The Administration for Children Services - Case Study Example

RUNNING HEAD: THE ADMINSTRATIONS FOR CHILDREN SERVICES IN NYC The Administration for Children Services: Mission Accomplished?? Date The Administration for Children Services: Mission Accomplished?? This paper will explain what the Administration for Children Services (ACS) is as well as discuss their mission and policies and further critique the organization’s current structure. The purpose of this paper is to address the inefficiency of the current program in place to protect New York City children and to investigate what changes are being implemented to remedy these shortcomings. Introduction The ACS system as it currently operates has strongly failed our children. Recent news in the media highlights two cases where children have died at the hands of their unfit caregivers. This paper will review Case management and the ACS’ statistics. The question of,” How have these cases being in the media affected the public’s view of the ACS?” will be examined. The organization is currently in the process of implementing innovative procedures that should optimistically show its effect on the organization’s work. Will this be sufficient to addressing the problem? How efficient will the organization be after all the changes? The paper will in detail confer the potential positive outcome of the restructured organization. The paper will also analyze the media’s effect on the expedited renovations to the system. In order to more fully understand the current status of the ACS, a brief synopsis of its history is necessary. History of and Services Provided by the ACS On January 10, 1996, for the first time in New York City history, an agency “devoted solely to serving children and their families” was established.1 The ACS mission is to “ensure the safety, permanency and well-being of the 1.8 million children in New York City and to strengthen families.”2 In order to achieve this, several key areas of responsibility were established by Nicholas Scoppetta the agency’s first commissioner. These include: Investigating reported cases of child abuse. Offering counseling and referral programs to children and families for such issues as substance abuse, parenting, prevention, crisis intervention among others. Oversee the foster care system including selection and training of caregivers, placement of children requiring these services and offering transitional services to youth as they leave the system. Oversee and maintain the Head Start Program and other child care programs throughout the city. Oversee adoptive services, when applicable, within the city. Design networks and foster cooperation throughout all agencies which deal with children services and other agencies with whom they interact.3 In order to achieve these aims the agency put several processes in place including: reduced caseloads for workers, increased training and compensation packages, fostered improved interagency cooperation between various government agencies including Family court, the Department of Education and the various police agencies within the city and streamlined the record keeping system and automated it into a streamlined mode using latest technology. Additionally the ACS established in 2001 an intake facility solely dedicated to those children entering the foster care system, initiated a clinical consultation team to specifically work on cases involving physical abuse, substance abuse and mental health services and developed an intricate system to measure level and quality of services provided to children and their families. This system known as EQUIP (the Evaluation and Quality Improvement Protocol) was designed to evaluate all phases of the ACS system including: “processes, outcomes and quality.”4 Finally, ACS instituted a comprehensive service review plan to ensure timely meetings within required time frames are conducted for each case. Yet, with all the innovative programs purported to be instituted children are still ‘slipping through the cracks’ – too often with deadly results. Current Statistics and Findings In order to more fully understand the current state of ACS. It is necessary to evaluate current trends and statistics of cases within the agency currently being serviced. In the following paragraphs, figures will be presented that contain the most current statistics available from the agency with regard to the number of cases currently be handled by ACS staff. The data is broken down by type of service. Additionally, present in these figures is historical data for the previous five years. Areas of specific interest that will be addressed include protective services, the foster care system and preventative services in particular. This is by no means implying that the additional services the agency offers are any less important; rather, they merely fall outside the scope of this research work. Figure 1 below displays the statistical data available for Child Protective Services. As seen in the below table the instances of intakes by year have been decreasing since FY 2001 where there we a total of 57,235 intake cases compared with 50,309 in FY 2005. Additionally, the total number of children within the total citywide caseload dropped from 88,312 to 72,629, 17.7% decrease since FY2001. The average number of cases per worker has fluctuated during the five year period. The high was an average of 13.7 in FY2001 and the low average was 11.6 in FY2003. The average number of children per caseworker in FY2005 was 12.1; however, the number of workers with over 30 cases is increasing with 2.8% of caseworkers having over 30 cases as compared to 1.4 the previous years a 50% increase. The last figure to examine is the indication rate which shows the percentage of cases investigated where a determination is made that there is evidence of abuse or neglect. As seen in the figure below this rate has remained relatively stable over the five