PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Nora McCarthy, Executive Director of New York City Family Policy Project
2:28:37
·
3 min
Nora McCarthy, Executive Director of the New York City Family Policy Project, testified about current narratives in the media regarding child welfare in New York City. She argued that solutions being proposed in response to recent child deaths are not supported by facts and may not improve safety for families and children.
- McCarthy emphasized that CARES (Collaborative Assessment, Response, Engagement and Support) is a necessary response to the high volume of low-risk reports ACS receives, and is not untested or linked to recent child deaths.
- She highlighted the importance of distinguishing between accountability and punishment in child welfare interventions.
- McCarthy stressed the need for fact-based, inquisitive accountability to find real solutions for child protection.
Nora McCarthy
2:28:37
Hi.
2:28:37
Thanks so much for your Oh.
2:28:40
Marie.
2:28:41
Can you hear me?
2:28:43
Alright.
2:28:43
Hi.
2:28:43
I'm Nora McCarthy.
2:28:44
I'm the executive director of the New York City Family Policy Project, which is a think tank focused on child welfare in New York.
2:28:50
Thanks for the opportunity to testify, and thanks for the time that you've been putting in to get this difficult hearing right.
2:28:57
I want to address some of the stories being told about child welfare in New York City right now in the media.
2:29:01
We're seeing some in the media advance solutions that are known not to work to improve safety for families and children.
2:29:08
A major narrative right now is that, these children's deaths have happened because ACS has gone too far in trying to reduce the threat of investigations and the trauma of removing children from home.
2:29:20
That seems intuitive that any effort to reduce threat and to reduce removing kids from home might be risky.
2:29:27
And if you've read the news, you're basically only seeing risk.
2:29:30
You're only seeing these horrific outlying cases.
2:29:33
And it can be hard to remember that there's another 75,000 children coming to ACS's attention every year.
2:29:39
But these narratives are not supported by the facts.
2:29:42
What we know in New York is that we have a lot of really low level, low risk reports coming through the hotline.
2:29:48
There was an assembly hearing in October because the New York state hotline is passing along 75% of all calls that it gets when most states screen out half of calls.
2:29:59
And the state commissioner testified that people answering the hotline don't use any standard screening questions.
2:30:04
They're just asking the questions that come to mind.
2:30:07
So a lot of unnecessary, unwarranted reports are flowing to ACS, and ACS has to respond to every one of them.
2:30:14
CARES is not perfect.
2:30:15
It is but it is an effort to respond to that reality.
2:30:19
When a parent get a can't get a teenager to go to school, which has been a huge problem since COVID everywhere, you've probably seen the reports on school attendance.
2:30:28
Only some families are dealing with investigations around that, and you don't need a full on investigation on that type of issue.
2:30:36
I've spoken to over a dozen CARES investigators in the last couple of months, and that's a lot of what they're seeing.
2:30:42
It's important to remember also that CARES, as you said, is not some new untested approach.
2:30:47
It's used in 20 states.
2:30:49
It's been used here since 2013.
2:30:52
And there's no indication that CARES has anything to do with children's deaths that we've seen reported on.
2:30:57
So 10 seconds.
2:30:59
Sure.
2:30:59
I think we should all be surprised when we see really strong claims made in the media and absolutely no effort to interrogate them and I appreciate that you've done that today.
2:31:08
Same thing is true for foster care.
2:31:09
Foster care has not dropped under the current administration.
2:31:12
It's gone up since 2020.
2:31:14
And, we know from years years of data that there's no indication that child fatalities go up when foster care entries go down.
2:31:21
That's just not true.
2:31:22
It's really important that we distinguish a demand for accountability from a rush to punishment.
2:31:27
And when we see that children's deaths are the news and feel helpless
Althea V. Stevens
2:31:31
Wrap it up.
2:31:32
Thank you.
Nora McCarthy
2:31:33
Can I just say the last bit?
2:31:34
Mhmm.
2:31:35
We have to remember, and we know from research, that child welfare interventions have the capacity to harm and not just help.
2:31:41
So it's so important to slow down, to have real accountability, that it's inquisitive, that focuses on the facts, and gets the real solutions to do our best to protect every child.
2:31:51
Thanks.
