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City Investigating Home for LGBT Youth
Current and former residents of a group home for LGBT youth say physical abuse, sexual misconduct and financial mismanagement were common.
Workers, Kids Suffer in Corruption Probe's Aftermath
One of northern Manhattan's largest non-profit organizations, only last year the focus of a city investigation into corruption allegations, now faces a fresh crisis – one that threatens to disrupt the lives of dozens of working parents and over 100 pre-school children.
New Child Welfare Head Faces Mountain of Challenges
Ronald Richter just got what the mayor calls a "thankless" job—running the Administration for Children's Services. We asked ACS's sometime allies and frequent critics in the advocacy world what Richter's chief challenges will be.
Concerns Persist Over Child Welfare Cases Involving Mental Health
As many as one in five child welfare cases involves a parent with a mental health diagnosis, creating challenges for parents, children and caseworkers. Advocates say efforts to address those challenges haven't gone far enough.
Budget Cut Avoided, But Children's Services Still Show Strain
There are reports that some parents are having trouble getting child welfare services because a botched contract award and budget threats last year led providers to scale back.
Human Factor Looms Large In ACS System
What Cuts Will Cost: Children's Learning, Parents' Work
As tabloids celebrate an on-time state budget, a look at what one budget cut at the city level will mean: fewer childcare slots, less school prep for kids and a tough choice for their working parents.
Grandparents Who Parent Are Facing Budget Cuts
Thousands of New York children are raised by relatives other than their parents. Many rely on state programs to support their unexpected second stint as guardians.
Credits As Collateral: Schools Withhold Records If Debts Unpaid
Some students transferring to public school arrive with no educational records because a private or parochial school has withheld them until tuition debts are paid.
Cuomo's Cuts Could Hit The Poor
The tiff between Albany and City Hall over education aid isn't the only fight brewing over the governor's budget. His cuts to public assistance, homeless services and child welfare are also coming under fire.
Questions About Mayor's Plan To Run Youth Jails
Few would deny that state-run juvenile detention facilities are flawed. But a Bloomberg bid to take control of some of those sites has raised a new set of issues.
For Transgender Homeless, Choice Of Shelter Can Prevent Violence
A pilot policy to allow transgender people to choose between men's and women's shelters has reduced violence. But women's shelters are safer for either identity.
Overhauling New York City Juvenile Justice
Two city agencies are working to reform the city's juvenile justice system, partly by putting more troubled kids into community-based programs and counseling.
Child Welfare Changes Stir Hopes, Fears
Service providers like that the city is moving away from group homes and institutional foster care. But they wonder if the money and policies are in place to make the changes work.
Child Welfare Agency Calls Time-Out On Foster Funding
The Administration for Children’s Services is calling for a "do-over" of the process it undertook last year to implement a sea-change in child welfare policy.
Tough Love In The Big City
Kids in New York have often had a lot to fear. So how’d we end up afraid of them?
Making Their Way
Immigrant Women Straddle Cultural Chasms
Homelessness Strikes More NYC Children
Key Court Rulings On Criminal Defense, Foster Care
Budget Deficit Threatens Teen Sex Worker Safe Harbor
New York has fundamentally changed the way it treats underage sex workers, replacing jail time with social services--if Albany can afford them.
Child Welfare
More than 70,000 children enter New York City’s child protective network or juvenile justice system in a typical year. From family court to foster care, secure detention facilities to adoption, child welfare policy is where compelling desires to protect children, respect families and ensure public safety meet—and sometimes clash.
Follow This Investigation:
BLOG ENTRIES
Report: Shift in Child Welfare Policy Undermined by Budget Moves - Helen Zelon
The IBO depicts a profound change at the Administration for Children's Services, with preventive offerings replacing foster care as the agency's go-to policy. But questionable budget decisions undercut the impact of the shift.
Human Factor Looms Large In ACS System - Jarrett Murphy
The recent indictment of two Administration for Children's Services workers in the death of a Brooklyn four-year-old has focused new attention on the city's system for detecting and stopping child abuse and neglect. In this interview, City Limits' Helen Zelon explains how legal process and human nature interact in the child welfare system.
Veteran Provider Takes Big ACS Job - Helen Zelon
The Administration of Children’s Services has announced the appointment of Charles Barrios, a licensed psychotherapist with decades of service at Good Shepherd Services in Brooklyn, as Deputy Commissioner for Family Support Services.
CONVERSATIONS/OPINONS
City Policy, Not Corruption, to Blame for Nonprofit's Woes
The former head of Alianza Dominicana responds to a City Limits story about a dispute between the nonprofit's workers and administrators.
Juvenile Justice: The Case For Local Control
A youth services provider says Mayor Bloomberg's bid to take more control of the state's juvenile justice system is an opportunity not just to save money, but to change lives.
MULTIMEDIA
Justice Deceived
Large foreclosure firms subvert state regulations protecting homeowners by failing to file documents that move cases forward; instead, homeowners accrue added fees and interest and cannot enter into settlement conferences with banks in order to get affordable mortgages.
FDNY report on fatal fire, January 23, 2005
The fatal fire investigation report on the death of Firefighter Richard T. Sclafani of Ladder 103 at 577 Jerome Street, Brooklyn.
