How to save kids’ lives
What relief to feel a fresh breeze blow through the once hermetically sealed city Administration for Children’s Services, air forced in by a state-appointed monitor brought in after a string of unfathomable homicides of children by their caregivers within a few awful months starting last September.
Zymere Perkins, dead at 6; Zamair Coombs, 4; Jaden Jordan, 3 and Michael Guzman, 5: Each boy had case files thick with reports from child welfare workers charged with their well-being, to no good end.
Now a first report from the monitoring team at Kroll Associates, led by former state Inspector General Joseph Spinelli, layers on freshly appalling details of just how out of kilter ACS operations have been, and, as important, delivers a first round of recommendations for systemic repair.
Recommendations that it’s just astonishing have yet to be implemented despite cycle upon cycle, over many mayoral administrations, of child deaths, failures exposed and promises to remedy deficiencies.
ACS Commissioner David Hansell, a no-nonsense management professional who took over from the cowering and defensive Gladys Carrion in March, promises this time will be different. It had better be. Where to begin? Kroll finds that ACS investigations into urgent reports of child endangerment get bottlenecked as crucial minutes tick by because only a small cadre of retired cops on staff have access to criminal records and a trove of reported domestic violence incidents that might clue ACS into risks.
And that those cops are therefore stuck at their desks even when their talents are needed to crack the most alarming alerts — like the 911 call reporting a boy locked in a cage. That was Jaden.
And that investigators don’t have access to case records in the field, and still write notes by hand to slot into paper files, in one of multiple record-keeping systems for each family.
And that when teachers report suspected abuse or neglect, investigators often can’t reach them to follow up.
And that investigators get dispatched from a central Manhattan office to visit children reported to be in harm’s way, no matter how far flung or how much precious time might elapse.
And that 15 out of the 150 case files reviewed showed risky lapses in oversight.
Hansell, refuting none of this, commits to fixes — starting with, and this is a breakthrough, getting tablet computers into investigators’ hands.
The first step to recovery, as they say, is admitting you have a problem, or a whole lot of them. That initial test Hansell passes with flying colors. His ultimate test will be saving kids.