There will be no sugar-frosted foster care in New York

 

NOT SOLD IN NEW YORK!

The state’s highest court slays what one critic called “a hydra-headed quasi-foster care monster, with all of the hallmarks of foster care but none of the legal protections the law demands.”

A scheme to create what amounts to a second, hidden foster care system in New York, without even the bare minimum due process protections in the formal system, has been shut down by the state’s highest court. 

In a unanimous decision, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that the state’s family police agency, the Office of Children and Family Services, had no legal authority to allow a system of so-called “Host Homes.” The model is based on, and developed in close consultation with, an organization called Safe Families For Children, which has similar models in multiple states. 

In other states, Safe Families has gotten state lawmakers to authorize the program. We can only hope New York legislators won’t be suckered into doing the same. 

Proponents portray Safe Families / Host Homes as just a purely voluntary program in which parents under stress, perhaps due to an illness, or homelessness, or some other financial problem, get a total stranger to take in the kids for a while. Sometimes this “voluntary” arrangement is “suggested” by a state or local family police agency. The parents, it is said, can get the kids back anytime they want.  But Safe Families actually is sugar-frosted foster care. 

Here’s the biggest catch. 

Unlike a family that leaves a child with a relative or a close friend, these families are leaving children with total strangers who know, at the outset, that the family has some kind of problem. Odds are the strangers will be a different race and class from many of the children. 

So what happens if the parent says, “OK, I’m ready to take my child back,” but the stranger doesn’t agree that they’re ready? The stranger can call the formal family police agency, which almost certainly will launch an investigation. The risk is even greater if, as often happens, the family police agency already is involved with the family and is looking over everyone’s shoulder from the start. 

The family desperate to find a place for their children – because no one is offering the kind of help they might need to keep them in their own home – may not know that. There is no lawyer looking over the paperwork, no one to say: “Wait a minute, maybe we can get you food aid or housing assistance so your children don’t need to lose you for a matter of days or weeks in the first place.” And there’s no one to point out that the stranger always has the option to call the family police. 

No wonder OCFS received at least 17 letters from advocates for both children and parents, opposed to letting this program into New York. One letter called it “a hydra-headed quasi-foster care monster, with all of the hallmarks of foster care but none of the legal protections the law demands.” The lawsuit to stop the program was led by lawyers who regularly represent children in child welfare cases. 

The founder of Safe Families for Children, David Anderson, says the program has taken 77,000 children into its volunteers’ homes since 2003. A lawyer for OCFS told the Court of Appeals that 99% were returned to their own homes. The Imprint reports, however, that it’s 93%. Either figure represents, as the OCFS lawyer said, “better numbers than foster care.” 

But that is the wrong comparison. Safe Families is a program used for families that either have no connection to the formal family policing system or are referred there by family police agencies as a form of “diversion” because even the agency doesn’t think they’re so unsafe they need to be taken by force of law. Of course, such a program will have a better reunification record than those placed in formal foster care. But the best track record, of course, would be attained by not putting poor people in an impossible position where their only option is to “voluntarily” surrender their children, because no one will provide them the help they really need. 

And Safe Families’ own figures mean that anywhere from 770 to 5,390 times, parents who thought they could get their children back anytime – they didn’t. 

One of the very examples Safe Families showcases illustrates the problem. A story about the program in The Imprint begins with a family that Safe Families likes to showcase as a success: 

In the summer of 2012, Corisma Gillespie hit a crisis point. Pregnant with her second child, the 20-year-old from the west side of Chicago had lost her job at McDonald’s. Her car was impounded, and she was about to become homeless. Desperate to provide for her children, she asked herself: “How can I do this?”  

A local program had an answer. She could hand her daughter over to a volunteer family through Willow Creek Community Church, almost an hour away in the suburbs. There would be no court hearings, judges, or lawyers involved when her child moved in with these strangers, and it would take almost no time to arrange. Her daughter could live in this “Safe Family” home for as long as Gillespie needed. All she had to do was sign a form. … 

After three weeks, she found a job and her first apartment, and her daughter came home to Chicago. 

Gee, what might either government, a charity, a church or a group of churches do instead? How about simply providing enough cash to tide the family over so Ms. Gillespie could stay in her apartment until she found another job? How about helping with the job search? 

