New York social services law and resistance by the state child welfare agency have hindered a city watchdog from exercising “meaningful, comprehensive oversight” of the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), a new report states.
The New York City Department of Investigation released its scathing 30-page report on Tuesday. In it, Commissioner Nadia Shihata and two coauthors argue that even when ACS is willing to provide records that investigators need to scrutinize allegations of “policy failures, criminality, corruption, or inefficiencies,” five provisions of the New York State Social Services Law throw up impediments. A primary problem, she said, is that the state’s Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS), which oversees child welfare programs, must authorize the Department of Investigation’s requests for records.
But that authorization process “has become more burdensome over time,” Shihata and her coauthors write — even in cases where the Administration for Children and Family Services itself asked her department to investigate and is cooperating with the investigation. Further, they write, the state agency overseeing ACS “routinely denies, limits, or delays” the city inspector general’s records requests, beyond what recordkeeping laws “intend or require.”
The report calls attention to the issue by pointing out the stakes: Without access to records in child maltreatment cases, the New York City Department of Investigation is unable to examine missteps that could have led to children’s deaths and caseworker misconduct. Poor access to child maltreatment claims that were initially deemed unfounded were also of concern to investigators. Unlike with “virtually every other city program,” investigators are unable to determine what went wrong, and help prevent “criminality, corruption, fraud, waste, abuse, conflicts of interest, unethical conduct, and inefficiency” in the child welfare system, the report stated.
A spokesperson for the state’s Office of Children and Family Services responded to the report by email.
“OCFS is deeply committed to the wellbeing of children and families and takes seriously its obligation under New York State law to protect the identities of children experiencing abuse and maltreatment or institutionalization,” the statement said. The state agency “has and will continue to cooperate” with city investigators, and provide “access to child protective services and juvenile detention records where authorized by law.”
“However,” the spokesperson added, “we cannot provide records in violation of state law.”
The state’s Children and Family Services also pushed back against some of the Department of Investigation’s claims. In an April 27 letter responding to a draft of the report, OCFS Deputy Commissioner Terrance Pratt told the city watchdog it had other avenues to access some of the records, such as requesting a court-ordered subpoena or seeking authorization fromthe family involved in the particular case. But so far, they have not done so, Pratt’s letter stated.
The Department of Investigation is not the only organization frustrated with the state’s response times and state law regarding release of records. Last year, children’s advocates from New York City’s Legal Aid Society filed a lawsuit alleging that OCFS violated public records laws by refusing to disclose essential safety policies governing its locked juvenile facilities.
The leader of the city’s Department of Investigation proposes a solution. She’s urging support for new legislation sponsored by Brooklyn state Sen. Jabari Brisport that amends social services law so that city investigators could access confidential records relating to “abandoned, delinquent, neglected or dependent children.” It would also remove the requirement that they receive prior approval from the state’s Children and Family Services for such access.
“Ultimately, this legislation seeks further transparency and oversight to ensure that CPS agents and juvenile detention facility employees are executing their duties properly,” the sponsor memo states.
