Release #458-00

 

Contact:	Sunny Mindel / Michael Anton (212) 788-2958
	Jack Deacy/Jennifer Falk (ACS) (212) 341-0999

MAYOR GIULIANI HAILS CHILD WELFARE PANEL FINAL REPORT
THAT FINDS ACS HAS MADE “REMARKABLE PROGRESS”

Panel Cites ACS’ “Record Of Accomplishment” As Evidence of Further Change

After two years of reviewing the New York City child welfare system, the Special Child Welfare Advisory Panel today issued a far reaching final report that concluded that the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) had made “remarkable progress” to reform the system.

In a cover letter to federal District Court Judge Robert Ward, the Panel of five national child welfare experts wrote that “ACS has made remarkable progress in many areas” and that they “are unanimously convinced that the breadth and pace of ACS’s reform efforts are themselves compelling evidence of good faith.”

In the report itself, the Panel said, “We believe that the Administration for Children’s Services has engaged over the past several years in a sustained, intelligent effort to change a complicated and difficult system,” the report said. “The record of accomplishment by ACS should be the public’s best evidence that it can demand further change with confidence that it can be accomplished.”

Mayor Giuliani said, “This final report by five highly respected child welfare professionals is a ringing endorsement of the comprehensive reform effort that was undertaken by this administration and by ACS on behalf of the children and families of our City. When we established ACS five years ago as a separate agency and provided the resources for reform, our child welfare system was in serious trouble. The report confirms that in just five short years ACS has made remarkable progress and reform has taken hold. I want to congratulate Commissioner Scoppetta and the entire staff at ACS for their tremendous efforts, and pledge that reform of the system will continue unabated.”

ACS Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said, “Although we realize that much remains to be done, this report tells us that the reforms we have worked so hard to implement have strengthened and improved New York City’s child welfare system. The report also confirms my own view that no government agency before ACS has gone through so much change, in so short a time, to such good effect. I want to thank the members of the Panel for their assistance over the past two years in helping us to implement our original reform plan that is now largely in place. Now we need to build upon that plan, working with parents, families, neighborhood institutions and our contract agency partners to ensure that reform continues.”

The Panel was created as part of the December 1998 settlement agreement of the federal class action Marisol lawsuit between the City of New York and child welfare advocates. Under that agreement, the Panel spent the last two years in an advisory role, issuing a series of reports on the child welfare reform initiatives undertaken by ACS. The Marisol agreement terminates on Friday, December 15th and with it the work of the Panel. When the Panel's work ends, it will mark the first time in 12 years that the New York City child welfare system operates without a court order or stipulation.

In its final report, the Panel noted: “For most child welfare systems it would be a very daunting proposition to reconfigure services along neighborhood lines, or to thoroughly overhaul the management of child protective services or to dramatically increase the amount of training available to staff, or to reform civil service titles and substantially increase salaries for staff and supervisors, or to significantly change reimbursement and evaluation systems for contract providers, or to undertake family case conferencing at key points throughout the life of a case. ACS has taken on all of these challenges, and more, and in our view has done so with at least deliberate speed in virtually every area.”

The report also recognized that ACS began their reform efforts long before the Marisol settlement or the appointment of the Panel. “It is especially important to note that many important (ACS) accomplishments predate any of our (Panel) work,” the report said. The Panel cited ACS’ creation of a new front line caseworker title series, training improvements for ACS staff, the decision to reconfigure the entire child welfare system along neighborhood service boundaries and the acquisition and renovation of a new $67 million ACS Children’s Center, which was dedicated last month.

Panel Chair Douglas W. Nelson said: “ACS has made impressive progress toward building a stronger child welfare system in New York. But more needs to be done to insure that children and families coming into care routinely receive the individualized attention and tailored services they require.”

In the report, the Panel outlined seven new benchmarks that it urged ACS to meet during 2001. The benchmarks call for ACS to evaluate existing programs and to issue reports to update progress in several areas of reform. The Panel also noted that “the most significant challenge facing the system is to make further, critically needed improvements with regard to permanency.”

Commissioner Scoppetta said: “We wholeheartedly agree with the Panel that there is nothing more important than ensuring that children are put on the path to permanency at the earliest possible time so that they will have the benefit of stable, nurturing families. We will continue to build on the success we have had already had in pursuing permanency for every child in our system.”

As part of its report, the Panel also conducted an informal survey among New Yorkers involved in the child welfare system, including ACS personnel, contract agency representatives and members of legal and advocacy organizations. “Most of the people who answered our questionnaire believe that New York City’s child welfare system is better now than it was three years ago, and most also believe that it will be better two years from now than it is today,” the report noted.

Among the highlights in the final report:

• "The foster care population has dropped almost 18% over two years, from 39,563 at the end of June 1998 to 32,470 at the end of June 2000, lower than it has been at any time since 1989." (The current figure is below 32,000.)
  
• "The number of children admitted to the foster care system declined by almost 24%, from 12,536 in Fiscal Year (FY) 1998 to 9,583 in FY 2000.
  During the same period, new allegations of abuse or neglect fell 9.3%, from 57,732 to 53,540."
  
• "For the first time in the history of New York City's child welfare system, ACS has gathered and publicly disseminated information on the placement experience of children entering the foster care system."
  
• As part of ACS neighborhood-based services initiative, "children are now about twice as likely as they were a year ago to be placed near their homes."
  
• "ACS' implementation of family case conferencing, on a scale unmatched by any other child welfare system in the United States, has been an impressive achievement over the past two years."
  
• "ACS has taken sustained, thoughtful and substantial actions with regard to permanency, encompassing issues as diverse as moving to a neighborhood-based service system, developing permanency principles, instituting family case conferences and trying to strengthen service plan reviews."
  

During their two-year review, the Panel issued several status reports on ACS’ reform efforts. In its first report issued in February 1999, the Panel described the original 1996 ACS Reform Plan as "a thoughtful, coherent, broad and appropriately ambitious vision and framework ...that was consistent with the most informed current thinking about urban child welfare reform across the country."

A year later in March 2000, the Panel issued a report on ACS frontline and supervisory practice in which it cited "remarkable achievements, some of which go beyond what we have seen leaders able to accomplish in virtually any other child welfare system."

Funded by the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Special Child Welfare Advisory Panel is composed of Douglas Nelson, President of The Annie E. Casey Foundation, John Mattingly, Senior Program Associate of The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Judith Goodhand, former Director of Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services in Cleveland, Paul Vincent, former Director of the Division of Family and Children's Services of the Alabama Department of Human Resources and Carol Williams Spigner, former Associate Commissioner in the Children’s Bureau of the Administration for Children and Families in the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

Copies of the report can be obtained by calling the Panel's New York office at (212) 509-2718.

www.nyc.gov