Child Welfare

Children need safe, nurturing and permanent families. The Schuyler Center promotes policies that advance or maintain effective, high-quality systems that serve at-risk families, prevent entry into the child welfare system, and improve child well-being for children who are in care. We advocate for accountability of public systems, including better data regarding child outcomes and expenditures of funds.

Policy Focus:

Align state financing with desired child and family outcomes;
Ensure that all children are safe from abuse or neglect;
Fund preventive and treatment services that support families, so parents can protect and care for their children;
Improve access to health, mental health and other care for children and youth in out-of-home placements;
Increase access to higher education for former foster youth;
Help children return to their own families or move to permanent ones as quickly as safely possible;
Facilitate data collection and reporting on expenditures and results.

Resources:

CHAMPS Foster Care Fact Sheet, January 2020

Strengthening New York’s Kinship Guardianship Assistance Program to Better Support Permanency for More Young People in Foster Care, January 2020

Testimony before Assembly Committee on Children and Families and Assembly Task Force on Women’s Issues on family involvement in the child welfare and Family Court systems. Presented by Dede Hill, Policy Director, Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy, November 21, 2019

CHAMPS 2020 Policy Priorities, November 2019

Memo of Support S.4339 Salazar/A.4258 Hevesi, April 2019

Press Release: NY: Family First Transition Fund Included in FY 2020 Final Budget. March 31, 2019

Schuyler Center Public Comments on the Proposed Expansion of Public Charge, December 10, 2018

Schuyler Center Public Comments on the Detention of Immigrant Children, November 6, 2018

Improving New York Child Welfare Outcomes by Strengthening Family Economic Security, December 2018

Schuyler Center Public Comments Regarding Proposed Federal Rule on the Apprehension, Processing, Care and Custody of Immigrant Children, November 2018

The Federal Family First Prevention Services Act Relating To Child Welfare Financing, June 2018

Supporting New York Children Impacted by Parental Detention or Deportation

Federal Analysis Shows that New York State is Failing to Keep Children Safe or to Find Permanent Homes for Children in Foster Care within a Reasonable Time (download PDF)

Every three years the federal Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families’ Children’s Bureau conducts an assessment of states’ performance on child welfare outcomes. The review, called the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR), assesses states’ performance in areas related to child welfare. Here, we focus on the Review’s evaluation of New York State’s performance on the following measures: safety of children involved in the child welfare system; speed with which children are placed in a permanent home and remain there; and the number of times children are moved while in care. Each of these measures is compared to a national standard.

According to its 2015 review, New York ranks near the bottom nationally on safety and permanency measures, indicating that children in New York are more likely to experience a recurrence of maltreatment than children in other states, and are less likely to be placed quickly in permanent homes. New York scores well nationally on one measure: placement stability. This indicates that children in its foster care system are moved less frequently while in care than children in other states.

County-level data for New York State.
Current (Round Three) CFSR data for all states.
For more information about the Review process and how stakeholders can participate in the process, please read our publication Child & Family Services Review: An Opportunity to Work Together to Improve the Safety and Well-Being of Children Involved in New York’s Child Welfare System.