One need only compare the Safe Families white savior rescue approach to what happened when communities themselves developed networks of mutual aid during COVID – and the federal government provided families with cash: Child abuse decreased. 

Indeed, early in the program’s history, in a comment posted anonymously on a television news website, one viewer understood the problem immediately: 

During the second World war Jewish family were separating from their children for the sake of children survival. The Nazis were set to kill them all. And now in the richest and, so far, peaceful country the best solution to the economic crises it to give up your children to charitable Christians for the sake of survival. Millions of homes taken by banks stay empty. Parents cannot buy children shoes, there are sleeping in subways. Instead of buying shoes and providing decent shelter for families with children "Good people" solve the state problem and offer their solution, they take children to their Christians homes. What country is that? What country allows that to happen? Charity starts with courage of thoughts. Courage of social changes. But as long as this is acceptable and cherished solutions, any real change in hearts and minds is impossible. 

Safe Families cites a study comparing outcomes for children in Illinois involved in a family police investigation, in which those who were placed in a Safe Families home (which, for all intents and purposes, is foster care) were less likely to end up in, uh, foster care than those who got conventional preventive services. 

So, for starters, if a family police agency is saying: We’re investigating you and we recommend you put your child into this “voluntary” program while we’re investigating you, that’s not exactly voluntary. 

Second, a comparison to conventional preventive services misses the point. Conventional preventive services usually mean lots of counseling and parent education, while doing nothing to ameliorate problems like the kind Ms. Gillespie had. 

And third, the study author, Prof. Mark Testa, says he had to omit results from Chicago for a disturbing reason. As The Imprint explained: 

As part of his research, Testa found “anecdotal evidence” that some Cook County child welfare workers were using the host program “as a way station” and “holding-pen” for kids while they completed their investigations. He had to exclude that county’s data in his final study. 

David Anderson, the group’s founder, has said, “The Lord gave me the idea of Safe Families for Children.” 

I am not religious and certainly have no expertise in theology. But the public record leads me to wonder if The Lord may have had a broader array of preventive services in mind. Surely one of the best-known Bible passages is this, from Matthew 25:35-40:

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. 

Nowhere in the Bible does it say: “I was a stranger and you invited my cute little kids in, but left me outside.” 

Illustraton via ChatGPT

UPDATED: New York’s structure for screening child abuse reports guarantees one thing: mutually-assured buck-passing. The Legislature should change that.

Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2018

The State Assembly holds a hearing Oct. 9 that could be a first step in the right direction

Last March, the New York City Family Policy Project, an essential resource, and not just for New Yorkers, published a comprehensive report on the harm done by the state’s child abuse hotline, which is run by the state Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS).  The report found that New York screens out false reports at a far lower rate than most states. That causes havoc for families wrongly investigated, and deluges workers with so many false reports they have less time to find the few children in real danger. 

Responding to the Family Policy Project report, the State Assembly Committee on Children and Families announced it will hold a hearing on the issue on Oct. 9.  

I hope they will zero-in on one nearly unique element in the New York system that makes it particularly destructive: a built-in incentive for what should be called mutually-assured buck-passing. Only one other state has the structural problem New York has built into its process.  I also hope the legislature will take a look at some relevant history, both recent and ancient. 

The structural problem 

In most states, the family police agency (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agency) is a state agency.  That state agency runs the hotline and that state agency does the investigations and takes away the children.  In 10 states,* the investigating and family-separating is a local government function.  But in five of those states, including California and Minnesota, the localities typically run the hotline as well, while in three more, localities can screen most or all reports sent from the state hotline. 

Only one other state, North Dakota, does it in the awful way New York does it: 

In New York, all calls alleging child abuse and neglect go to the statewide hotline run by OCFS.  They then send the reports they screen-in to localities to investigate.  The localities have no choice – if the state hotline sends it, the locality must investigate it. 

And it sure seems like, at least in New York City, they want to keep it that way.  The reason for that has to do with safety – no, no, not safety for the children, safety for the city family police agency, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). 

Over and over again, when ACS needlessly investigates and traumatizes an innocent family, the
agency’s commissioner, Jess Dannhauser, says something like: We didn’t want to wreak havoc on this family; the state made us do it!  

