New Child Welfare Head Faces Mountain of Challenges

Ronald Richter just got what the Mayor calls a "thankless" job. In the shadow of disturbing and, many say, preventable fatalities, and in the wake of bruising media coverage and administrative missteps, the veteran legal advocate, city agency staffer and Family Court judge has been tapped to take over the city's Administration for Children's Services from John Mattingly, ACS' longest-serving commissioner.

As ACS head, Richter has the potential to alter the lives of thousands of New York City's most vulnerable youth. His portfolio will include high-visibility turf like child protection and juvenile justice, as well as vital but lower-profile responsibilities like city-subsidized day care and Head Start.

Richter's tenure may be determined by the political calendar: Whether his appointment outlasts the current mayor can't be known. (Whether he'd like to do so can't be known, either: City Limits' request to meet with Richter was declined by ACS.)

However long Richter runs the agency, he faces enormous challenges and opportunities to leave his mark on a complex, crucial system.

Here are some of the issues that advocates in the child welfare community—sometime allies and frequent critics of ACS—hope Richter will address during his time at the helm:

1) Reaffirm the commitment to keeping kids at home

Mattingly's legacy at ACS predates his tenure as commissioner when, more than a decade ago, as a child welfare advocate at the Casey Foundation, he was part of the Marisol Panel (named after a one-time client of the agency), which recommended a systemic about-face at ACS, putting more emphasis on keeping children at home with their families and in the home community—goals that sound plenty familiar today.

As part of the Marisol Panel, Mattingly challenged the agency's direction and focus. Under ACS' first leader, Nicholas Scoppetta, who oversaw the agency from its founding in 1996 to 2001, decisions favored removing children for the “safety” of foster care. Removals rose by 50 percent, advocates assert. Parents in difficult circumstances – victims of domestic violence, residents in city-provided Section 8 housing that didn’t meet ACS scrutiny – were prosecuted in criminal court, charged with endangering their children.

After Mattingly took over, ACS made some tremendous strides: Fewer children are in foster care today than a decade ago; the agency's reliance on group homes and institutions has dropped steeply; ACS has merged with Juvenile Justice and has overseen the closure of Spofford detention center—a long-blighted site in the Bronx.

Yet some assert that Mattingly lost his way and backpedaled from his progressive policies in the wake of child deaths, notably Nixmary Brown's in 2006 and Marchella Pierce's in 2011. Responding to crises took Mattingly's focus away from the systems and processes that affect the vast majority of children in foster care—the kids who fly under the front-page radar, but whose struggles challenge ACS workers, nonprofit providers, and child-welfare advocates.

Paul Vincent, head of the Child Welfare Group who served on the Marisol panel with Mattingly, once said that “fixing the child welfare system is like fixing a bicycle – riding uphill.” Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, says that’s still true – but the hill has become a mountain.