The “unintended abolition” is still making New York City children safer

 Between 2019, before the pandemic, and 2023 foster care went down…

 ENTRIES INTO FOSTER CARE

...and child safety improved

           % ALLEGEDLY SUBJECT TO REPEAT “MALTREATMENT”

 Among the first studies to debunk the racist claims that, in the absence of “mandated reporters” keeping their eyes constantly on children, COVID would lead to a “pandemic of child abuse” was Prof. Anna Arons’ examination of what happened in New York City – what she aptly called “An Unintended Abolition.” 

Here’s what happened: The family police (a more accurate term than “child protective services”) were forced to step back, community-run community-based mutual aid organizations stepped up and the federal government stepped in with the best “preventive service” of all, no-strings-attached cash.  The result: A dramatic reduction in needless family surveillance and foster care with no compromise in safety.  Even the head of the city’s family police agency at the time admitted it.  Other studies, including one in JAMA Pediatrics, would confirm it. 

But, the fearmongers replied: It’s still early!  Just wait until 2021, when the kids are coming back to school.  But in 2021, the federal government’s annual Child Maltreatment report found that what family police agencies label “abuse” and “neglect” reached a 30-year record low. 

Oh, well, OK, the fearmongers said, just wait ‘till 2022!  Then you’ll see how all those overwhelmingly poor disproportionately nonwhite parents treated their children because, after all, you know how they are, right?  

Wrong. Data for 2022 from Pennsylvania and New York City showed there still was no surge in what agencies call “child abuse” and “neglect.” 

I don’t know if the fearmongers are desperate enough to tell us that the “surge” in child abuse will happen in 2023 – but it looks like they’re wrong again. 

New York City just released its annual Mayor’s Management Report for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2023 

So let’s compare 2019, the last fiscal year entirely unaffected by COVID, to 2023:

INVESTIGATIONS + INVESTIGATIONS NOT LABELED AS INVESTIGATIONS, BUT STILL INVESTIGATIONS:

 Let’s start with how often caseworkers for the city’s family police agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, banged on the doors of almost exclusively poor, nonwhite families and demanded entry.  In 2019 it happened in 58,217 cases.  In 2020, unsurprisingly, it went down a lot. It went down a little more in 2021, before going back to 50,516 in 2022.  In FY 2023 it went up a little more to 52,369.  But it’s still well below the figure before COVID hit.  Lesson: All those mandated reporters learned something – but they haven’t learned enough. 

Note that these figures combine formal investigations with cases that are investigations in all but name.  New York City’s family defenders have found that the city’s version of “differential response” can be even more intrusive than an investigation that’s labeled an investigation. 

There’s a similar pattern when it comes to children forced into foster care.  The number declined significantly, then there was regression.  But the 2023 figure, 2,798, remains more than 25 percent lower than the number in 2019 when the city took 1,000 more children. 

The safety measures 

But, of course, the fearmongers want you to believe that this modest reduction in family policing must have left children less safe.

There are two standard measures of child safety.  One is foster-care “recidivism,” that is, of all children sent home from foster care what percentage are returned to foster care within a year?  In 2023 8.5% of foster children sent home returned to foster care.  That’s up from 7.5% in 2022 – but still well down from the 9.8% in 2019.  

This also is potentially the more volatile of the two measures since the raw numbers are relatively low.  A one percentage point difference, whether up or down, probably represents fewer than 18 children, since 1,770 foster children were reunified in FY 2022 – and we’re looking at what happened in the year that followed. 

The second measure involves far more children: It concerns alleged recurrence of abuse or neglect – that is, the proportion of children for whom a caseworker checked the box declaring an allegation “indicated” for whom there was another “indicated” report within a year.  That figure plummeted during COVID – and stayed down, falling from 17.9% in 2019 to 13.6% in 2023.  

As we’ve noted previously, in 2022, New York raised the threshold for indicating a case to “preponderance of the evidence,” the abysmally low standard used in most states; incredibly it used to be even lower.  That might account in part for the lower rate of alleged recurrence of “maltreatment.”  But the dramatic decline in recurrence also could be seen in 2020 and 2021.  Again, the pandemic-of-child-abuse thesis was that, in the absence of mandated reporters and the family police, abuse would skyrocket – and we’d see it when we got back to normal. 

