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.

Child Welfare Watch: the Innovation Issue

This edition of Child Welfare Watch examines the changing landscape of New York City's child welfare system, including the shift of millions from the shrinking foster care system into support services for families at risk of losing their children to foster care.

By Cassi Feldman, Alyssa Katz, Sharon Lerner, Nora McCarthy and Andrew White

August 2005 | DOWNLOAD PDF

For the first time in decades, fewer than 5,000 children were placed in New York City foster care during the city fiscal year that ended in June 2005. The large majority were removed from their parents following a report of abuse or neglect, but such removals are down by more than half in just six years.

In fact, the total number of children in foster care today is less than 18,000. Thats very close to the number in care at the moment the crack epidemic first sent the system reeling in early 1986-the start of a rapid, steep climb to nearly 50,000 foster children in 1991.

And now for the first time, the city is reinvesting funds saved from the shrinking foster care system-$30 million worthinto support services for families who are at risk of losing their children to foster care, or who have moved back in with children who had been taken away.

These are the broad, defining facts that describe the changing landscape of the citys child welfare system. But the full impact of such changes on front-line practice will take time to measure. Whether children will be better served and more quickly placed in-or returned to-permanent homes; whether parents and foster parents will always be given respect in their dealings with caseworkers and courts; and whether investigators first contact with families becomes a consistently different experience-all of this is not yet certain.

In fact, the true impact of reform on the lives of families and children is often found in smaller details. In this edition of Child Welfare Watch, we look closely at changes in childwelfare programs that in some cases affect only a few hundred people at a time. In one sense, they are just marginal shifts on the edges of a vast, billion-dollar system. But they matter a great deal to people in their day-to-day interactions with the foster care system.

For example, in two neighborhoods-Central Harlem and the Highbridge-the city is trying out an 11th-hour intervention that aims to prevent unnecessary removals of children from their parents, create an infrastructure of support around families that may be able to stay together and establish a better working relationship with parents whose children are taken away to foster care. We also report on attempts to improve parents visits with their children in foster care, an area that is central to childrens lives and overdue for reform. Another article looks at changes in rent supports for families involved with the child welfare systemand the citys initial steps toward a major increase in a key housing subsidy. Finally, we look at a small mental health project that may one day blossom into a full fledged transformation of the way foster children and child welfare agencies interface with the states unwieldy-and often unyielding-Medicaid-funded system.

This issue of Child Welfare Watch is a little different from what you may have come to expect. From now on, one out of every two editions will survey the latest news in New Yorks child welfare system. Well continue to publish in-depth themed issues-look for a report on Family Court and ACS legal services next winter-but we have concluded that with so much rapid change going on, we need more flexibility to analyze developments as theyre happening and ensure accountability for how those changes affect children and families. There is still a great need for improvements in principal aspects of the system. Yet theres also cause to celebrate the drive for positive change. Reformers outside and inside the system are setting the course, affecting the lives of thousands of children and families for the better. ANDREW WHITE

Recommendations proposed by Child Welfare Watch
The innovations reported on in these pages offer a view into the possible future for child protection, family support and foster care, yet many details of these new policies and programs still need to be worked out. The following recommendations come from the Child Welfare Watch advisory board.

FAMILY TEAM CONFERENCES CONVENED BEFORE CHILDREN ARE TAKEN FROM THEIR HOMES NEED FAR-REACHING SUPPORT TO SUCCEED. In two neighborhoods, ACS is convening parents, their advocates, attorneys, community representatives, child protective specialists and others prior to removing children from their homes. Child Welfare Watch believes these conferences have the potential to prevent unnecessary removals and inspire more positive interaction with parents in the early stages of child abuse and neglect cases. The administration deserves high praise for undertaking this extraordinary effort. Successful family conferences require strong parent advocates. Soon, the city will have to fund a new, well-trained network of parent advocates who have personal knowledge of the child welfare system based on their own families experience. These advocates should be employed by community organizations and be available on very short notice. Many families involved in these conferences will also need or want support services-regardless of whether their children end up in foster care, are placed temporarily with relatives or friends, or are not placed at all. Therefore we restate our recommendation that ACS mount a broad effort to assess the quality and effectiveness of family support services provided under contract with the city. Only appropriate, flexible, high-quality support programs can adequately help families. In addition, it is essential that facilitators and other participants in family conferences be trained to identify and respond properly to families they encounter in these meetings who are experiencing domestic violence. Great care must be taken to avoid endangering the survivor as well as the children, and supports should be established for the non-offending parent whenever possible.

FAMILY TEAM CONFERENCES SHOULD BE HELD IN COMMUNITY AGENCIES,NOT ACS FIELD OFFICES. At the moment when families are extremely stressed and most vulnerable, meetings held in ACS field offices are inevitably more intimidating and potentially less productive for parents than those held in welcoming spaces at familiar community-based agencies.

PARENTS VISITS WITH THEIR CHILDREN IN FOSTER CARE SHOULD BE FLEXIBLE, FREQUENT AND CREATIVE. Frequent visits are the linchpin to getting children out of foster care and back home as quickly and safely as possible. Five years ago,ACS visiting guidelines encouraged creative approaches to visitation and required visits be unsupervised except when there is a clear reason to believe children are in danger.Yet Family Court, ACS attorneys and many nonprofit foster care agencies have not followed through. The new ACS visiting unit and the agencys planned visiting centers are important steps forward. So too are the efforts of a handful of foster care agencies to improve practice. But all players in the system should pursue the recommendations made by the ASFA Ad Hoc Coalition in its October 2004 report to ACS. These include: more and better training of foster care agency staff, ACS attorneys and Family Court judges; greater use of relatives or family friends who can host visits in their home; sleeping arrangements for people who want to have weekend visits with their children but have no home; reimbursements for food and transportation; and better communication on visiting issues among all the key players in a case. Furthermore, foster care agencies adherence to visitation practice guidelines should be included in the citys EQUIP performance measurement system.

INCREASE THE CHILD WELFARE HOUSING SUBSIDY THIS YEAR.
ACS provides temporary rent subsidies to some families whose children are returning from foster care, as well as a handful of families who need housing to avoid losing a child to foster care, and to some young adults aging out of the system. This monthly subsidy is only $300, in a city where the median rent of a vacant apartment is $900. This subsidy remains in place only up to three years. But rent support is often essential for helping a parent pull her family together and find other income. Six hundred households currently receive the subsidy, at a cost of about $2 million. The state legislature will have to amend the state Social Services Law to create a more adequate subsidy, preferably $970 for a two-bedroom apartment, as ACS has proposed. Two-thirds of the subsidy is funded by Albany, which could move on the amendment this fall. Alternatively, the Bloomberg administration and the City Council should provide the funds from city revenues.

INTEGRATE MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES FOR CHILDREN WITHIN AGENCIES MANAGING FOSTER BOARDING HOMES. Specially trained staff of community mental health clinics located in the neighborhood offices of foster boarding home agencies improves the quality of care, strengthens case management and increases access to services. The state Office of Mental Health should approve Medicaid funds and strongly encourage this practice. The potential payoff is tremendous: foster children are a tightly targeted group that experience a high rate of trauma and other emotional issues. The long-term benefits of proper care at an early age are clear. In addition, parents and caregivers of children in foster care should be actively encouraged to participate in decisions made about their childrens mental health care. This is important as a fundamental right, and because effective treatment of behavioral health issues often requires adults in a childs life to adapt, to support their children and sometimes to alter their own behavior.

To read the full report, click here.