THE PRICE OF PANIC
There has been much talk in recent years about improvements at ACS. Some of that improvement is real. But that simple storyline obscures a more complex reality. Any assessment of where ACS is, must begin with where it was just a few years ago, at the height of a “foster-care panic” that did enormous harm to the city's children.
Such panics are common in child welfare systems after the highly-publicized death of a child “known to the system.” Over and over they occur in the name of “child safety.” And over and over they have made children less safe.
The panic in New York City took place after the death of Elisa Izquierdo late in 1995. Less than two months after Elisa died, then Mayor Rudy Giuliani created ACS, named Nicholas Scoppetta to run it, and said: “The philosophy of child welfare has been too rigidly focused on holding families together, sometimes at the cost of protecting babies and children.” [i]
He was wrong. And his mistake probably cost some children their lives.
After Elisa died, every child who became known to ACS was seen as a potential Elisa, a potential national embarrassment. Every poor African-American or Latina mother was seen as a potential killer. And just when things might have calmed down, Scoppetta ratcheted up the pressure again, putting out a notorious “Mission Statement” which said:
“Any ambiguity regarding the safety of the child will be resolved in favor of removing the child from harm's way.” [ii]
Several months later, Giuliani himself elaborated, declaring that “[W]hen you see a home that is in such a condition that the people taking care of the children need a homemaker to take care of their home maybe that suggests they shouldn't be taking care of children, don't you think?” [iii] The Mayor did not, however, order child protective workers to sweep through the penthouses of the Upper East Side, confiscating the children of every parent who hired a maid to keep the place clean.
The result was a disaster for families. Terrified workers were afraid to leave any child in his or her own homes. (For one worker's impressions see A View From the Frontlines .)
The New York Times reported that by 1997, children not only were being taken away, but their mothers were being placed under arrest for such “crimes” as living with a five-year-old in a roach infested apartment without electricity or running water, l eaving a ten-year-old and a four-year-old at home for an hour to shop for groceries, and losing track of a child's whereabouts while helping a friend to move.
Even a prosecutor who handled such cases for the Queens District Attorney's office said: “I find that police charge endangering the welfare of a child when there shouldn't be an endangering case at all.” [iv]
By 1998, the height of the foster care panic, the number of children taken from their parents in a year had soared 50 percent compared with 1995, the last year before ACS was created. [v]
The justification for all of it was the ACS mission statement, a statement that bought in to the biggest myth in child welfare: that child removal equals child safety. Or as agencies all over the country say to justify all of their excesses – “we're just erring on the side of the child.”
But when a child is needlessly thrown into foster care, he loses not only mom and dad but often brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers, friends and classmates. He is cut loose from everyone loving and familiar. For a young enough child it's an experience akin to a kidnapping. Other children feel they must have done something terribly wrong and now they are being punished. The emotional trauma can last a lifetime. How is that “erring on the side of the child”
And that assumes the foster home will be a good one. The majority are. But several studies from all over the country show that the rate of abuse in foster care is far higher than generally realized and far higher than in the general population. The record of institutions is even worse. [vi]
In the lawsuit that led to creation of the Special Child Welfare Advisory Panel for New York City, Children's Rights Inc. said:
"Abuse or neglect by foster parents is not even reported, because CWA [as it was known then] and the voluntary agencies tolerate behavior from foster parents which would be unacceptable if exhibited by birth parents." [vii]
Furthermore, the more a foster care system is overwhelmed with children who don't need to be there, the less safe it becomes, as agencies are tempted to overcrowd foster
homes and lower standards for foster parents. If a child is taken from a perfectly safe home only to be beaten, raped or killed in foster care, how is that “erring on the side of the child”?
