Child Protection: It's Everybody's Responsibility
By William Bell, MSW, Deputy Commissioner, Division of Child Protection
I once heard a social worker say, "If you show me how a community treats its children and its elderly, then I can predict for you the likelihood of that community's future success." I often think of this statement when I consider the approach that the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) has taken to reform Child Welfare Services in New York City. Simply put, ACS has recognized that the public agency alone can not fulfill the awesome responsibility of protecting the children of New York City. Child protection is everybody's job and true success is only possible when both the public and private stakeholders work together to form a safety net for our children.Caseload decreased
Since its creation in 1996 ACS has implemented a number of reform initiatives that have resulted in unprecedented improvements in its ability to protect the children of New York City and build stronger families. For example, CPS caseloads have been reduced from an average of 27 per caseworker to an average of 12 per caseworker. The workload for front line child protective managers has been reduced from an average of more than 1,000 cases per manager to an average of approximately 400 per manager. Approximately 2000 fewer children were placed in foster care each of the past two years than in previous years. During this same period, ACS dramatically increased the number of families that it referred for in-home preventive services.
Engaging both public and private stakeholders in efforts to design and implement strategies for child protection has been critical in achieving these gains and will play a significant role in sustaining them. Several key ACS reform initiatives strongly emphasize the need for public and private partnerships. These include initiatives such as Family Team Conferences, Neighborhood Based Services, and Instant Response Teams. Internally, ACS has supported these initiatives in a number of ways such as hiring and training more than 1000 new CPS workers, as well as hiring approximately 200 social workers to facilitate the conferences. ACS also created 2 new title series for its caseworkers that included higher rates of pay and higher qualifications.
A previous issue of Currents described in detail two of ACS' Family Team Conferences. These conferences, which are referred to as the 72-Hour Child Safety Conference and the 30- Day Family Permanency Conference respectively, involve a collaborative process through which families, Administration for Children's Services staff, private service providers and other involved community members participate in the development of plans for how to best protect children and support families in crisis.
Family Team Conferences are also held at other critical decision-making points such as when risk to children increases prior to a protective removal, when a discharge from foster care is contemplated, and when adoption is being considered.
Neighborhood based services
ACS' effort to institutionalize Family Team Conferences has been supported by the implementation of a Neighborhood Based Services model. At the core of this model is ACS' desire to have public and private stakeholders collectively implement a full continuum of child protective and family services at the community level. To facilitate achieving this desire, ACS has redefined its service catchment areas to make them compatible with community district and neighborhood boundaries.
ACS staff and its contract providers have been assigned to specific community districts which allows casework staff to make more comprehensive and more accurate investigations and assessments of the needs of children and their families. Caseworkers, supervisors, and managers are also building stronger links to the individuals, other community-based service providers and public institutions that are familiar with the children and the families in each community.
The continuum of services incorporated in the Neighborhood Based Services model reflect the ACS belief that sometimes a child is best protected by providing supportive services to that child's family. To this end, the creation of neighborhood based service networks has been supported by a $60 million expansion of Child Care and Head Start programs. ACS has also increased its preventive services funding by 20% since 1998. These service expansions will allow ACS to move closer to making a full array of services available within each community at hours that meet the needs of families.
Benefits of services
The service expansions and case practice innovations described above have shown benefit for all stakeholders. Some of the benefits recognized thus far include: