Danielle Chapman worked for the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) for a little over two years before, overwhelmed and disillusioned, she left the field entirely in 2001. “It’s very easy to get burnt out … even in a government system with benefits and security,” she says.

That’s fairly typical, according to a 2003 survey by the Brookings Institution that finds that more than 40 percent of human services workers leave the field after two years.

The women and men on the front lines of the struggle to keep children safe from abuse, neglect and trauma often suffer from overwork, low pay, and little support. Recent studies show that in most areas, child welfare caseloads are twice as high as the recommended standards.

In 1998, New York City set about to improve the conditions of its child welfare workforce as a critical step in achieving better outcomes for children and families—and evidence suggests that in many areas, the reforms have worked.

By boosting salaries and investing in training and professional development for caseworkers, turnover has dropped dramatically. In 1995, nearly 50 percent of caseworkers left after two years; that number is now down to 29 percent. Workers are better trained and prepared for crises. While in 1995 service workers received four weeks of training before taking a full caseload, they now ease into the job, starting with a few cases and gradually adding more, with supervision and support. They build to a full caseload after ten months.

ACS commissioner William Bell says that the reforms are behind the 40 percent drop in the number of children in foster care since 1995. Then, 43,000 children were in temporary placements; now, there are fewer than 26,000 children. For years, the city saw an average of 13,000 new children entering foster care each year. In 2002, just over 8,000 entered.

Susan Lambiase, associate director of Children’s Rights, Inc., cautions that numbers alone don’t get at the reasons for the decline. “If the population is declining because an agency is doing a very thorough investigation, giving families thorough family preservation services when appropriate, that’s a great thing. But if it is declining because they want to keep their numbers down, and it’s not based on adequate investigations and what children need, that’s of course a bad thing. There’s no way to know just by looking at the numbers.”

Children’s Rights, Inc., brought the lawsuit that sparked these reforms. While acknowledging that the city has made progress, associate director Susan Lambiase cites some areas of concern: Youth congregate care [residential facilities]: “The facilities are often reportedly not up to par. We want to test whether the kids are going to congregate care simply because they are teens and there’s a belief that no foster families will take them. You have to really recruit foster parents for teens; is enough being done?” The computer information system [designed before Marisol, but a requirement of the settlement was that they get it up and running] is still not complete: “If you can’t gather data on kids, you can't as a management entity figure out what you’re doing right and wrong.” Children’s Rights is working on two independent studies of congregate care and the city's approach to teens; they expect to release the findings in fall 2003.

Still, she says, the system has certainly improved. “The [administration] did a lot of basic important things that needed to happen … They have established a really ambitious plan that they’re going forward in implementing.” (See box.)

Not only are fewer children languishing in what can sometimes be years of temporary foster placements—but caseloads are among the lowest in the nation, with most workers handling an average of 12 children in foster placements each.

“Twelve is really excellent. I don’t know many jurisdictions that are meeting that,” says Pamela Day, director of child welfare standards at the Child Welfare League of America, which recommends that workers oversee no more than 12 to 15 children in foster care at a time. “That means workers can spend time with families and children, get to know the situation and really work towards ... permanency.”

The changes weren’t cheap: overall spending on the system increased by between $200 and $300 million since 1996. Most of the new funding for foster care services comes from the federal government; the agency has corrected filing errors that for years meant ACS received fewer federal dollars than it was entitled to.

It’s a wise investment, William Bell told attendees at a March 23, 2003 National Press Club briefing. The two key ingredients for reform are “political will … and a commitment to the allocation of resources to this process even in tight times,” he said. “We can either choose to invest in the children’s lives while they’re still children, or it will cost us more later.”

Making Child Well-being a Priority
What mobilized this vast change in the system? A tragedy. In 1995, six-year-old Elisa Izquierdo was beaten to death by her parents in New York City. The event captured national attention; in December of 1995, Elisa’s picture appeared on the cover of Time Magazine.

