Child welfare cuts hurt all New Yorkers
By Michael Arsham, Committee on Families and Children's Services
(October 1995)
Most New Yorkers are aware and concerned about the depth of the recent budget cuts to our public education, healthcare, and mass transit systems. These are services which the average citizen depends upon in a very direct way. Perhaps less apparent to many are the losses suffered in Child Welfare, which is defined to include Protective services to suspected and confirmed victims of child abuse and neglect; community-based Preventive services to support and strengthen families in crisis, reducing the need for removal of at-risk children from their homes; and Foster Care services for children who must be placed out of home. The average New Yorker may never have personal need of Child Welfare services: Nonetheless, policy decisions made in this arena have a dramatic and lasting impact on the quality of life of all New Yorkers. Our prisons, psychiatric hospitals, homeless shelters, and streets are full of the legacies of institutional neglect of vulnerable, needy children.
In an era of our City's history when drugs, AIDS, street violence, diminished access to affordable housing, and to meaningful employment and educational opportunities have made healthy child development a challenging obstacle course for even relatively privileged families, Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki are choosing to drastically reduce already-inadequate State and City family support and preservation efforts. As in many other areas of public policy, the changes being contemplated and implemented are radical, fueled by rhetoric, largely undiscussed and unexamined, and potentially devastating to children, families, and communities.
Under cover of his twin mantras of "reduced spending" and " regulatory relief", Governor Pataki has disingenuously redefined Child Welfare as an unfunded mandate and an unwarranted State intrusion on the discretionary powers of local government. Under his Family and Children's Services Block Grant, he has cut Child Welfare spending by over 20%, and weakened State standards for local practice. Mayor Giuliani, rather than opposing the Block Grant as a threat to the lives and futures of our City's children (who comprise a very sizable majority of the New York State children in need of such services), virtually embraced it. His reasoning seemed to be the same as with other forms of "entitlement" spending: every State dollar stopped at the border represents some fraction of a dollar the City is no longer obliged to spend.
Viewing Child Welfare services as part and parcel of other contested "entitlements", however, can be misleading and dangerous for a variety of reasons. The Child Welfare Reform Act of 1979 is not a "welfare" act in the usual sense of the word. What it does mandate is that any New York State child who is at risk of abuse or neglect is entitled to protection from harm. Imagine the public out-cry if the Governor were to suddenly decide that the State could no longer afford to systematically protect its adult citizens from rape, murder, and exploitation; or if the Mayor were to express the belief that excessive police spending has deterred crime victims from taking greater responsibility for their own safety. Periodic re-thinking of the nature of the State's fundamental obligation to endangered children can be useful, but must not be misrepresented or politicized. The consequences are life and death; the values at issue are defining values of our society.
Already, the combined impacts of State and local policy decisions have been severe. Reimbursements to voluntary Foster Care agencies have been cut by 15%, foster parents stipends by 10%. The inflexibility of agencies fixed costs such as rents and insurance have dictated that the brunt of budget cuts fall on personnel. At least 600 New York City Child Welfare workers have been laid off since June. Expanding caseloads translate into less services for children and families and slower progress towards adoption, family reunification, or independent living. The cruel irony is that less intensive casework generates longer stays in care at greater cost to the taxpayer and incalculable cost to children and families. While the City is working to develop a "Managed Care" approach to foster care, there are many unresolved concerns and potential dangers in this model.
Community-based Preventive programs have also suffered greatly. Home-making services for disabled parents and children have been reduced by about 60%. The Family Rehabilitation Program, an innovative combination of drug treatment and intensive monitoring and social services has absorbed two rounds of cuts, 50% in January, then total elimination of the all important drug treatment component in June. The On-Site Social Services Program, which outstationed social workers in publicly subsidized daycare centers where they provided training, support, and counseling to staff, parents, and children, has been eliminated. General Preventive programs are also enduring lay-offs and expanding caseloads.
And this is only the beginning. Both the Mayor and the Governor are fueling their own deficits with deliberate policy decisions to cut their own tax bases. Both budgets seem likely to fall out of balance quickly. Mid-year City budget modifications and the Governor's second budget are all but certain to target Child Welfare once again. Powerless, unrecognized constituencies always make the best targets.
Bracing against these repeated assaults, professionals who have devoted their career lives to nurturing fragile children and families cannot help but feel a sense of pain and outrage that is very personal. Many of my colleagues understand what it's like to hear your life's work scornfully dismissed; to see the results of years of your labor destroyed with the stroke of a pen; to hear the clients whom you've come to value and respect so deeply described as a worthless drain to society.
Ten to fifteen years ago I was about as far from the City's corridors of power as you can get. I was scrambling around the streets of Harlem looking for missing children; looking in what were then called "base houses' and "shooting galleries" for children who'd been missing from their elementary school classrooms that morning. There was and is nothing unique about this. Dozens of social workers and caseworkers are doing the same thing every day in this City; going places where the police hesitate to go, going alone and unarmed. We have done this work at great personal risk and material sacrifice based on some hard-won convictions. Some of us work from a base of religious belief and have literally devoted our lives to the work. Others got their basic grass-roots community organization training in Mississippi and Alabama in the 1950's and 60's. Still others grew up in the same communities and circumstances as their clients, and are determined that the next generation get a fairer shot at life than they did. We are, by and large, very sincere, dedicated people. When we say that the Mayor's and the Governor's policies are dangerous and will hurt children we are not exaggerating to protect our jobs. They are not the kind of jobs you would even want unless you really believed in what you were doing.
This was never about money, power, or perks. We are following the highest calling we can imagine: salvaging human lives. It is hard for us to conceive of a better use for our own lives. Now we are told by our Mayor and our Governor that our energies have been misdirected, a waste of time and tax dollars. It is suggested that we should have done something truly meaningful and helpful to society--like trade bonds or speculate in real estate--and that our clients should simply shape up or leave town.
We have often heard the Mayor say that he wants to "bring New York City more in line with the rest of the country". I'd like to understand what this means. Are we now consciously trying to be more reactionary, more racist, more xenophobic, less tolerant of diversity? Didn't we used to be proud of the qualities that made us a little different from the rest of the country, of our ability to lead? In front of a nationwide television audience the Mayor opted for a bumper sticker which read "... because our City can kick your City's ass." For once I found myself in grudging agreement with his choice. But the bumper sticker on this last budget should read "... because we want to be more like Des Moines."
The cover story of a recent Des Moines newspaper showed child welfare workers doing drive-by home visits to foster children. Workers with caseloads of up to seventy children literally drive by their foster homes and yell from the car window "is everybody okay in there?" One wonders if they don't have time to get out of the car, what do they have time to do if the answer is "no"? This is clearly where New York City is heading. Mayor Giuliani will bring New York City Child Welfare practice more in line with the rest of the country unless we, the electorate, make it clear to him that we will not tolerate this; that we care not simply about the quality of our own lives but about the quality of all children's lives, and our shared future.
(A version of this article originally appeared in the September, 1995 issue of "the low twenties times.")