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Reforming the Child Welfare System

The question I was asked to address is: Can the New York City Administration for Children's Services (ACS) be trusted to monitor itself? The answer is that ACS cannot monitor itself because it does not believe that it is subject to any restrictions. In the spring of 2001, at a forum at New York Law School, Nicholas Scoppetta, who was then Commissioner of ACS and an experienced attorney, was asked whether he believed that the Fourth Amendment applied to the Administration for Children's Services. He said, "No" -despite several rulings by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that the Fourth Amendment did indeed apply.1 Today, Commissioner Scoppetta decried class action litigation against ACS on the ground that ACS would not be able to live up to the terms of any consent judgment to which it agreed. An organization that does not think it has to follow the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, or its own agreements cannot be trusted to follow any rules.

ACS responds only when it is sued and sometimes not even then. You have heard many speakers this morning talk about how terrible the foster care system is. I agree. Foster care is harmful to children. Too often foster children suffer horrific abuse;2 too often the abuse that they suffer in foster care is more horrific than the problems in their own homes which caused them to go ...

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