The state, for its part, has an incentive to send huge numbers of reports to the localities.  After all, if the hotline wrongly screens out a report and later there’s a tragedy, the state agency gets the blame.  This may well be a key reason the New York hotline wrongly screens in so many cases. 

Meanwhile, ACS speaks often of the need for better training so mandatory reporters don’t phone in false reports, (but since they’re mandatory reporters, they still may be afraid not to report) and ACS is piloting some supports in schools to encourage those reporters to seek alternatives to calling the hotline.  But Commissioner Dannhauser has never publicly called for the Legislature to simply give ACS the power to screen out false reports sent to his agency by the OCFS hotline. 

And no wonder: If ACS were to get that power, screen out a report, and then there’s a tragedy  – well, you know. 

Hence, mutually-assured buck-passing. 

I figure Dannhouser is likely to testify at the Oct. 9 hearing.  I hope one of the lawmakers asks him this question: You keep blaming the state hotline for forcing you to investigate reports you know are b.s.  Why have you never asked us for a law allowing you to screen out those reports yourself?  (And if the legislators don’t, I hope a reporter covering the hearing will.) 

UPDATE, OCT 10. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE HEARING:

On the one hand, for the first time I know of, Dannhauser made some noises about wanting some power to screen calls after they are received from the hotline. 

 However, Dannhauser is a master of calculated ambiguity.

 All he really said in his prepared testimony is that the state should consider creating a system in which localities would submit a plan that OCFS would then have to approve which would allow ACS to "conduct an expedited and less intrusive review of the allegations." He seemed to go a little further in answer to questions – or did he?  But this is certain: At no time did he call for simply giving his own agency the power to screen out reports it deems to be false.  It doesn’t sound like he wants to give up the power ACS truly covets: the power to pass the buck.

As I said, only North Dakota does it the way New York does it.  There also are two hybrid states.  In Colorado, there’s a state hotline and local hotlines.  Most calls go directly to the local hotlines which, of course, can screen reports. Pennsylvania has a state hotline that passes on calls to local family police agencies.  But, unlike New York, those local agencies have discretion to screen out almost all reports alleging “neglect” – which are, of course, the overwhelming majority of reports. Pennsylvania localities are not allowed to screen out reports alleging abuse or “severe neglect” – but this still is an improvement over New York’s approach. 

Pennsylvania also teaches something else: Giving localities the authority to screen won’t work miracles. Both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh take away proportionately far more children than New York City – and Pittsburgh decided to screen in the worst possible way – using “predictive analytics.” 

So why make the change? For starters, just taking away ACS’ excuse and making localities accountable for launching needless, harrowing investigations of families would be worth it. 

But also: right now, New York localities have to investigate 100% of the reports sent to them by the hotline.  If they get the authority to screen and wind up investigating 90% of the reports instead of 100% that’s still an improvement. And there’s nothing to stop OCFS from using predictive analytics at the state level should it so choose. 

Even without a law, it is possible to change regulations to allow for a kind of “circuit breaker” in which localities would have the authority to stop an investigation at a very early stage if the report never should have been sent to them in the first place. 

Also, there’s a more encouraging lesson from a county in Upstate New York. 

The relatively recent history 

At one time, two Upstate counties, Monroe (metropolitan Rochester) and Onondaga (metropolitan Syracuse) ran their own hotlines.  In Monroe County that was true until 2015 when, in the wake of a child abuse death, the state took that authority away.  Showing notably more courage than their New York City counterparts, Monroe County officials actually asked for that authority back. But, in a remarkably nasty response, the state OFCS said no – because, they said, when Monroe had its own hotline they screened out too many calls.  

Well, OCFS sure “fixed” that problem! Once the state took over, the number of screened-in calls skyrocketed. 

The ancient history 

All the way back in 1987, the (long-since defunct) New York State Legislative Commission on Expenditure Review gave hypotheticals to 23 hotline operators, 12 at the state hotline in Albany, eight in Onondaga County and three in Monroe County.  In each case, they asked: Screen-in or screen-out?  

The results: Big differences between Monroe County, Onondaga County and state hotline screeners (at that time the Monroe County operators were far more likely to screen-in reports) and no consistency among the state hotline operators. 

In one case, for example, all the Monroe County operators said screen it in, almost all the Onondaga County operators said screen it out, and the 12 operators at the state hotline split: 8 yes, 4 no. 

