Q&A
Potential restructuring and vision for ACS
1:36:43
·
166 sec
Council Member Lee asks Commissioner Dannhauser about potential restructuring of ACS and the biggest barriers to efficiency. Dannhauser outlines ACS's vision and strategic priorities for improving child protection and family services.
- Discussion of ACS's vision to provide help to families without going through the full reporting process
- Emphasis on retraining schools, shelters, and hospitals to reduce unnecessary reports
- Focus on excellent assessment for a narrower group of children who may be in danger
- Goal to avoid repeating past mistakes while ensuring children's safety in the city
Linda Lee
1:36:43
Okay.
1:36:44
And I think that's the challenge we all face with the HIPAA and all that stuff.
1:36:47
And just one question?
1:36:47
Yeah.
1:36:48
One more.
1:36:48
Okay.
1:36:49
And this is sort of if you can't answer this now, but I I would love to hear your thoughts from your perspective.
1:36:54
Because if you had sort of a magic wand, and you could sort of sort of deconstruct what's there now at ACS and reconstruct.
1:37:01
Right?
1:37:02
And I know that's a big question.
1:37:04
Right?
1:37:04
But I guess what I'm trying to get
Althea V. Stevens
1:37:06
all day to answer that.
1:37:07
Yeah.
Linda Lee
1:37:07
Yeah.
1:37:07
Yeah.
1:37:08
So
UNKNOWN
1:37:09
but
Linda Lee
1:37:09
but no.
1:37:09
Because I'm just curious to know what are the biggest I guess, I know it's a big one.
1:37:14
But if you had if you could reconstruct everything because I know, as you mentioned, there are some redundancies.
1:37:19
Right?
1:37:20
So if you could reconstruct things, and sort of look compare it to what's available now, like, what would you say are the biggest barriers to you doing your job and streamlining things so that you could be more efficient and help people more?
Jess Dannhauser
1:37:35
Thank you for that question, council member.
1:37:36
I could talk to you about it all day.
1:37:39
We did just release our, fall strategic priorities update, which is, but let me just say, our vision at ACS is around, starting from the very beginning this is particularly as it relates to child protection and to, family services.
1:37:56
We've got other parts of it like DYFJ.
1:38:00
But we get 50,000 reports that the state accepts every year and sends to us.
1:38:05
We find maltreatment in about 25% of those instances.
1:38:09
And so the first goal is how do we get families help without having to go through all of that?
1:38:16
And so retraining schools, retraining shelters, retraining hospitals, because over the years, we've said, when in doubt, call us.
1:38:26
When in doubt, call the state center registry, I should say register.
1:38:29
So now that's why we have the preventive hotline in place.
1:38:32
That's why we're pushing out so much more around child care and family enrichment centers.
1:38:37
The other piece of that is to continue to invest in excellent assessment, for a much narrower group of children who may be in danger.
1:38:45
And so, we don't reflexively just bring families to court anymore to say you have to do this service.
1:38:52
We really have to use our engagement skills and get families to to work on and and have them feel helped.
1:38:59
And so but in those instances where a child's in danger to bring, the best assessment through our child advocacy centers, through our, training of our staff and the consultancies that they get, and bringing that expertise.
1:39:13
And so to make sure that we, in a very targeted way, do not repeat the mistakes of the past while making sure children are safe in our city.
1:39:23
I could go on and on and on, but that's the core of our of our vision.
1:39:29
Thank you.
