Preventive Funds Sought: Council to Get ACS Updates Quarterly

Preventive Funds Sought
Council to Get ACS Updates Quarterly

By HOWARD MEGDAL

Mayor Bloomberg June 19 signed a City Council bill requiring the Administration for Children's Services to provide quarterly reports on issues ranging from average caseload per worker to results of each investigation in response to the January death of seven-year-old Nixzmary Brown.

The Chief-Leader/Adrienne Haywood-James TWELVE IS ENOUGH: Protective Services Caseworker Abiola Ward-Morris talks about her heavy caseload, and its effect on her ability to do her job, during a June 13 press conference on the steps of City Hall. At the event, Councilman Bill de Blasio announced a plan to add $4.2 million to the ACS Preventive Services' budget. The measure, sponsored by Speaker Christine C. Quinn, General Welfare Committee Chairman Bill de Blasio and others, will require a written report every three months beginning July 31.

'Trouble Getting Answers'

"One of the things we found out was that when we asked basic questions, we had trouble getting answers to those questions," Ms. Quinn said of inquiries to ACS during a June 13 press conference in City Hall's Red Room. ACS Commissioner John B. Mattingly expressed support for the Council's move.

"The Administration for Children's Services welcomes the quarterly reporting of key child welfare system indicators and the opportunity to further inform the public on issues regarding the welfare of our City's children," Mr. Mattingly said in a June 14 statement. "Children's Services will work closely with the City Council to make maximum use of this data to strengthen all aspects of our child protective system." He added that the agency's new computer system, ChildStat, provided much of the same data.

Mr. de Blasio said that the new regulations were designed to flag agency problems before they prove fatal.

"The bottom line is, would we have been able to save Nixzmary Brown? We'll never know," he said at the press conference. "But we do know we would have seen that there were problems at the Brooklyn office [which investigated the Nixzmary Brown case] and at ACS."

More 'Preventive' Money

In a further effort to preempt problems, Mr. de Blasio introduced a bill to provide another $4.2 million to ACS's Preventive Services. He said the bill would allow ACS to hire another 240 Preventive Services workers.

"We can't protect children and families without dedicated preventive-service Caseworkers that make the system run," Mr. de Blasio said during a rally in support of the measure on the steps of City Hall June 13. "Without adequate personnel, it is inevitable that there will be gaps in the system and it will fail again."

Abiola Ward-Morris, a Caseworker in Bedford-Stuyvesant, talked about her current docket of 17 cases. "For high-risk children, it's just too many cases," she said at the rally. "For years, I had a caseload of 12. With 17, 18, it's just about impossible for me to do my job."

Neither the Mayor nor Speaker Quinn have indicated whether they will support Mr. de Blasio's bill. The Speaker said she "will consider it," while a spokesman for the Mayor declined to comment on the proposal.

Commissioner Mattingly said, "We greatly value the work of our preventive-service providers; they play a critical role in protecting children and strengthening families. This work includes parenting, education, mental health and substance abuse services, ongoing safety and risk assessments and other critical programs. These services often are the key intervention that prevents a child from being hurt or neglected."