NYC’s child welfare system riddled with racial disparities, civil rights group finds

Black communities in New York City have long said the city's child welfare agency has subjected them to an unmatched degree of scrutiny and that their families have borne the brunt of forced separations.

Now, a new analysis of city data by the New York Civil Liberties Union finds that the agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, has furthered racial disparities the group and other advocates say are a hallmark of the child welfare system.

The analysis, which was shared exclusively with Gothamist ahead of its release, also found that Black people are overrepresented in ACS interventions, including emergency removals and family court cases, with the disparities worsening after a suspected maltreatment report is made to the state.

Non-Hispanic Black residents made up less than a quarter of the city’s population between 2017 and 2021, according to the study, but represented 38% of suspected abuse and neglect claims filed with the State Central Register, the official avenue through which maltreatment allegations are transmitted to local child welfare agencies, in fiscal year 2022.

Those parents accounted for 41% of family court cases, with Hispanic and Latino parents following close behind, at 39%, NYCLU says.

Black children made up 51% of removals without a court order and nearly half of foster care entries from family court proceedings in fiscal year 2022.

Zach Ahmad, senior policy counsel at NYCLU and one of the lead researchers, says that while racial bias is at play in the underlying reports of alleged abuse and neglect, the data reveals “disparities in how ACS treats the case once it comes into its hands.”

Map credit: NYCLU

Several accounts of Black parents claiming unfair treatment by ACS have been memorialized over the years in news stories and by advocates seeking to publicize the problem.

A Gothamist investigation last year found the agency continued to scrutinize Black parents’ marijuana use even after New York legalized recreational marijuana in 2021 — highlighting how Black families in particular experience the child welfare system differently from other families.

This year, ACS agreed to a first-of-its-kind judgment since legalization, and awarded a Black parent $75,000 after she accused the agency of targeting her over her race and marijuana use.

“The Black community has been infiltrated by child protection services,” said Joyce McMillan, founder and executive director of JMAC for Families, a group that advocates for parents in ACS proceedings. “They don’t protect families — because people don’t run from help and protection.”

The findings underscore what parents, advocates and ACS’ own employees have described as a broader culture of bias embedded within the agency itself, which has been plagued by accusations of racism for decades.

Gothamist presented figures from the NYCLU analysis to advocates outside the organization, and they affirmed the numbers comported with families’ experience.

“That disproportionality isn’t just cause for concern because it’s an inequitable system,” said Nila Natarajan, associate director of policy and family defense at the Brooklyn Defender Services, who was not involved in NYCLU’s research. “It’s cause for concern because it’s a really violent, harmful system that is targeting Black families at a disproportionate rate.”

The Black community has been infiltrated by child protection services.

Joyce McMillan, founder and executive director of JMAC for Families

The study also found disparities based on neighborhood: Investigations, family court cases and foster care entries were largely concentrated in areas where the median income was below the citywide median of $76,000 and most residents were non-white.

Those communities “are so much more exposed to that type of mandated reporting because they’re accessing public services — public housing benefits, shelter, medical care, schools,” said Natarajan.

According to the analysis, white families made up 10% of SCR reports in fiscal year 2022 and represented an even narrower portion of cases — 6% — that went to family court. White families also accounted for just 4% of emergency removals without a court order.

The study’s authors cite an internal 2020 audit of ACS that concluded the agency was administering “a predatory system that specifically targets Black and brown parents and applies a different level of scrutiny to them throughout their engagement with ACS.” The audit was based in part on a survey of ACS caseworkers and other employees.

“You see how at every stage Black children and Black families become more represented in the system, whereas white families and white children become disproportionately less represented,” said Jenna Lauter, an NYCLU policy counsel and coauthor of the report.

In a statement, ACS spokesperson Marisa Kaufman acknowledged the agency is “very concerned with the disparate impact that child protection systems nationwide have on Black and Hispanic families.” But she insisted Black families’ involvement in the system was declining in several areas, and credited the agency’s efforts encouraging mandated reporters to exercise caution when filing claims, among other actions.

“Through a wide range of initiatives, like providing training to mandated reporters and expanding our differential response track, ACS is working to address these disparities in New York City and reduce the number of families experiencing a child welfare intervention where unnecessary,” Kaufman said.

Between 2018 and 2022, “indicated investigations” — where ACS finds a claim to be substantive enough to face a judge — dropped by 38% among Black families, according to the agency. Family court cases against Black parents accused of maltreatment fell by nearly half in that time, while emergency removals of Black children fell by a third.

'Proactive' is the opposite of what we observe in family court.

Nila Natarajan, associate director of policy and family defense at the Brooklyn Defender Services

ACS is legally required to respond to claims reported to the state. This past fall, the agency launched a pilot program to inform families of their rights when child protective services agents seek to enter their homes without a warrant. (According to ProPublica, a Brooklyn mother who says police and ACS caseworkers repeatedly entered her home without a warrant sued the city in November.)

But attorneys for parents facing ACS inquiries and proceedings say the agency’s approach has been insufficient to address a hugely imbalanced problem.

“If their position is they can’t do much about that — that that’s coming from reporting and from the SCR — then what they do have the power to do is be as proactive in getting families out of the system as fast as possible,” Brooklyn Defender Services’ Natarajan said. “And I think ‘proactive’ is the opposite of what we observe in family court.”

While advocates have long pushed for legislation to better protect the rights of families in the city’s child welfare system, those calls have largely fallen flat over the years.

For its part, NYCLU is calling for lawmakers to require child protective service workers to read parents their rights during interventions — akin to how police officers must read criminal suspects their Miranda rights during arrests. The group also supports legislation to tamp down on malicious or bad-faith child welfare reports to the state, and to provide legal representation for parents facing ACS investigations.

McMillan of JMAC for Families said that while she doesn’t oppose removing children from homes where they face legitimate harm, too many families — especially Black families — have been ripped apart for reasons beyond their control. Those circumstances often involve child protective services agents mislabeling poverty, including an inability to retain stable housing, as evidence of parental neglect, she said.

“Get rid of the portions, the aspects and the things that are not working,” McMillan said of the city’s child welfare system. “And if that’s 98% of the system — 98% of the system we [should] get rid of.”

Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky contributed reporting.