There is no reason to think the hotline is any less arbitrary, less capricious or less cruel today. 

Improving that will require a better screening tool and yes, operators will have to be trained in how to use it, and others will have to be trained to be sure they are using it correctly.  But beware of the use of “training” as a copout. Because in addition to being invoked when it’s needed, it’s also invoked – endlessly – as a way to avoid real change.  Training is no substitute for due process. 

So if you’re in Albany on Oct. 9, please be extra careful on the roads.  Because if anyone suggests a drinking game based on how often some family police official at the hearing uses the word “training,” you can expect a lot of drunk driving. 

*-Nine states are fully local. I also count Wisconsin, since the state runs child welfare in only one county, albeit the largest, Milwaukee.  I do not count Nevada, where the state runs the system everywhere except the largest county Clark County (metropolitan Las Vegas)

A New York State “child welfare” agency can curb one family policing horror with the stroke of a pen. Do they have the guts?

The number of ways family policing agencies (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies) can hurt the children they are mandated to protect is limited only by their imagination – and, unfortunately, this is the one area where they show any imagination at all. 

Among the worst things they do is tear children from the arms of parents – usually mothers – whose only crime is to, themselves, have survived domestic violence.  Among the reasons this does so much harm to children: 

● Research shows the trauma caused to children when they’re separated in these types of cases is even worse than the trauma in other situations.  One expert said taking children under these circumstances is “tantamount to pouring salt into an open wound.”  Unfortunately, at most family policing agencies their policy can be boiled down to “please pass the salt.” 

● Research shows the trauma of removal in such situations is worse than any trauma that may be caused by witnessing domestic violence.  In part, that’s because some children believe they must be responsible for their mother being beaten and now they are being punished. 

● Fear of family police coming to take away the children deters women from seeking help – and abusers know it.  One battered mother in Los Angeles whose children were taken summed it up simply: “I called the police for help, but I should have just let my ex-husband beat my ass.” 

That’s why a successful class-action lawsuit, Nicholson v. Scoppetta, curbed the practice in New York.  (NCCPR’s Vice President was co-counsel for the plaintiffs.)  You can read all about the lawsuit, and the research on this topic on our website here.  The federal suit was aimed at New York City’s family policing agency, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), but for complex legal reasons the issue also wound up before the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, which extended its potential impact statewide. 

And what was the response of ACS to all this?  In effect, they said: Well, maybe we need some other excuse to take away the children, but nothing stops us from endlessly harassing battered mothers and their children with oppressive surveillance!  So that’s what they’ve done.  And now there’s a new lawsuit to try to stop that practice as well. 

The agency that could help 

But there’s a state agency that could put a stop to a lot of this instantly, simply by making it harder for the process to get started in the first place.  To understand how, we need to understand how these cases usually come to the attention of family policing agencies. 

In the case that is the subject of the new lawsuit, The Imprint reports, the state child abuse hotline

 was notified of the domestic abuse from the mother’s therapist, whom she had confided in after telling [her abuser] to leave for good. 

Therapists are, of course, mandated reporters of “child abuse.”  Even had that therapist realized how much harm it would do to call in a report, the therapist may well have felt s/he had no choice. 

But there is an agency in New York that could fix that. It’s the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS). 

In New York, county governments (and New York City) run family policing.  OCFS theoretically
performs oversight.  Mostly that means interference that makes nothing better and sometimes makes things worse, as with their support for what should be called sugar-frosted foster care.  But its primary function is to enable mutual buck-passing.  Localities get to say: “The state made us do it!”  while OCFS gets to say: “That was [locality’s] responsibility.” 

One of OCFS’ few concrete functions is running the state’s child abuse hotline.  In an approach perfectly designed for maximum buck-passing, OCFS takes the calls from mandated reporters – like that therapist.  They then decide whether to “screen-in” the call for investigation.  Any call that’s screened-in is passed on to localities, which, almost always, must investigate them. 

OCFS does something else: It designs the online training course for mandated reporters.  Indeed, in what may be the first genuinely useful thing it’s done in decades, if ever, it improved that training course.  The new course is a muddled mess of mixed messaging. But that’s way better than the old training or any other training I’ve seen in any other state.  In those other courses, the message can be boiled down to Report! Report! Report! 

