Still another ACS official makes still another claim about the New York City foster-care panic
Before anyone reads
this, I recommend checking out this
brilliant op-ed column in The New York Times by Emma Ketteringham of the
Bronx Defenders.
In the previous
post to this blog I discussed the resurrection of an odious racial
stereotype in a column in the Chronicle of
Social Change. [UPDATE: To its credit, the Chronicle ultimately apologized and deleted the column.] The stereotype appears in a
column by the Chronicle’s “Blogger of the Year,” Marie Cohen, in which she
complains about the New York Times
story on foster
care as the new “Jane Crow.”
But Cohen’s column did serve one useful purpose. It brings us still another official from the New
York City child welfare agency, the Administration for Children’s Services,
contradicting claims made by his colleagues concerning the extent of the foster-care
panic in New York – the sharp spike in removals that tends to follow
high-profile tragedies.
ACS Commissioner David Hansell told WNYC Public Radio there
had been no increase at all. A
deputy, Andrew White, contradicted him, claiming that removals had
increased, but only at about the same rate as the increase in reports passed on
from the state child abuse hotline for investigation. The Center for New York
City Affairs said both had
increased by about 20 percent.
But now Cohen tells us she was told by ACS that “ACS
investigated 27,549 allegations of maltreatment in the first five months of
2017, 2,000 more than in the first five months of 2016” – that would be an
increase of less than eight percent – while removals increased 20 percent.
Cohen makes other claims about ACS data that are wrong,
however.
She misreads the data when she suggests that ACS is
responding with more use of family preservation. There has, indeed, been a sharp increase in
cases under “court supervision.” But
that does not mean ACS is providing more help – only that the “help” is being
provided with more surveillance and more hoops to jump through. As the Center for New York City Affairs
explains in its report, that’s actually led to less help for families.
Cohen is correct in noting that the rate at which children
are removed from their homes is lower in New York City than most places –
though not all. Chicago is lower, and independent court-appointed monitors have found that the reforms which
reduced foster care in the state-run Illinois system improved child safety.
Child safety also
improved in New York City as the number of children taken away each year
declined.
But, as Cohen is quick to point out, there are still horror
stories, such as the death of Zymere Perkins. They have the same kinds of
horror stories in all those places that take away, proportionately, far
more children. (That means, of
course, that the very real problems exposed by the Times are probably far worse almost everywhere else in America.)
Perhaps if caseworkers spend less time harassing parents
such as those profiled by the Times they’ll find the next Zymere Perkins before
it’s too late.