year period fluctuating between a high of 34.1% in 2001 and a low of 32.6% reported in FY2005. Figure 1: ACS Protective Services Caseload Data FY2001-20055 Figure 2 below displays the court cases during the five-year period which resulted in court placement in the foster care program. As demonstrated in the below chart foster placement has decreased by over 50% in the last five years. Court placements in FY2001 were 11,777 while in FY2005 placements totaled 5,502 children. A large portion of the decrease can be attributed to a decline in the new admissions (down in excess of 45% since FY2001) and an increase in the discharges from the system. As seen in FY2005, 5,208 discharges were attributed to either return to the family, the child reaching majority or other living arrangements were established. Of the total discharges for FY2005 2,364 resulted in permanent adoption. Figure 2: ACS Foster Care Caseload Data FY2001-20056 Figure 3 below contains data for preventative services over the previous five year period. The data presented is for ACS direct services not contracted services performed by independent agencies. New cases opened in FY2005 were down in FY2005 by 37.3% from FY2001 figures. In FY2005 2,908 new cases were opened while 4,641 had been opened in FY2001. Active cases during the five year period also saw declines. In FY2001 there were 8,086 active cases while in FY2005 there were only 5,603 active cases. Court ordered supervision also declined during the five year period examined by over 44%. In FY2001 there were 4,371 court ordered cases and only 2,424 in FY2005. Due to the decline in cases the workload by caseworkers has been reduced as well. In FY2001 there was an average caseload of 14.5 cases per caseworker while by FY2005 the average caseload had dropped to 9.7. However, while the total percentage of cases has been reduced by 44.5%, the cases per caseworker have not declined in kind. The reduction percentage of caseload over the five year period reduced by just 32.8% indicating that the total number of caseworkers have declined or been reassigned to other functions within the agency. Figure 3: ACS Preventative Services Caseload Data FY2001-20057 One last set of statistics to present examines the current caseload as of February 2006 in general terms. As of February of 2006, there were 16,723 children in foster care, 16,595 in protective services and as of October of 2005 there were 29,820 children utilizing preventative services.8 Recent Failures of ACS Little Nixzmary Brown was only seven years old when she died. It is tragic when any child dies, but when it is at the hands of her own parents it becomes tragic beyond words. At her death, Nixzmary weighed only 36 pounds and according to police “was possibly tied to a chair and forced to use a litter box for a toilet.”9 Figure 4 below is a picture of Nixzmary in kindergarten. Figure 4: Nixzmary Brown Photography10 Nixzmary Brown, seen in class photo provided by family friend and taken when she was in Kindergarten (AP) ACS had been contacted twice with allegations of abuse of the child by her mother and stepfather, once in May of 2004 and the second time in December of 2005 – a month before her death. ACS Commissioner John Mattingly, according to the news report stated, “I am committed, deeply committed as anyone can be, to doing whatever it is that we can do to minimize the chances that this kind of thing will happen again” (Pinkston, 2006, screen 1). The commissioner could offer no explanation for why Nixzmary had not been removed from the home or why caseworkers had not obtained a warrant to enter the home and investigate the allegations as, according to him, the parents were being uncooperative. According to an article in the New York Sun, the medical examiner’s office reported that she “died as the result of child abuse syndrome - meaning she sustained injuries all over her body for some time - including blunt impact injury to the head with brain hemorrhage.”11 According to USA Today in May of 2004 a guidance counselor at Nixzmary’s school reported to ACS that the child had missed 47 days of school that year. ACS responded to the complaint but closed the case finding no “educational neglect when it was clear the girl had not been attending school.”12 Another report of abuse was received in December as stated previously, but Nixzmary’s mother and stepfather refused entry to the home and no further progress was made by ACS. They are currently under ‘attack’ for not doing more and getting a court order to enter the home. According to Nixzmary’s stepfather, he lost his temper when she stole a cup of yogurt from the refrigerator and beat her in the presence of her mother although both he and his wife deny actually causing the child’s death. Both have pled not guilty. According to the USA Today report since this latest incident “six ACS employees have been suspended or reassigned. In just the first week, the agency received 2,170 reports of child abuse and neglect, a 71% increase from the same period a year ago.”13 Another case that left the public wondering about the competence of ACS involved the death of Quachaun Brown who was just four when early this year his mother’s boyfriend beat him to death after he was returned to the home by ACS. Young Quachaun died of a skull fracture complicated by other injuries received at the hands of the 18 year old boyfriend. According to Stern (2006) Quachaun was the sixth child to recently be murdered by his parents or caregivers and when referring to the previous five murders stated “Just a few days later, the name of Quachaun Brown must be added to the roster of children beaten to death in their homes in families supposedly under the supervision of the Administration for Childrens Services.  