Last week, the Assembly Committee on Children and Families held a hearing on the Administration of the Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment. During the hearing, Crystal Charles, Senior Policy Analyst, testified before Assemblymember Andrew Hevesi on behalf of the Schuyler Center. Testimony featured remarks regarding the protection and support of children and families, as well as the role that poverty plays and how to prevent unfounded calls to SCR.
Read the full testimony here. Click here to view the panel.
Key takeaways include:
New York screens out calls to the SCR at a much lower percentage than the national average—New York only screens out 25% of calls compared to 50% nationally—resulting in a higher investigation rate than the national average. Calls to the SCR from anonymous reporters, many of which are repeat false reports made to harass families by weaponizing the system, account for about 16% of all calls to the SCR. In recent years, Texas and California have enacted laws to curb anonymous reports. Only a fraction of calls to the SCR are found to be substantiated; in 2023 it was 30,492 (24%).
The vast majority of reports to the SCR, 76% in 2023, were unfounded. The child welfare system investigates these reports to determine whether they are substantiated (referred to as indicated) or unfounded, meaning 76.1% of families needlessly suffer through investigations which last as long as two months, and often involve breaching of rights such as searching the home, interviewing family members and everyone they know, strip searching the children—often without being notified of their rights. CPS investigations weaken the parent-child bond, families’ reputation, and families struggle with their mental health because of the fear of separation. The families subjected to these traumatic, disruptive, and humiliating encounters are disproportionately Black, Latino, and Native American.
In fact, racial disparities follow families through each step of the child welfare system. Black, Latino, and Native American families are disproportionately reported to the SCR every year, investigated by Child Protective Services (CPS), and separated, with their children placed in foster care. Decades of unnecessary, intrusive, punitive, and traumatic investigations have led to many community members referring to the child welfare system as the Family Regulation System. This reflects the multigenerational trauma and antagonistic relationship the state of mandated reporting has contributed to in New York, especially New York City.
Child poverty is a major driver of involvement in the child welfare system. Nearly half of families (47%) who have their children removed from their homes have trouble paying for basic necessities. Additionally, a contributing factor to the disproportionate representation of Black children in the child welfare system is the higher rate of poverty in Black communities—a disparity caused by historic, systemic and ongoing racism.
Cutting child poverty and providing families the resources and supports they need to achieve economic security is understood by many experts to be one of the most effective ways to keep families safely together.
In order to achieve true child welfare, families must be able to access resources and supports within their communities without fear of being reported to CPS. Approaches proven to reduce child poverty, including higher wages, and access to safe housing, high-quality child care, progressive tax credits, robust cash assistance, and work supports, are tremendously effective methods of supporting families. Effective policies require the collaboration of multiple state agencies, including the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA), the Department of Tax and Finance (DTF), and the Department of Labor (DOL).
To better support children and families and prevent reports to the SCR, New York must:
- Strengthen and expand New York’s refundable tax credits
- Stabilize housing and reduce costs for thousands of families by funding the Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP)
- Remove barriers to food, including by establishing and funding a permanent, statewide Healthy School Meals for All program that provides school breakfast and lunch at no cost to students in schools participating in the National School Lunch Program.
- Make substantial and sustained investments in New York’s child care workforce to ensure sufficient capacity to serve all of the state’s children who need care
New York must act with urgency to stop the cycles of trauma in children, families, and communities by ensuring fewer New York families are caught up in child welfare investigations, particularly in Black, Latino, and Native American communities. An important part of this crucial work is reducing the number of unnecessary investigations that happen because of the lack of filtering at the SCR, along with reducing child poverty statewide.
Recent Comments