Ranks 48th in finding permanent homes
Lawyers and advocates suing over child welfare conditions in New York said the city’s foster care system is rife with problems, from children who don’t speak the same language as their foster parents to kids who stay in the system too long.
More than half of the children in the city’s foster care system have been there for more than two years, just one of the reasons why New York State ranks among the worst in the nation — 48th — in placement permanency, said advocates who criticized the city’s Administration for Children’s Services.
“ACS has abdicated its responsibility to the children in its custody,” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of A Better Childhood, which is suing the city on behalf of 19 children in foster care.
“It fails to ensure that the agencies with which it contracts meet even the most basic requirements of the law, and thousands of New York City children are thus experiencing protracted and harmful stays in a system that is fundamentally broken.”
Lowry’s agency filed a nearly 300-page legal brief Tuesday in support of its motion seeking class certification status to the four-year-old lawsuit.
If granted, the remedies sought by the 19 plaintiffs would apply to more than 8,000 children in the city’s foster care system.
ACS deferred to the city’s Law Department when asked for comment. A spokeswoman for the Law Department did not respond to a request.
Lowry said the “long stayers” — children in care for more than two years — help place the city in violation of federal law.
Meanwhile, ACS and the agencies it contracts with often extend a child’s time in care because their parents don’t receive the services necessary to reunite with their kids.