That didn’t happen.  

Whether this progress can be maintained is an open question.  That extra cash assistance is no longer going to poor families – resulting in a dramatic rise in child poverty nationwide.  It’s not as if ACS ever stopped confusing poverty with neglect; so more poverty means a more target-rich environment for ACS.  And, of course, at any time a child abuse death could prompt a demagogic reaction from politicians creating the risk of a foster-care panic, a sharp sudden increase in needless removals of children.  How would ACS respond to that?  The current leader, Jess Dannhauser, has yet to be tested. 

If we really want to keep making children safer a good start would be for the state and the city to step in and replace the cash assistance the federal government no longer provides – or at least provide no-strings-attached funds to the mutual aid organizations that sprang up during the pandemic. 

And remember, this progress comes in a place that, even before COVID had a terrible system, but a less terrible system than most.  Wherever you are, it’s all probably worse.

New child welfare data from NYC confirm: The “unintended abolition” worked!

Key child safety measures show significant improvement

A Black Families Matter rally in New York City in 2020.  (Photo by Rise)

 

This is the first of three parts about a scathing report, commissioned by the New York City family policing agency itself, which found pervasive racial and class bias in the agency, and rampant confusion of poverty with “neglect.” 

● Today: Context for the new study: The Administration for Children’s Services’ own data show that when the agency pulled back, did fewer investigations and took fewer children – child safety improved. 

● Tomorrow: ACS commissioned a study of racism in the agency.  Then they suppressed it.  Family defenders had to use the state Freedom of Information Act to get hold of it.  Once you read it,  you’ll see why ACS wanted to hide it. 

● Wednesday: The New York Times published a front-page story about the study that was, mostly, very good.  But it still fell into some of the traps that characterize much of the journalism of child welfare – including a crucial misunderstanding of poverty and neglect and one inflammatory claim that, as originally published, was flat wrong. 

● And always: New York City has one of the least awful family policing systems in America. As you read about what the caseworkers themselves are saying there, remember: Wherever you are, it’s probably worse.

 

There are two principal ways to measure child safety and the performance of family policing agencies. One makes sense, the other makes everything worse. 

Using the method that makes sense, new data show that during and after the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the city’s family police agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, stepped back, mutual aid groups stepped up and the federal government gave poor people what they need most – money – child safety improved.  The data confirm the findings of Prof. Anna Arons of New York University School of law who called it, “An Unintended Abolition.”  They are still more evidence that the fearmongering claims about COVID leading to a “pandemic of child abuse” were false. 

Before getting to the data, let’s explore those two methods for measuring safety: 

Method #1 The worst method is the one most beloved by journalists: A child “known to the system” has died and the case file has more “red flags” than a Soviet May Day parade.  Child welfare establishment groups rush to claim the system is doing too much to try to keep families together.  Reporters buy it, and their stories almost always include a reference to their beloved “swinging pendulums.”   

Even if total child abuse deaths have remained the same or declined, if there are three such cases in rapid succession, it is officially declared by journalists to be a “series” of deaths (unless they’re writing for a tabloid, in which case it’s a “spate”).  The agency is then deemed to be “beleaguered” and/or “embattled.”  When it was pointed out to one of the worst reporters ever to cover child welfare that, while she was doing exactly this, the actual number of child abuse deaths per year had not increased, she famously replied “it was a series, but not statistically.”  So the lesson to agency chiefs is: If the horrible, and extremely rare, tragedies of child abuse deaths are evenly spaced, it’s one thing; if they happen to occur in rapid succession, that’s a series/spate and you are officially embattled/beleaguered. 

What all of this usually does is set off a foster-care panic, a sharp sudden surge in removals of children.  This further overloads workers so they have less time to find the relatively few children in real danger.  Child abuse deaths don’t stop, they don’t even decline, often they increase. 