We thought that Nixzmarys death by prolonged torture had exhausted our capacity for outrage.”14 ACS Policies According to the new policy outlined in 2005 ACS has stressed its desire: through adherence to a set of principles – keeping children safe while supporting them and their families with quality services in their very own neighborhoods – this transformation was accomplished. All the while, safety, permanency and well being for children were, and still are, our paramount concerns.15 The policy further outlined the agency’s new focus on concentrating on ‘neighborhood-centered family services’ which concentrate on keeping the home intact. Figure 5 below displays the ACS’s aim to reduce placement and increase family support functions that stress the importance of keeping the child, as much as possible, within the home setting. As seen in the below chart since 1998 foster care has continued to decline from approximately 40,000 children in 1998 to just under 20,000 in October of 2004 while family support services have increased from an all time low in 200 of just over 25,000 to the current total of 31,529 children. Figure 5: ACS decline in Foster Care and Increase in In-Home Services 1998-200416 While the main focus of the ACS came to be keeping the family intact or at the very least reuniting children with their parents as soon as possible, ACS asked on question in their 2005 Policy Program: While returning children home quickly is a major priority in child welfare practice, the fact that so many children can be returned home within the first three months of placement raises an important question: can these children remain safely at home with the right mix of services?17 After the recent deaths of the children discussed previously, the answer becomes obvious. Clearly the desire of every person is to keep children safely within their own homes. However, that can not, as has been tragically demonstrated, always occur. The safety of the children is of paramount importance - first, foremost and always. Where do we go from here? In a recent editorial in the New York Post online Charles Millard, a former NYC commissioner, similar to much of the media surrounding ACS at current gave a scathing commentary of the ACS’s current policies and practices regarding youth placements. According to Millard (2006): Yes, that document [the 2005 new policy released by ACS] mentions child safety in all the appropriate places. But its every policy pronouncement — and every new idea — is about promoting family preservation and services. There was not a single initiative related to improving childrens immediate safety.18 According to a caseworker for ACS who wished to remain anonymous stated that current policy is not feasible to ensure the safety of children. When a child is in immediate danger, they need removed from the home then and there – not schedule a family conference to discuss the options. The media has drawn a great deal of focus to the current deaths surrounding the children mentioned early and countless others. However, one statistic that can never be revealed is how many children are, at this very moment, suffering from abuse within their home because the current policy is to keep the family intact. We may never know how many there are, until the violence committed against them finally becomes so great that like Quachaun and Nixzmary we read their obituary in the morning paper. Unfortunately, that is too late. As traumatic as removal from the home can be for a child, the permanence of death lasts longer. If ACS is to error let in error in favor of the children. References “Introduction to ACS.” (2005). Administration of Children Services (ACS) Booklet, New York City. Elkies, L. (2006, April 17). “Officials say murdered girl had signs of sustained abuse.” NY Sun Online. Accessed April 17, 2006, from http://www.nysun.com/article/25727 “Final days of girl’s life reveal horrors.” (2006, January 21). USA Today Online. Accessed April 16, 2006, from http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-21-new-york-girl_x.htm?csp=34 “Five-year report.” (2006). Statistics and Links webpage. PDF file. Administration of Children Services Website. Accessed April 15, 2006, from http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/html/statistics/statistics_links.shtml Millard, C. E. F. (2006, February 1). “ACS’ wrong-headed reforms.” New York Post online. Accessed April 16, 2006, from http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/62660.htm Pinkston, R. (2006, January 13). “Outrage over abuse, death over NYC girl.” CBS New Online. Accessed April 15, 2006, from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/13/earlyshow/main1206722.shtml “Protecting children and strengthening families: a plan to realign New York City’s child welfare system.” (2005, February). NYC Administration for Children Services. New York City. Accessed April 16, 2006, from http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/html/about/protecting_children.shtml “A renewed plan for action for the administration of children’s services.” (2001, July). Administration of Children Services. New York City. “Statistics and links.” (2006). PDF file. Administration of Children Services Website. Accessed April 15, 2006, from http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/html/statistics/statistics_links.shtml Stern, H. J. (2006, February 1). “Death of baby Quachaun leads some to question Mattingly’s management.” New York City Civic Organization Website. Accessed April 16, 2006, from http://www.nycivic.org/articles/060201.html The Administration for Children Services: Mission Accomplished?? I. Introduction II. History of and Services Provided by the ACS A. History of ACS B. Current Services III. Current Statistics and Findings A. Overview B. Protective Serivces C. Foster Care D. Preventative Services IV. Recent Failures of ACS A. Nixzmary Brown B. Quachaun Brown V. ACS Policies A. 2005 Policy Implementation B. Past Practices VI. Where do we go from here? A. Media Focus B. ACS C. Ethical Considerations D. Conclusion Read More