Now OCFS has a chance to make a much more substantive improvement – this time without confusion, hedging or ambiguity:  Simply change the training to specify that a child witnessing domestic violence, or a parent being a survivor of domestic violence is not grounds to call the hotline.  Then, if mandated reporters, or others, persist in making such calls, instruct the hotline operators to screen them out. 

What the Legislature could do 

These are things OCFS can do entirely on its own.  There also are steps the New York State Legislature could take. 

● Ideally, of course, the legislature would abolish mandatory reporting altogether. That is not the same thing as abolishing reporting; it simply would free professionals to exercise their professional judgment.  But short of that, there still are things the Legislature could do: 

● It could write into law that witnessing domestic violence is not, in fact, child abuse or neglect and therefore should not be reported. 

● It could exempt from mandatory reporting requirements any professional whose primary work is with domestic violence survivors. 

● More generally, the Legislature could create an “off-ramp” for mandatory reporters.  The theme of OCFS’ new training – stolen from family advocate Joyce McMillan of JMAC For Families -- is “you don’t have to report a family to support a family.”  

But if mandatory reporters opt to support a family and not report a family, they might still face penalties if something goes wrong and some grandstanding county district attorney decides to “make an example” of them. 

The Legislature could prevent that by changing the law to specify that when mandatory reporters, exercising their best professional judgment do indeed try to support a family instead of report a family – by, say, referring parents of a hungry child to a foodbank, or a homeless family to a housing agency, this is deemed equivalent to a report, and the reporter is exempt from any penalty. 

But, again, when it comes to domestic violence survivors, OCFS doesn’t have to wait for the legislature to take a big step forward.  The question is, does OCFS even know what stepping forward means?

Just another day at NYC “child welfare” agency: Harass a family, pass the buck

           

John Tomasi, a 14-year-old from Brooklyn, New York, got a pretty good report card from Cobble Hill High School in Brooklyn last fall.  According to the New York Post: 

His physical-education teacher twice gave John the highest grade: “ME” for “exceeds standards.”  His algebra teacher cited “progress toward … understanding the connection between proportional relationships, lines, and linear equations,” among other skills. 

            It’s a remarkable achievement – considering that John was never enrolled in the public school.  He was on the honor roll at a parochial school, where he had a perfect attendance record for both online and in-person classes.  A mix-up at John’s middle school led Cobble Hill to believe John was enrolled there.  (That doesn’t explain the report cards, however.) 

            It would be funny, if not for the fact that even as they churned out report cards about his progress, Cobble Hill did notice his absence.   You know where this is going, right? Instead of calling the family to find out what was going on, they rushed to call in a report of “educational neglect.”  And New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services rushed to investigate “suspected child abuse or maltreatment.”  According to the story: 

“On Nov. 5, I got a knock on my door at 5 p.m. from an ACS worker stating that my son has not been attending Cobble Hill High School,” John’s mom, Margaret Tomasi, told The Post. “It was very traumatizing and shocking.” …

The ACS investigator asked John’s parents if they used drugs, were ever arrested, been on welfare, or had a history of domestic violence. The worker asked many personal questions, including what religion they practiced, and looked inside their kitchen cabinets, refrigerator and freezer to check for sufficient food. 

The investigator asked John to lift his shirt, pull up his pant legs, and remove his socks to look for bruises or other injuries. 

            Now let us consider all the screw-ups, by the school, but especially by ACS. 

● As we have noted before, “educational neglect” is a category that is routinely abused by school systems, usually when parents are fighting to get their children a better education. Most recently, it’s been used in New York City and elsewhere to harass poor families who can’t get their kids online for class.  (Rich parents get a free pass.)  

More than a decade ago, the highly-respected Vera Institute of Justice issued a report arguing that educational neglect either shouldn’t be a child protective services issue at all, or, if it must exist, it should be handled through an approach known as “differential response.” 

● Since educational neglect is in state law, ACS might argue that it had no choice but to send out a caseworker to traumatize the family.  This is not clear.  The story says the school “alerted” ACS.  If, in fact, they contacted ACS directly then the agency had discretion.  

More likely, however, the school called the state child abuse hotline which “screened in” the report and sent it on to ACS.  At that point, ACS had to do something – though it could have done what the Vera Institute report suggested all those years ago and used “differential response,” which does not involve a traumatic investigation or any threat that a child might be taken away. 