And it constrains what public officials say and what they can support.  If, for example, Dannhauser, were to come out for key legislation to give families “Miranda rights” or to give ACS the authority to screen out false reports forwarded by the state (something discussed in future posts in this series) and if, in the ensuing months, total child abuse deaths declined but three happened to occur in rapid succession, a “news analysis” in The New York Times probably would say something like this:  “After a series of deaths, Dannhauser, the embattled commissioner of the beleaguered Administration for Children’s Services, is seen by some observers as letting the pendulum swing too far toward family preservation.” 

Method #2: Because fatalities are, fortunately, as rare as they are horrifying, they tell us almost nothing about overall system performance.  There are two measures that do indicate if children are getting safer: One is re-abuse – that is, of all children caseworkers alleged were abused or neglected how many were allegedly abused or neglected again within a year? The other is foster-care recidivism – of all children reunited with their families, what percentage had to be placed again within a year? 

This measure also has flaws.  To be significant, changes should be substantial and sustained.  A tiny increase or decrease means nothing, and even a big change may mean nothing if it’s only a single year’s results. 

But we now have a fair amount of data on this in New York City.  The data are measured by fiscal year. So the baseline is the year ending June 30, 2019.  In FY 2020, which included the start of the pandemic, reports alleging child abuse or neglect dropped sharply, entries into foster care also declined.  But contrary to the fearmongering that made it into countless news stories, the absence of all those overwhelmingly middle-class disproportionately white mandated reporters having their “eyes” constantly on children who were neither did not set off a “pandemic of child abuse.”  On the contrary, both key measures improved.  

But that didn’t stop the fearmongers.  They poured their old whine into new bottles and said that as soon as schools reopened, we’d see a surge in child reports as all that hidden child abuse came to light. 

That didn’t happen either.  

After schools reopened, the number of reports declined again, entries into foster care declined again and the key child safety measures improved again.   In FY 2022, reports started to increase again, so did foster care entries, but both still were way below pre-pandemic levels.  By then, compared with before the pandemic, re-abuse had declined by 15% and recidivism had declined by 40%   It should be noted that the biggest decline in recidivism occurred in a single year, and, as I said above, single-year changes should be treated with caution.  But the multi-year trend still is clear: As ACS stepped back, and the community stepped up, child safety improved. 

One reason this is so important: Family defenders just got hold of that scathing report, mentioned at the start of this post; the one commissioned by ACS itself, finding pervasive racial and class bias in ACS.  Who said so?  Among others, frontlines caseworkers for ACS. 

The report was the subject of a front-page story in The New York Times.  Over the next two days, we’ll look first at the report itself, and then at how the Times covered it. Read all three parts of this series here.

Did child welfare fearmongering contribute to the increase in COVID among children?

 An eighth-grade girl died the morning of Saturday, Aug. 14, in Raleigh, Miss., mere hours after testing positive for COVID-19. Multiple sources told the Mississippi Free Press that the student had attended classes at the school most of the week, including Wednesday, before testing positive for COVID-19 at week’s end. Her health quickly declined afterward.

                                                          --Mississippi Free Press, Aug. 15, 2021

Just one week into the new school year, 5,599 students and 316 employees in Hillsborough County [Florida] are isolated or quarantined as COVID cases continue to rise.  That's equivalent to about 2.4 percent of the student population in the county.

                                                                --WFTS-TV, Tampa, Aug. 16, 2021

 The number of kids infected with Covid-19 is soaring as the highly contagious Delta variant spreads and schools reopen, pushing children's hospitals around the country to the brink. Tennessee’s health commissioner expects the state’s children’s hospitals to be full by the week’s end. Louisiana reached that point more than a week ago. And Arkansas’ only children’s hospital has just two ICU beds remaining.

 --Politico, Aug. 11, 2021

             Remember how some of America’s latter-day child savers told us we’ve got to get the kids back in school as soon as possible to protect them from a “pandemic of child abuse” at the hands of their own parents? 

            Remember how they said that as soon as the eyes of overwhelmingly middle-class disproportionately white professionals were averted from overwhelmingly poor, disproportionately nonwhite children those children’s parents would unleash upon their children child abuse in pandemic proportions? 

