But a judge finds that, in one particularly egregious case, the city's Administration for Children's Services couldn’t even get the buck-passing right.
In New York State, individual counties and New York City run
child welfare, but services for the mentally ill and the developmentally
disabled are provided by state agencies.
So I suppose no one should be surprised at what happened
when a New York City Council committee tried to call David Hansell, the
commissioner of the city’s Administration for Children’s Services to account
for the horrible conditions at the Bill de Blasio / David Hansell Children’s
Center. (That’s not the center’s real
name, but, as I explained in a
previous post to this blog, the more often we call it that, the more likely
it is that the worst of the problems will be fixed.)
Hansell
blamed the state. Since some of the
problems involve older youth with mental health and developmental disability
issues his response to the chaos at the center boiled down to: Hey, not my job!
There is actually a lawsuit over this. Perhaps in the end it
will turn out the state really does share responsibility (though it’s important
to note that many of the longstanding problems at the de Blasio / Hansell
Center involve children and youth for whom Hansell’s agency has unambiguous responsibility).
But even if part of the fault rests with the state – in fact,
even if all of the fault rests with
the state, a few things should be obvious:
● As long as the youth are in your custody you do not allow children,
youth and young adults to be jammed together in an overcrowded shelter.
● As long as they are in your custody, you don’t allow them
to bully and terrorize each other.
● And as long as they’re in your custody you do not allow a
youth who suffered brain and spinal injuries to be stuck there for a year, with
no therapy, without even a working wheelchair, sometimes left sitting in his
own urine.
You don’t let the horrors continue until the jurisdictional
niceties are worked out. You fix it
first, then fight over who foots the
bill.
The case of the brain-injured youth was so bad that a judge
ultimately held Hansell in contempt. She
found that ACS couldn’t even get the buck-passing right: Hansell’s agency
repeatedly missed deadlines for submitting applications to the relevant state
agency.
Is ACS angling to open more group home / institution beds?
But it gets worse. Hansell also blames the problems at the
center in part on the closing of some beds in group homes and institutions – which
suggests he might want to reopen some of them.
But the reason they were closed in the first place is that
they’re so bad for children, and because many of them were at the center of
scandal after scandal over abuse and exploitation – (here’s
a case in point) – just like the Bill de Blasio / David Hansell Children’s
Center.
So let’s recall, again, the history of the shelter. An earlier shelter had been shut down as a
hellhole in 1977. But when the new one
opened, in 2001, Nicholas Scoppetta, the ACS commissioner at the time, promised
that this time it would be different. Of
course it wasn’t.
So consider: The old shelter became a hellhole and was shut
down. Then a new shelter is opened amid
promises that this time it will be different.
Then the new shelter becomes a hellhole.
So now Hansell hints that maybe the solution is to open some other institution. Really?
If he’s allowed to get away with it, I’m sure he’ll be at
the dedication ceremony, explaining why this institution will be different.
