Q&A
ACS's approach to immigration status confidentiality and family outreach
1:25:24
·
138 sec
Council Member Menin questions ACS Commissioner Dannhauser about measures to protect immigrant families' information and encourage trust in ACS services. The discussion covers plans for confidentiality, outreach, and staff training.
- ACS is developing an action plan to inform families about their rights and data protection
- Collaboration with other city agencies like MOYA to support immigrant families
- Plans for staff and provider training to ensure understanding of policies and build trust with families
Julie Menin
1:25:24
For ACS, in your testimony, you say that your support line is available to help connect families to free services in their community regardless of immigration status.
1:25:36
My question there is, with the incoming Trump Administration and the potential of, mass deportations, what is the agency doing to assure families that their information will be kept confidential?
1:25:52
And moreover, we know that there is a great distrust of government right now, even at the municipal level.
1:25:58
So what specifically, proactively, is the agency doing to address this
UNKNOWN
1:26:03
issue?
Jess Dannhauser
1:26:03
Yeah.
1:26:04
Thank you, council member.
1:26:05
It's so important.
1:26:06
We are, currently working with Moya to develop a full scale action plan that lets families know about, their rights, that their that their, information will be protected.
1:26:18
We're also looking at our technology around that to make certain that it's, that it's protected.
1:26:24
We have programs that you've supported, like Promise NYC, that we wanna make sure.
1:26:28
So we're going through every single layer to make sure that we are as protective as possible.
1:26:35
We also are gonna be working on some, information to families about what to do if they're concerned to make sure that they have appropriate, plans in place for children who, depending on the decision that the the family is forced to make, we've been really lucky to have the support of of Moya.
1:26:55
I met with commissioner Castro a couple weeks ago.
1:26:57
We're gonna be doing some some press around this, and we will you know, one thing I can, think we can add is to add to our hotline a very clear, right away at the outset that immigration status is is not something that we consider.
Julie Menin
1:27:15
Okay.
1:27:15
I mean, I would just recommend, again, the families that need the support the most are going to feel a real deterrent to be calling a support line.
1:27:22
So I just we've got to be proactive about that.
1:27:24
Absolutely.
Jess Dannhauser
1:27:25
And we're going to get trainings out for both our staff and provider staff.
1:27:30
There are many providers, many of the ones we work with in Promise NYC, who have the trust of families, and so it's really key that we get them trained to make sure that they understand all of the sanctioned policies.
