MSW field placements.

A Variety of Roles for MSWs

Children’s Services employs over 250 MSWs known as Child Evaluation Specialists (CES). CES convene and facilitate Family Team Conferences (FTC) at various decision making points, by engaging the family and their supports in safety decision making and service planning. CES also assess all children entering foster care. MSWs also serve as Family Assessment Specialists (FAS), who assess the needs of families seeking Persons in Need of Supervision petitions, and as Family Support Specialists (FSS), who provide services to families at the Emergency Assistance Unit’s Prevention Assistance and Temporary Housing Program (PATH). CES are also working on the Families for Teens project, which is aimed at reducing the number of children in congregate-care settings through skillful clinical interviews to obtain information by which we can locate potential permanency resources.

Of the more than 6,000 staff currently employed at Children’s Services, 5,000 work within the five divisions encompassed by Child Welfare Programs (CWP): Child Protection (investigations, safety assessment and service referrals), Family Permanency (foster care and adoption case management), Family Support Services (preventive case management), Family Court Legal Services and Quality Assurance. The remaining staff is distributed among
the divisions of Child Care and Head Start, Financial Services, Policy and Planning, Administration, and the Offices of the Commissioner, General Counsel, Community Affairs and Communications. More than half the staff directly employed by Children’s Services work within the Division of Child Protection.

Shared Values, Common Skills and Knowledge Are Key

Children’s Services contracts with community organizations for many of its services including child care, Head Start, and preventive, foster care and adoption services. Although working in collaboration with many agencies has its challenges, having shared values and common skills and knowledge provides the potential to improve services to the children and families of New York City.

With the major infusion of social workers into the public sector, the system as a whole is stronger. As we move forward with our plan to further realign the child welfare system to become more community-based, social workers in the public as well as in the community agencies have the opportunity to build a system true to the values of the social work profession.

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