● Once the worker was at the door and was told that John was, in fact, enrolled in another school, that should have put everything on hold until the next day, when the school could (and did) confirm it.  Instead, the worker marched full speed ahead, poking and prying into the most intimate aspects of the family’s life – none of which had anything to do with the actual complaint – and partially stripsearching the teenage boy. (And, by the way, ACS: Why is a family’s religion ever any of your business?) 

 In the process, of course, the worker wasted time that could have been spent finding a child in real danger.  The worker also put everyone at greater risk of contracting COVID-19, especially given that this happened in New York City in November. 

● The city Department of Education acknowledged that before calling a child abuse hotline school staff “should first make multiple attempts to contact a family.”  But we’ve also seen story after story about schools failing to do that, while ACS does nothing about it.  

Why aren’t ACS and the state Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) demanding that schools stop harassing families, and wasting caseworkers’ time this way?  Why isn’t OCFS, which runs the state hotline, insisting that schools document their attempts to contact families before “screening-in” such calls, and otherwise raising the standard for accepting them – as the Vera Institute report recommended in 2009?  Why isn’t ACS investigating school employees who make such calls to see if they constitute malicious false reports? 

We know why.  It’s because the current system allows ACS to do the one thing it does as well – or better – than any other child welfare agency in America: Blame someone else whenever something goes wrong.

Andrew Cuomo’s child welfare agency pits current foster youth against future foster youth

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

To help prevent some foster youth from becoming homeless, the state Office of Children and Family Services is using money meant to help keep children out of the system in the first place.

            Every year about 18,000 young people “age out” of foster care. Their own parents were taken from them, and that promised “forever family” never showed up.  It’s the last in a long line of traumas, injustices and betrayals inflicted upon them by child welfare systems in the name of “saving” them from their parents.  Other young people may depend on their parents for all sorts of support, from love to money, into their mid-20s or beyond.  Foster youth, who often need such help more than anyone, are on their own at age 21 – or sometimes, age 18.

            This comes on top of the trauma of being torn from their own parents in the first place – sometimes for good reason, but often not – then often separated from their brothers and sisters and moved from foster home to foster home.

            The assorted patchwork of aid programs for such youth is a tiny fraction of what we owe them.

            Now, add coronavirus to the mix: At a time when the best advice is to stay home, thousands of foster youth are being made homeless.

            At least nine states and Washington, D.C. have responded by saying foster youth can remain in care during the pandemic. But in New York, where individual counties and New York City run child welfare, the state had said to counties the same thing it’s said to foster youth: You’re on your own!

            Until now.

Now the state is telling the counties they need to help these youth – but to do that, the state is, in effect, stealing money from preventing another generation from ever entering foster care in the first place.

            The Chronicle of Social Change reports that

In a letter sent July 3, Sheila Poole, commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, advised county social services leaders that they are now required to identify young adults in foster care who have no identified permanency resources and who are either at risk of homelessness, applying for welfare benefits, or have significant unmet service needs.

“Youth who meet the above criteria must be affirmatively offered the option to remain in their current placement setting or other financial support for a setting of the young adult’s choice that is of equal or better safety and stability,” she wrote.

            This covers only a narrow subset of the youth who need help.  But even this is being paid for in part at the expense of helping families stay together.  To fund this extra assistance the state is allowing counties and New York City to use about $3 million in state aid originally intended to be used to meet the requirements of  a new federal law, the so-called Family First Prevention Services Act.

            Family First, is supposed to help curb the misuse and overuse of foster care in the first place. In fact, for a variety of reasons, it’s not likely to do very much of that – but that’s still the intent.  The $3 million in state aid is meant to help localities meet the requirements of the act.

That money is less than one-one-hundredth-of-one-percent of the state general fund portion of the New York State budget.  Surely a governor as brilliant as New York’s Andrew Cuomo can find, somewhere in that budget, even more than $3 million to spare. He should be able to find enough to fund more comprehensive proposals to help the current foster youth New York State has let down all these years, without stealing it from a program designed, however feebly, to reduce the number of youth the state will let down the same way in the future.

            One place to look: The $1 billion budget for the New York State Police. That agency could probably use a little defunding.