Contact:Colleen Roche/Samantha I. Lugo (212) 788-2958
Leonora Wiener, ACS (212) 266-2255
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Administration for Children Services (ACS) Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta today announced that contracts for neighborhood-based child welfare services will be awarded to 35 preventive, foster care and homemaking providers in Bronx County. These contracts will, for the first time, require child welfare agencies to provide services to families in the communities where they live, moving forward ACS's plan to construct a neighborhood-based system.
Under the existing system, the trauma of victimized children is sometimes exacerbated when they are sent to foster families far from their homes, friends, schools, and extended family. Since approximately 75 percent of the children in foster care eventually return home or to other relatives, it is important that, in appropriate cases, children maintain strong relationships with their parents or relatives during their stay in foster care. Yet only 12 percent of children are currently placed in their own community districts.
The neighborhood-based system will help ACS to develop a strong network of providers and advocates that will help prevent and detect abuse in its earliest stages as it provides preventive services that address both the individual needs of the child as well as the family members.
"The neighborhood-based care that we are putting in place in the Bronx, and which will be put in place throughout the City, will help bring neighborhoods closer together and will create a stronger safety net for children," Mayor Giuliani said. Neighborhood-based services make sense on several levels, it encourages all of the important people in a child's life to work as a team; it creates partnerships between community organizations and City government; and most important, it puts the needs of children first, ahead of any political or social agenda.
"The delivery of neighborhood-based services is one of the cornerstones of the ACS Reform Plan that this administration released in December 1996. Two weeks ago ACS celebrated its third year and I can think of no better announcement to celebrate the agency's anniversary," the Mayor concluded.
The new network of local providers will allow ACS to build a pool of strong, nurturing foster care and adoptive families within all neighborhoods and to coordinate the delivery of services, including medical, mental health, substance abuse, to children and families. This will in turn, facilitate a Family-to-Family approach to foster care, where, in appropriate cases, birth parents, caseworkers and foster parents will be part of a service plan for the child in care.
The contracts to be awarded in the 12 Bronx community districts will total nearly $200 million annually for child welfare services. ACS received 138 proposals from 74 separate providers, exceeding the capacity needed to serve Bronx County. The 70 contracts awarded to the 35 Bronx providers include 32 preventive, 18 foster care, 18 congregate care (group homes), and 2 homemaking services contracts. A majority of the providers will be "Bronx-only" providers, solely serving families in that county.
Commissioner Scoppetta said, "We are very pleased with the response to our first RFP for neighborhood-based services and applaud the providers for the many excellent proposals we received. The quality of these proposals is further evidence that a neighborhood-based program will significantly benefit children and their families. Preventive services will be available in the communities where families live and when it becomes necessary to remove children from the home they will be placed with foster parents in their neighborhood, reducing some of the trauma associated with separation. Requiring providers to concentrate in particular community districts will promote collaboration not only among child welfare agencies, but also among other neighborhood social service providers. This will bring safer, higher quality services to New York City children and families."
The award of contracts in Bronx County is the first phase of the neighborhood-based service initiative. Current providers serving Bronx County will continue to provide services to the families already in their care until the terms of their contract end. Neighborhood-based providers will service all new cases of children entering care. Services will not be discontinued, nor will any child already placed in foster care in the Bronx be forced to move. It is estimated that more than 9,000 Bronx foster children will be served under the new contracts, while thousands of other families in the Bronx will receive preventive and homemaking services.
The citywide RFP, the second phase of this initiative, will be released in the next few weeks. Providers who did not receive contracts in the Bronx can send in proposals for the citywide RFP, which will serve the remaining four boroughs and provide for specialized services citywide.