In interviews, then-Mayor Rudolph Giulini and other politicians expressed outrage and vowed this would not happen again—and child advocacy groups set out to hold them to their word.

A 1995 class-action lawsuit brought against Giuliani by the New York-based Children’s Rights Inc., and funded by the national Annie E. Casey Foundation, alleged that Elisa was just one of thousands of children put at risk not only by abusive adults, but by the failures of an inadequate child welfare system. The suit Marisol v. Giuliani—brought in the name of “Marisol A.” and 10 other children in the city’s custody—sought to remove the entire Child Welfare Administration (CWA) from city’s control.

Instead, the parties reached a settlement in 1998—one that sought to change child welfare by starting from the ground up and targeting improvements at front-line caseworkers.

To oversee the reform process, a Special Child Welfare Panel was created, made up of outside child welfare experts, advocates and researchers, and headed by Annie E. Casey Foundation senior associate Steven Cohen. The panel worked with CWA, and with communities and families to review conditions, recommend improvements, and report on progress to the public. Those public progress reports gave city officials an incentive to deliver on the promises made during the Marisol settlement.

Healthier Workers, Better Outcomes
In 1998, as the lawsuit was underway, Danielle Chapman graduated from New York University and joined ACS, looking to give something back. She wasn’t a caseworker, she served as assistant to the Commissioner. But she saw enough to convince her that the system—and the workers—were in crisis.

She applauds the front-line approach of the reform effort. “The purpose of foster care is to create healthier situations for families, and it’s the caseworkers who are in charge of making the decisions that lead to this goal. So a priority of the system should be to look after the health and happiness of their caseworkers—because people who are unhealthy and miserable aren’t capable of making good, healthy decisions for other people,” says Chapman.

Part of the reform process mandated “case conferences”—parents and service providers now meet face to face to devise plans for children’s well-being. Among the most popular reforms is a shift from citywide to neighborhood-based intervention services, locating all aspects of a child’s care in his or her neighborhood and familiar community.

“We started looking at how families make judgments about themselves,” says William Bell. “The role of the caseworkers is to facilitate, not assume, that process. By working in communities where families live, we’re moving beyond the cloak of mysticism that child protective services is a black hole children go into and never come out.”

Workers are given training not only to minimize trauma to kids, but to themselves as well. “If a police officer fires in the line of duty, there is a battery of support when he returns to the office. If a child dies, a battery of accusations awaits when the caseworker returns to the office,” says Bell.

The settlement also called for a cutting-edge, statewide computer system to run and track all child protective investigations and information, making it virtually impossible to lose cases. This, coupled with access to supervisors and support during difficult decisions, can cut down on stress and errors. This system, still in development, has been slowed by recent budget cuts.

A Long Road Ahead
The city is doing better, but work remains to be done—particularly in caring for teenagers, and in tightening the link between child protective services and family court. Adoptions still move too slowly, according to the panel, and, on average, children spend more time in foster care than recommended by development experts.

On March 19, 2002, a permanent advisory panel was created to continue the work of the special panel and maintain what William Bell calls a “high standard of public accountability.” The panel, housed at the nonprofit Citizen’s Committee for Children and funded in part by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, will have full access to ACS programs, staff and data, meet with ACS officials and produce two reports a year on the system’s performance.

The biggest challenge for the city will be continuing this commitment, and these reforms, in the face of one of the most severe budget shortfalls in history. The agency has lost $222 million for fiscal year 2004 as a result of this crisis.

The city is committed to its children, says Bell, though he admits the road will be rocky. “This is proof that change is possible. [Now] we have to say with our actions what we often say with our words: that children are our future. We have to choose to leave in place the capacity to deliver on that promise to kids,” says Bell.

For more information, visit the following sites:

• Connect for Kids’ Child Abuse and Neglect topic page
• The New York City Administration for Children's Services
• The U.S. Administration for Children and Families
• Child Welfare League of America
• National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information

   

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