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ALBANY---Two key Assembly committees will launch a statewide investigation into New York's child welfare system focusing on the vigilance, reliability and efficiencies of agencies charged with protecting at-risk children.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) called on Assembly Children and Families Committee Chair William Scarborough and Oversight, Analysis and Investigation Chair James Brennan to hold a series of statewide public inquiries into the operation and procedures for safeguarding the health and welfare of the tens of thousands of children statewide receiving child protective services, preventive services, foster care services, and adoption services.
Scarborough and Brennan immediately set an initial hearing for New York City on Feb. 9. They said additional hearings have been scheduled for Feb. 16 in Buffalo and March 2 in Syracuse.
Calling the four fatalities of children known to New York City's Administration for Children's Services (ACS) in the last two months "a stunning example of sweeping failures on many different levels," Silver said the hearings would provide an open, public process for legislative oversight. Silver said the deaths of seven year-old Nixzmary Brown, 16-month old Dahquay Williams, seven year-old Sierra Roberts, and two month-old Michael Anthony Segarra were particularly troubling because each child was known to ACS.
According to Silver, the New York City hearing will invite testimony from the state Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS), the state agency responsible for the direct care and protection of children across the state, as well as ACS. Other child welfare agencies will be invited to testify at the additional hearings. Also being called to testify will be school officials, children's advocacy groups and law-enforcement officials. The information will serve as a basis for comprehensive legislation aimed at ensuring abused children receive needed protection through the child welfare system.
"It is difficult to fathom how children whose protection has been placed in the hands of the state could be allowed to suffer so horribly when there were numerous eyes already on them," said Silver (D-Manhattan). "The death of Nixzmary Brown lays in clear view the consequences of failing our children. From the bloodied hands of those who saw Nixzmary's suffering to the systemic failures of ACS that went unchecked and unchallenged, there is enough culpability to go around. The time is now to investigate a system that fails so miserably in its mission of protecting our most vulnerable children."
"I am outraged that children whose families are under investigation by the child welfare system are dying," said Scarborough (D-Queens). "The child protective system was designed to ensure that children are safe in their homes, and I am deeply disturbed that the system as it is currently operating is not living up to that goal. New York State's child welfare system must be able to ensure that children who are made known to the system are kept safe and a reevaluation of current policy and practices is necessary in the wake of deaths such as the tragic death of Nixzmary Brown."
"These tragedies have touched many hearts and we will not let these horrendous events amount to only headlines. We will find out what happened, and why, and then we will work with City and State agencies to institute the changes needed to prevent similar tragedies," said Brennan (D-Brooklyn).
Silver said an additional area of scrutiny for the committees would be the impact of the implementation of CONNECTIONS, a computer system procured by OCFS intended to track children receiving various child welfare services across New York State.
The Assembly's Committee on Children and Families held several hearings last year to begin examining child welfare issues. In December the committee investigated the child fatality review system in New York City. That hearing focused on the process that localities follow in the wake of a child fatality in order to prevent future deaths. The testimony provided at that hearing revealed a patchwork system of fatality reviews and raised critical issues of interagency collaboration at the local level.
An earlier hearing in September focused the participation of several hundred New York City foster care children in clinical trials of drugs to treat HIV or AIDS in children. The lawmakers expressed concern over a June determination by federal investigators that New York City's ACS and Columbia University Medical Center failed to follow proper protocols when obtaining consent to participate in the tests. They also cited a public acknowledgement by ACS that 465 HIV-positive and AIDS-infected foster children received treatments not yet approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration as further evidence of serious failings in the agency's operation.
"New York's child welfare system was established more than three decades ago to ensure the safety and well-being of children who are abused and neglected. It is devastatingly clear that there are serious, systemic failures with the way children are cared for in New York State. Clearly, New York has a moral and ethical obligation to revamp a system charged with caring for children who are already the victims of abuse. We cannot continue to allow an ineffective system to continue to fail them," said Silver. 1-22-06
© 2005 North
Country Gazette
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