A half century ago today, child welfare reform began when the Daily News stunned the city with the first installment of a six-part series about the system by reporters William Heffernan and Stewart Ain, headlined “Big Money, Little Victims.”
Then as now, New York City has a harmful child welfare system. While foster care has declined, children still are taken needlessly. And a massive child-welfare surveillance state remains, with children still tormented by needless investigations and stripsearches, often when family poverty is confused with neglect. The time wasted on these cases is stolen from finding the relatively few children in real danger.
But the New York City system also does far less harm than its counterparts almost everywhere else, and it is far less harmful than it used to be. ACS now tears apart families at half the rate of Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Phoenix.
Many organizations and visionary leaders contributed to this transformation, and continue to fight the system’s ongoing harm. But a good case can be made that the progress began 50 years ago this week with a stunning work of journalism. …
