Dear John,

This week, my office released an audit of the Administration for Children’s Services’ (ACS) oversight of New York City’s foster care system.

Our topline finding? The overall number of New York City kids facing abuse or neglect has, thankfully, been on the decline since 2020.

Still, 1,641 children in foster care faced neglect or abuse over the three-year period we reviewed. And heartbreakingly, over three-quarters of incidents happened while children visited their birth families. 

The first job of government is to keep our kids safe. Every single child under the care of the City deserves a nurturing and safe environment. But even one child abused or neglected is one too many, let alone over 1,600.

How did we get here, and how do we keep NYC’s most vulnerable children safe?

For starters, our auditors found that in some instances, the New York State Family Court made the decisions concerning visitation and supervision – not ACS (or the foster care agencies with whom ACS contracts). That’s why I sent a letter to the NYS Family Court asking them to review our report and work with ACS to prevent instances of neglect and abuse during familial visits.

But let’s be clear: ACS must also level up their efforts to collect, aggregate, and analyze data that would allow the agency to better track incidents of abuse during unsupervised visitations versus court ordered visitations etc. ACS does not track the aggregate number of incidents that occurred during court-mandated versus non-court-mandated visitations with birth families.

Our team also found that while ACS’ safety oversight was adequate in most areas of the foster care system, ACS did not conduct site visits at residential care facilities in a timely manner. In some cases, ACS allowed an average of 10 months to elapse between visits—far exceeding the target timeframe of at least one visit every six months.

This is unacceptable, and my office urges ACS to conduct the required number of site visits (and, additionally, unannounced visits) at all residential care facilities. These visits must be done in-person and at reasonable intervals.

Finally, we need a solution to address the root cause of abuse and neglect. We recommend that ACS require any parent found to engage in neglect or abuse during a visitation undergo mandatory counseling to address underlying factors that may lead to a child being unsafe. We believe it’s in the best interest of the parent and child to seek counseling.

You can read the full audit and all of our recommendations here.

With hope for a safe future for all our kids,

Brad

Office of the New York City Comptroller

Our mailing address is:
Office of New York City Comptroller Brad Lander
1 Centre Street
New York, NY 10007
United States

This email was sent to [email protected]. If you wish to no longer receive these messages, please unsubscribe.