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PUBLIC TESTIMONY

Testimony by Daphne Torres-Douglas, Vice President of Children's Village, Harlem Dowling, and Inwood House on Preventive Services in Child Welfare

2:20:58

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Daphne Torres-Douglas, Vice President at Children's Village, Harlem Dowling, and Inwood House, testified about the challenges and importance of preventive services in the child welfare system. She emphasized the link between poverty and families entering the system, and highlighted the limitations of current preventive contracts.

Current preventive contracts are underfunded, lacking resources for families' basic needs and competitive staff salaries.
Torres-Douglas called for recalculating labor costs, suggesting a $65,000 average salary for bachelor's level caseworkers.
She stressed the need to index OTPS costs against inflation for sustainable preventive services.

Daphne Torres-Douglas

2:20:58

Okay.

2:21:01

Greetings to the committee, and thank you for the opportunity to testify.

2:21:04

I am Daphne Torres Douglas, vice president at the Children's Village, Harlem Dowling, and Inwood House.

2:21:10

We provide one of the broadest continuum preventive programming in New York with an emphasis on trauma informed evidence based family and community programming to help keep youth identified as high risk, safe at home with family.

2:21:26

Poverty is a common thread connecting many families entering the preventive child welfare and justice juvenile justice systems.

2:21:33

Our preventive programs are essential in addressing trauma, and we also address needs created by poverty.

2:21:40

Well executed, evidence based preventive services are crucial, effective in helping families to cope with emotional impact of oppression of poverty, but they do not end poverty.

2:21:53

Our families continue to struggle to meet their basic needs, housing and food instability, lack of clothing, etcetera.

2:22:01

Preventive contracts give an illusion that there is funding to provide exceptional preventive services to families.

2:22:07

However, prevention misses the mark in 2 areas, providing financial support to social and developmental growth, and we miss the mark when it comes to staff recruitment and retention.

2:22:20

Current budgets do not allow for financial assistance of emergent needs for families.

2:22:25

Current funding does not allow us to hire or retain staff at comparable salaries offered by our public sector employees like ACS and DOA or private sector employers who also offer great flexibility around remote work and telehealth.

UNKNOWN

2:22:41

In order to ensure that preventive contracts are sustainable

Daphne Torres-Douglas

2:22:41

with slots consistently staffed, recalculate all labor cost lines beginning with the assumption of a 65,000 average salary for bachelor's level caseworkers and the index for OTPS costs against inflation, of the local CPI for each year following the initial budget period and renewals going forward for all human services contracts.

2:23:13

Thank you.

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Testimony by Tanesha Grant, Executive Director of Parents Supporting Parents New York