By Alma J. Carten, DSW
(December 2001)

This issue of Currents represents the end product of a small work group consisting of representatives from ACS and NASW. It was the outgrowth of a first meeting I had with Commissioner Scopetta, who subsequently came to the Chapter Office to meet with members of the Executive Committee. At this meeting, our two organizations agreed to work together on projects that promoted our shared interest in increasing the presence of M.S.W. workers at the Administration for Children's Services. A special edition of Currents was settled on as a first project. The work group set about planning the publication with several objectives in mind: to educate and inform various stakeholders about reforms taking place in an Agency that is too often misrepresented; highlight the critical role played by social workers in reform efforts; and illuminate a beginning process of transformation that we believed could serve as an exemplar for workforce development and professionalization of services for other public sector agencies that serve clients coping with the most difficult problems.

Beyond this, the issue should symbolize social work's commitment and investment in the success of the work of the public child welfare agency entrusted with the mission of protecting the city's most vulnerable and at risk children. Moreover, as the City prepares for a new Administration at City Hall, we hope that it sends a clear message from the social work community that the time is long past due for New Yorkers to put children and families first.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, this issue demonstrates that social work has not abandoned public child welfare. Social workers have, in fact, have had an enduring presence in public child welfare making noteworthy contributions from the days it was established as the Bureau of Child Welfare. For example, Dr. James R. Dumpson, instituted many innovations in children's services during his two terms as Commissioner of the City Department of Social Services under the Administrations of Mayors Beame and Wagner years when the public child welfare agency was under the authority of the Commissioner of Social Services. Included among these was the appointment of Dr. Carol Meyer to serve as the first Director of Staff Development and Training, and Dr. Patricia Morisey as a special consultant, who developed an innovative program that prepared ADC mothers to serve as foster parents, who would later become adoptive parents, of well babies who were lingering in city hospitals beyond the time they were medically ready for discharged and believed to be unadoptable. Dumpson engaged a consultant firm in 1961 to undertake a six-month study to assist in the realization of his vision of a "decentralized child welfare system with an increasing emphasis on family centered child welfare services." When the consultant firm known as Beatty Commission, established under the Koch Administration, recommended a new entity to serve as umbrella agency for all programs for children, Dr. Rosa Marie Gil, was appointed to head the new agency designated as the Family and Children's Services Agency. The James Satterwhite Academy, is named for its first director, a social worker with an unswerving commitment to improving social work practice in the public sector. The Academy was designed and conceptualized with strong social work representation to serve as a national model for the training of child protective service workers. Robert Little, one of the few M.S.W. social workers appointed to head the City's public child welfare agency, as Commissioner Scopetta, was himself a foster child. He emerged as an outspoken leader, who was a strong advocate for culturally competent family focused services. It was during Little's tenure under the Dinkins Administration, that I had the privilege of chairing an Expert Panel of social workers brought in to assess the quality of case work practice across all program components using as a measure social work standards for best practice in child welfare settings. These are but a few examples of the noteworthy contributions of social workers. These efforts, and many more that are not mentioned here, undoubtedly created the fertile ground for current reforms to take root and hopefully flourish.

Changing organizations the size and magnitude of the public child welfare agency require long term and sustained effort from many stakeholders and a changed mind set. For too long child welfare services have been designed in such a way that they do not become available until children have been hurt or their families are in extreme crisis. This must change. Nor can we continue to expect the public child welfare agency to carry sole responsibility for protecting children. And, at time when it has never been more possible not to leave any child behind, we must confront squarely systemic inequities that account for enduring racial and ethic disparities in outcomes for children.