'Deeply traumatic': Report finds NYC's child welfare agency is broken for families

Nearly half of New York City’s Black children will be investigated by child protective services by the time they turn 18, according to a new report published in the Columbia Journal of Race and Law.

The paper concludes that the city’s Administration for Children's Services is harming Black and Latino children by subjecting them to unnecessary investigations that violate their constitutional rights. The report was written by lawyers for the nonprofit Legal Aid Society.

The authors say the problem is twofold: The state is failing to properly screen calls to its child abuse hotline and referring too many reports to the city, which is legally bound to investigate them. The city’s investigations are also overly aggressive, the paper states.

“These investigations are deeply traumatic. Children are regularly strip-searched. The people who are collateral contacts in their lives, teachers, neighbors, family and friends, are all investigated. And that investigation can take up to 60 days and often does,” Melissa Friedman, a co-author of the report, told WNYC in an interview.

ACS said it is working to reduce racial disparities and has dramatically reduced the number of investigations that are substantiated by 40% over the last seven years.

“Protecting all children and families — no matter their race, ethnicity, or background — is always our North Star, and we are implementing a comprehensive strategy to do just that,” ACS Commissioner Jess Dannhauser said in a statement.

He said the agency is maintaining low caseloads for staff, helping parents better understand their rights and training teachers, social workers and health care staff who are mandated to report suspected abuse on how to better access what help families need.

Gothamist illustrated the Legal Aid Society’s findings through three main data points below.

3 in 4 cases aren’t substantiated

Every year, the agency investigates about 100,000 children, according to the report. The report said about 22.5% of cases are substantiated, meaning investigators found evidence to substantiate the allegation of abuse or neglect.

That means in 2023, more than 74,000 children were investigated where no abuse or neglect was found.

4 in 10 Black and Latino children will be investigated by age 18

The racial disparity among cases is also stark, with Black and Latino children investigated by ACS at disproportionate rates when compared to white children. Black children were still investigated more than their white neighbors even in neighborhoods that were predominantly white and had low child poverty rates.

Just 7% of anonymous complaints are substantiated

The report calls on Gov. Kathy Hochul to sign a bill on her desk that would ban anonymous reporting to the state child abuse hotline and instead allow for confidential reporting.

Legal Aid said anonymous calls are the least likely to be substantiated by ACS investigators and can also be used against domestic violence victims or by landlords trying to intimidate tenants.

Most calls to the state hotline are made by 48 different groups of workers who are mandated to report any cases of suspected child abuse, such as teachers, medical workers and social workers. But even in those cases, most reports aren’t substantiated.

The paper says the overreporting of cases distracts ACS from investigating cases where children are in danger and need help.

The report also calls on ACS to curtail school investigations, refrain from conducting home searches at night unless there’s an imminent danger to the child and cut back on body searches for children, which are used to check for signs of abuse, such as bruising.

It also seeks an overhaul of the state’s abuse hotline to roll out stricter screening processes that would refer fewer cases to local child investigators and allow them to focus on serious cases where children need help.