By Hank Orenstein, Director of C-Plan (Child Planning and Advocacy Now)

(April 2000)

Those working for the city's Administration for Children's Services (ACS) who are involved in the painstaking tasks of investigating reports of child abuse and neglect and decision-making as to whether or not to remove children have an extremely tough job. Front-line staff must be supported by a team decision-making process and a larger organizational culture that has the courage to utilize social work skills in a way that pursues both the goals of child safety and strengthening families.

The Administration for Children's Services (ACS), since its creation in 1996, has focused on protecting children, reflecting its mission that clearly states that any doubts about a child's safety will result in their being removed from harm's way. This policy change was a response to years of poor casework practice which led to a series of highly publicized child fatalities, highlighted by the death of six year old Eliza Izquierdo. ACS is also in the midst of implementing a highly ambitious reform plan that includes 72-hour case conferences, the family to family program and neighborhood-based service delivery initiative. Factoring in the impact of two major federal and state policy changes, welfare reform and the Adoption and Safe Families Act, our city's child welfare system is beset by many challenges.

Unfortunately, ACS's admirable goals are marred by an organizational culture that is grounded in the fear of making mistakes that perpetuates a vicious cycle of mistrust between parents and child welfare authorities, clouds professional judgment and obscures the ability to distinguish between situations where there is minimal risk and true child endangerment.

The 65 page Advisory Report on Front Line and Supervisory Practice issued in March 2000 by the Special Child Welfare Advisory Council (see www.aecf.org), while acknowledging highly positive steps ACS has taken in hiring more MSW's; expanding training; reducing child protective caseloads; and developing its internal management structure, found serious deficiencies in the quality of front line and supervisory practice, both within ACS and voluntary child welfare agencies. Among its findings were deficient risk assessments and service plans, misguided services to adolescents and lack of cultural competence. The report expressed alarm at the lack of efforts to increase the quality and quantity of parent-child visitation beyond the minimum of once every two weeks.

The report's findings confirm much of what we have experienced at the Public Advocate's office over the past several years. In 1995, New York City Public Advocate Mark Green, under the guidance and direction of social workers, created a child welfare advocacy project known as C-PLAN. C-PLAN's mission is to ensure that consumers of child welfare services are treated fairly and that they are receiving the services to which they are entitled. Since our inception, we have served close to 2,000 individuals who contacted our office because of difficulties they encountered with the child welfare system. We receive 50-60 new complaints each month, mostly from birth parents that express a variety of concerns, including inappropriate removals, the lack of services to facilitate reunification with their children, and the mistreatment of their children in foster care. Later this year we hope to complete a follow- up to our 1998 Child Welfare Scorecard, a report based on our case data.

We learn a great deal from the parents through our weekly support groups and our intake process-in which parents initially vent and express their guilt, rage and despair about the ordeal of having their children removed. When first approached by child protective workers, birth parents report that they are treated like criminals under investigation. Some parents report that workers present the possibility of taking their children away with the children present. Once their children are placed in foster care, there is a failure to develop and implement a service plan that is tailored to the needs of the child and the family. Instead, referrals are made according to one-size fits all approach based on weak assessments that focus on family deficits rather than strengths.

The system has become so fixated on child safety that it appears that no part of the child welfare system considers the parent a client. To be sure, there are children that should be removed from their homes, and some parents do not cooperate or follow through on referrals. However, the child welfare system fails to engage parents as full partners in service delivery, and there is a lack of a sense of urgency to address the needs of families.

The child protective system removes children to protect them against harm, but mistakenly equates child safety with child well being, failing to understand that children can be "safe" in relative terms, but be largely unhappy and psychologically unsafe. As a consequence of being removed from their homes after bedtime or at school, witnessing the arrest of their parents, and the disruption in their relationships and routine, many children will need some form of mental health care to help them understand and heal the pain they have suffered from this trauma, in addition to addressing the needs that led to their removal from their homes.

The following are suggested ways that social workers can promote improvements in child welfare service delivery.

Advocate for a more holistic definition of child safety that includes protecting children against the trauma of unnecessary removal, and from neglect and abuse once in foster care.

Promote greater professionalization and capacity building within voluntary child welfare agencies, including recruitment and retention of caseworkers and social workers.

Urge ACS to develop "best practice working groups," as Illinois's child welfare agency has done. There is a tremendous amount of expertise and excellent child welfare services in our city that could serve to inform and improve practice in a great number of areas.

Intensify efforts to maintain and strengthen bonds between parents and children, through increasing visitation when safe and appropriate, and utilizing it as an integral part of the family reunification plan.

Strengthen and organize case work in both ACS and voluntary agencies, so that staff have the ability to advocate and negotiate service delivery systems such as mental health, entitlements, developmental disabilities and housing. Good clinical and family assessment skills should inform decision-making and practice. Staff training must place a greater emphasis on practice skills related to the quality of the worker-client relationship.

Promote greater integration and access to mental health services during all phases of the child welfare system-prevention, foster care and discharge/aftercare.

Promote trust building between parents and child welfare services, both protective and preventive, within communities. Representatives from CBO's and groups of parents might explore ways of building effective relationships with ACS Field Offices.

Focus attention on the contradictions between the child welfare system, that places great value on protecting children, and welfare reform practices that place children in harm's way by denying or cutting family benefits, leaving them without sufficient food stamps and income and access to medical care and housing.

Promote greater professionalization and capacity building within the voluntary child welfare agencies.

C-PLAN welcomes your ideas and concerns. You can reach us at 212 669-4955.