            Remember the second wave of fearmongering, the one in which we were told that as soon as schools reopened, the children would come staggering back battered and bruised and we’d better brace ourselves for what one oft-quoted advocate said would be a “tsunami of suffering”?  (Actually, you don’t need a long memory for that one – that myth is still being spread.)  

            Remember how right-wing politicians exploited these fears to force schools to reopen and force children back into the classroom?  As this Blog noted almost exactly a year ago: 

            When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wanted the perfect excuse for opening schools, all he had to do was whisper the magic words: “child abuse.”  Or as a headline in the Orlando Sentinel put it: “DeSantis touts return to school to counter suspected rise in child abuse amid coronavirus.” 

            But, of course it wasn’t just the right wing.  

            Consider self-proclaimed liberal Prof. James Dwyer. 

            Dwyer’s contempt for impoverished families is breathtaking.  As we pointed out last year: 

In 2011, he called for the massive forced relocation of poor families. The penalty for not uprooting themselves and their children from “terrible” inner city neighborhoods and exiling themselves – if necessary to small towns and rural areas: government confiscation of the children. 

Dwyer blithely declares that most poor parents who live in “terrible place[s]” so do by choice, not because it’s all they can afford.  Most of the rest, he says, made the irresponsible choice to have children – “or to risk creating a child by having sex, despite knowing the child would live in a terrible place…” And besides, he writes, “a relatively high percentage of adults who live in the worst neighborhoods are marginal to begin with…” 

So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when, in May, 2020, Dwyer suggested that child abuse in the home is so rampant that schools should never have closed at all.  He claimed “the shutdown decision arguably amounted to a prioritizing of the welfare of certain adults over the welfare of children."  By this he meant that children appeared less likely to get coronavirus or, he claimed, to transmit it. 

            Defenders of the fearmongering might say what Dwyer and others said in 2020 was excusable because it was before the emergence of the Delta variant – who could have known what would happen?  In fact, the evidence about COVID and children was always more ambiguous than those crusading to reopen schools claimed.  As we noted in that earlier post: 

            What is unclear is which adults [Dwyer] means.  We do know that the research on the extent to which children transmit coronavirus is mixed.  We also know that in New York City alone 63 public school employees died of coronavirus before schools there were shut down.  Presumably some of them left children behind – some of them might even have been good parents.  And Dwyer makes no reference to a COVID-related disease that does, indeed, attack children – and might have attacked many more had schools not been closed. 

            Even now, we don’t know how hard children will be hit by the Delta variant.  As Politico put it: 

Doctors and scientists say there is not enough evidence to determine whether Delta causes children to become sicker than earlier Covid variants did. … Still, there is growing concern among health professionals that more children are showing up in worse condition than at any previous point during the pandemic. 

            And some children who had mild initial infections are experiencing long COVID. 

We do know, however that the “pandemic of child abuse” claims turned out to be false – and that it was clear from the start that there was no merit to them, because, in fact, the kind of horrors we think of when we hear the words “child abuse” are extremely rare.  

Now, enough children have returned to school, and there is more than enough other evidence, to show that (surprise!) Black and Brown parents are not monsters who will turn on their children as soon as white professionals aren’t looking.  Even the head of New York City’s family policing agency (a more accurate term than child welfare agency) has confirmed that the fearmongers were wrong. 

            Yet the myth won’t die.  Out of 14 child welfare stories summarized in an email we received yesterday (Aug. 16) two promoted the myth about COVID and child abuse.  Hardly a day goes by without at least one such story – even as the real danger of forcing children back into classrooms becomes more apparent. 

            So it’s about time the fearmongers took a good hard look at what they’ve done.  We are now witnessing a rush back into the classroom. In some cases, school districts won’t, or are not allowed to, require masks.  And children under 12 can’t be vaccinated.  How much did the scare stories about child abuse contribute to all this? 

            For many children, there may yet be a tsunami of suffering – but not for the reasons America’s child welfare establishment predicted.