Contents

CUF in the News

	Will East Harlem's La Marqueta Rise Again?, Grub Street New York, August 19, 2010
	Deal to Put Slots at Aqueduct Paves Way for a New York City Casino, The New York Times, August 12, 2010
	Local Biz Booster, New York Daily News, August 11, 2010
	The truth about commercial rent control, Crain's New York Business, August 10, 2010
	Spinning It Bloomberg Style, Huffington Post, August 9, 2010
	Group says state should 'step back' and dump plan for Aqueduct racino, New York Daily News, August 8, 2010
	read more>

Center for an Urban Future
is a New York City-based think tank that fuses journalistic reporting techniques with traditional policy analysis to produce in-depth reports and workable policy solutions on the critical issues facing our cities.

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New York by the Numbers

Economic snapshots of the 5 boroughs

This month's data... This edition of New York by the Numbers reveals that nearly a third of all adult workers in New York City are employed in low-wage jobs. While the percentage of low-wage workers is high across the city, the Bronx is in a league of its own, with 42 percent of the boroughs workers in low-wage jobs.

Accountability in Foster Care

A summer 1999 report of Child Welfare Watch

By John Courtney, Wendy Davis, Peggy Farber and Alyssa Katz

July 1999 | DOWNLOAD PDF

Introduction: Keeping an Eye on the Children

A generation ago, child welfare in New York City was a subterranean world. Tens of thousands of children came into the care of private foster care agencies and then departed months or, more often, years later, with no examination of what happened to them in that time. State inspectors sometimes stopped by to read case files; city officials would review an agency if there were reports of problems. But a comprehensive approach to monitoring the agencies worksystematic, rational accountabilitysimply did not exist.

In 1979, political leaders worked with child welfare advocates to launch New Yorks first effort to ensure that children and their families were getting the attention they needed to get back together or, when necessary, move on toward adoption. Over the years, however, these measures bogged down, disintegrating completely by 1991. For most of this decade, child welfare in New York City has been evaluated with the same one-size-fits-all system used to monitor city contractors from construction workers to school lunch vendors.

On the twentieth anniversary of New Yorks landmark resolution to maintain vigilance over the children in its care, this fifth edition of Child Welfare Watch examines the legacy of that decision. Starting this year, ACS is looking at how effectively its contract agencies deliver measurable results for children, whether its a speedy reunification of a child and her mother or a home for a teen determined to strike out on her own. The city is also requiring agencies to reapply for their contracts for foster care and preventive services, competing for slots based on their capacity and commitment to provide neighborhood-based services.

At the heart of all the measurements are two fundamental questions: What does New York City get for the $1.4 billion it spends annually on child welfare services? And does the $616 million that goes to the more than 60 agencies that provide foster care services buy the quality of care families need?

Elsewhere around the country, state governments take the lead in making sure child welfare services get delivered quickly and appropriately. Not so in New York. The state Office of Children and Family Services has taken the back seat, collecting data showing how families are faring but failing to follow its mandate to oversee the citys operations. And so the ultimate responsibility for childrens well-being rests squarely with ACS. The ability of parents, lawyers, advocates and the press to hold the city accountable hinges on the information it can provide, because ACS provides just about the only ways to evaluate the citys child welfare system.

But ACSs recent oversight overhaul has some blind spots. The system emphasizes bottom-line efficiency over examining agencies work in depth. Almost nowhere in this process is the quality of childrens care the focus. And, like any system for enforcing accountability, ACSs new performance measures reflect its priorities: Although the city has taken the important step of tracking agencies speed and success in reunifying children with their families, it continues to promote adoption as a preferred course of action.

Such choices directly affect the care provided to families and children. How a game is scored determines a teams strategies; likewise, what the city explicitly examines at its contract agencies-and what it doesnt-affects how those agencies do their jobs. Without a value on parental involvement in case planning, to take one important example, agencies have no incentive to improve casework with them.

The citys goal of pushing agencies to get children out of care sooner should be a win-win proposition: Children will be able move on with their lives, while the city saves tens of millions in foster care costs. But by only measuring the final outcome, agencies and ACS are simply being told where theyre supposed to go. What they still need is a road map showing them the best ways to get there.