| Paying the ultimate price: Caprice Reid
ACS thought Caprice Reid wasn't being properly supervised by her mother. So they decided to “put the child first” and put the child in foster care. They made a “child focused” decision. They “erred on the side of the child.” Eleven months after placement in her third foster home, Caprice Reid, then age four, was dead. Death did not come quickly. She was starved. She was dehydrated. And her body was covered with bruises. Police say she was tied to a chair and beaten with a stick for four days until she could no longer walk. The foster home was licensed by one private agency even though another agency had found the home unfit just a few months earlier – and had warned the agency that issued the license. About a week before she died, Caprice Reid's mother saw her daughter for the last time. The little girl clung to her mother's neck and said “Don't go, Mommy. I love you.” [i] [i] Rachel Swarns, “Agency Was Warned About Foster Mother Charged in Girl's Death,” The New York Times , July 2, 1997, p.B3; Michelle McPhee et. al., “Two Charged in Foster Death” New York Daily News , July 2, 1997, p.17
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But even that isn't the worst of it. Though the foster-care panic was begun and perpetuated in order to prevent more cases like Elisa Izquierdo, the panic backfired. Deaths of children previously “known to the system” didn't decline – instead they soared 50 percent between 1996 and 1998. [i] And City officials had every reason to know it would happen, since similar foster care panics in Illinois in 1993 and Connecticut in 1995 had produced similar results.
Only after three full years of panic did the improvement at ACS begin. Where, then, do things stand today?
· The number of children taken from their parents is down again. And it's crucial to note that this happened with no compromise of safety. There was no increase in the proportion of children returned home who had to be placed in foster care again [ii] and reabuse of children left in their own homes declined. [iii]
But it was only in the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2003, that removals finally fell below the number in FY 1995 – the last year before Elisa Izquierdo died. [iv]
And the figure still is too high. These papers document case after case of wrongful removal even now. And the best available data indicate that ACS still takes proportionately more children from their homes in New York City than its Illinois counterpart takes from homes in Chicago, even when factoring in the poverty rates in the two cities. [v]
· The workers who remove children are better trained and have lower caseloads; so they're taking fewer children. But then the case is handed off to an undertrained overwhelmed worker for a private foster care agency – an agency whose survival depends on keeping its foster care beds filled.
· The city has vigorously pursued neighborhood-based foster care. But it has been less vigorous in pursuing neighborhood-based preventive services – in which families get help the help they need to keep their children out of foster care in the first place.
· ACS has adopted Family Team Conferences to involve families in creating plans to safely keep their children at home or get them returned home. But ACS has done a better job of adopting the form than the substance.
· ACS is moving forward, and doing better than many other systems across the country. But the gains are coming painfully slowly, they are fragile, and any celebration is premature.
[ii] New York City Administration for Children's Services, Protecting the Children of New York: A Plan of Action for the Administration for Children's Services, Dec. 19, 1996.
[iii] Transcript, CBS News Sunday Morning , Aug. 2, 1998.
[iv] Rachel Swarns, “In Policy Shift, More Parents Are Arrested for Child Neglect,” The New York Times , Oct. 25, 1997, p.A1.
[v] Center for an Urban Future, “Too Fast for Families,” Child Welfare Watch , Winter 2000, Chart, p.15.
[vi] For details on studies of abuse in foster care nationwide, see National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, Issue Paper #1: Foster Care vs. Family Preservation: The Track Record on Safety , available online at http://www.nccpr.org/newissues/1.html
[vii] Complaint, Marisol A. v. Giuliani , Paragraph 245, p.75.
[i] Child Welfare Watch, Note 5, supra.
[ii] Administration for Children's Services Top 12 Performance Indicators , Indicator #4, available online at http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/acs/pdf/out4_quickvi ew.pdf
[iii] Ibid, Indicator #5 available online http://www.ci.nyc ny .us/html/acs/pdf/out5_quickview.pdf
[iv] ACS Update Annual Report 2003, available online at http://home.nyc.gov/html/acs/pdf/update_5year.pdf
[v] See Note 10 in our Overview paper for details and citations comparing Chicago to New York City.