Affected by State Cuts
Vow to Place 254 Family Service Staff

By REUVEN BLAU

The Commissioner of the State Office of Children and Family Services Feb. 8 vowed to find new jobs and help relocate all of the 254 state employees affected by the planned closing of six residential centers for troubled children.

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang NEED FOR PRE-EMPTIVE ACTION: State Commissioner of Family and Children's Services Gladys Carrión said more resources must be devoted to programs that will prevent youths from getting into trouble. 'I feel like I'm running an alternative boarding school for children of color,' she said. 'We preside over a pipeline to prison; we can't tolerate that.'

"I've made a commitment to make sure that the workers are treated with respect," said OCFS Commissioner Gladys Carrión during a panel discussion on the restructuring. "But that will mean that some people will have to move."

Need Other Programs

Child welfare advocates at the forum all supported the far-reaching plan, which is projected to save $14 million annually and become effective Jan. 11, 2009.

But they stressed the need to use that savings to fund additional community-based alternative programs to help young people who commit misdemeanor crimes stay out of trouble.

"We need to find a way to get this money back into the community," said Ellen Schall, a former city Juvenile Justice Commissioner who is the Dean and the Martin Cherkasky Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service of New York University, which hosted the symposium.

The detention center closings are part of a comprehensive reform plan, which includes reducing and merging underutilized residential facilities to help improve service to children, Commissioner Carrión said. According to OCFS, nearly a dozen of the state's youth facilities are operating under 40 percent of capacity.

Too Many Empty Beds

As of Jan. 7, 86 percent of the beds in the non-secure facilities being closed and 33 percent of the beds in limited-secure facilities were empty. The state is looking to move the children to community-based programs, which recent studies have conclusively shown are more effective at preventing repeat criminal behavior.

About 90 workers at a Bronx intake center will be moved to a site in Brooklyn, and state officials say they will work to place all of the affected employees at different locations or in other state agencies within the region where they now work.

But the Civil Service Employees Association is upset over the plan, noting that some of its 196 affected members will be reluctant to relocate and others will have greatly extended commutes.

Support Systems Closer

Commissioner Carrión acknowledged that there has been "pushback" to the changes. The state, she added, must wait 12 months before actually closing the centers, as required by state law. "These facilities have become economic engines, and it's about jobs," she continued. "It should not be on the backs of our children."

Mishi Faruqee, the Director of the Juvenile Justice Project at the Correctional Association of New York, hailed the overall proposed switches, noting that the state for years has been sending problem children hours away from their homes to help the downtrodden upstate economy.

Roughly 60 percent of youths in OCFS custody are from New York City, but only 5 of the 44 facilities are located in the five boroughs. Many children are therefore sent far away from their homes and communities, which makes it difficult for their loved ones to visit them and offer support.

She made the case for using the projected savings from the closings to help prevent youngsters from "going into the system in the first place."

'Bring Racial Equity'

State detention centers, she added, are almost exclusively filled with African-American children. "We have to talk about how to bring racial equity in the system," she remarked.

Ms. Carrión later acknowledged that was a major problem. "I think sometimes I'm running an alternative boarding school for children of color," she said. "We preside over a pipeline to prison. We can't tolerate that anymore."

Ms. Schall, who served as the Commissioner for the city's Department of Juvenile Justice in the mid-1980s, cautioned that the state should look beyond the savings the closures and mergers would generate. "We tried that and failed," she told those gathered at the forum.

She suggested state officials also use the new studies supporting community-based programs to help push forward the proposed reforms.

'We Know What Works'

The panel discussion, which was moderated by Erica Gonzalez, the opinion editor at El Diario, was held in NYU Wagner's Rudin Family Forum for Civic Dialogue.

Commissioner Carrión said the changes were designed to help fix the "broken" system that child advocates have been complaining about for years. "We know what works," she commented. "We need to have more resources on the community level."

The facilities being closed are: the Adirondack Wilderness Challenge in Clinton County, Auburn Residential Center in Cayuga County, Brace Residential Center in Delaware County, Gloversville Group Home in Fulton County, Great Valley Residential Center in Cattaraugus County, and the Pyramid Reception Center in The Bronx.

OCFS also is reducing by half the number of beds at the Lansing Residential Center in Cayuga County. The program at the Adirondack Wilderness will be merged into the Adirondack Residential Center, and the intake functions at Pyramid will be relocated to the Ella McQueen Residential Center in Brooklyn.