December 25, 2000

NEWS ANALYSIS

Success Story for Children, but the Ending Is Uncertain

By NINA BERNSTEIN

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Five years ago, when Elisa Izquierdo suddenly became a symbol of the failure of New York City's child welfare system, the Giuliani administration was criticized for letting the long-troubled city agency for children deteriorate to a new low. Today that agency — reconfigured, re-energized and infused with millions of dollars to strengthen its staff and management — seems on its way to becoming one of the administration's major accomplishments.

But there is a paradox in this apparent turnaround. The same elements that made it possible — public scrutiny, a political commitment buoyed by an economic boom, and a shrinking foster care population — make its successes tenuous. Political will and public attention wane, and history suggests that when they do, reforms in the system can unravel quickly, especially under the pressures of expansion.

The city's child welfare commissioner, Nicholas Scoppetta, says he is committed to the overhaul, which he called "an enormous work in progress." With only a year remaining in Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's term, he added: "It is a challenge to keep the reform going. Whatever happens with the change in administration, the critical thing is to continue."

Earlier this month, a panel of national experts ended two years of monitoring of the agency, the Administration for Children's Services, by praising the city's "remarkable progress."

Improvements they highlighted included Mr. Scoppetta's ambitious plan to reconfigure all foster care services along neighborhood lines; a sharp increase in staff training and salaries; the establishment of family conferences at important points in a child's case; and a shift from a focus on child removal, which characterized Mr. Scoppetta's first three years, toward a slow recognition that child safety would often be better served by preventing the trauma of foster care placement in the first place.

But Mr. Scoppetta and the panel, whose oversight was the result of a legal settlement, agree that the changes have barely penetrated the private, nonprofit agencies that care for 90 percent of the children in foster care, and that the Administration for Children's Services, too, is still working out how to turn new policies into daily work by caseworkers.

Mr. Scoppetta's candor in part reflects the knowledge that meaningful overhauls of the child welfare system came undone in the past. Scrutiny subsided, and competing political interests clashed with the needs of children in the system. Veterans of successes that slipped away have not forgotten those pitfalls.

David Tobis, director of research at the Center for the Study of Family Policy at Hunter College and a major player in the last comparable child welfare overhaul in 1979, said he thought it unlikely that the Giuliani administration, having already reaped a public relations victory from the panel report, would risk the political fight necessary to hold the agencies accountable for achieving actual results. His forecast, correct or not, is fatalistic.

"Our prediction now is that in five years, perhaps somewhat longer, the administrative reforms that have been implemented will unravel as they have so often in the past, because the fundamental problems of the system have not been addressed," Mr. Tobis said, citing "the lack of a comprehensive, early system of prevention, and the tendency to blame parents, particularly poor African-American and Latino families, rather than help them."

Agencies are supposed to lose slots for children, or even their contracts, if they do not accomplish goals like placing children close to home, keeping siblings together, and shortening or preventing stays in foster care through better services to poor parents in their own communities. But in the past, similar accountability measures have been watered down or abandoned under the pressures of city politics, economic downturns, or roller coaster shifts in the foster care population.

In the late 1980's, for example, when Mayor Edward I. Koch wanted Cardinal John J. O'Connor's support in a difficult mayoral election, and child welfare officials were begging for more beds from all foster care agencies, including those affiliated with Catholic Charities, the city quietly dropped any effort to enforce similar performance measures.

It is much easier for the city to demand changes of the foster care agencies when they are competing for a shrinking pool of children, but the current decline in the foster care population might slow or reverse in an economic downturn. The decline, to about 31,000 children today from a peak of 49,100 in 1991, in part reflects the departure of a huge contingent of children affected by the crack epidemic who are reaching adulthood, and masks the fact that annual removals of children from their homes surged to 12,536 in fiscal year 1998, from 7,949 in 1995, before subsiding to about 10,000 in each of the last two years. Many child advocates say that number is still far too high, especially since nearly half the children come from only a dozen community districts in the city and the average length of a stay in the system seems stuck at four years.

"Agencies have to roll up their sleeves and open offices in these districts," said John Courtney, who helped create an earlier agency accountability system for the city that fell apart in the 1980's. "Some have embraced the concept, and some are dragging their feet.

"Having been inside the system, I know how difficult it is to move it in any direction," added Mr. Courtney, who once directed a large foster care agency and is now an editor at Child Welfare Watch, a watchdog publication. "The political winds and the political landscape have to be going in the same direction."

The city acknowledges that the private agencies have lagged far behind in training, salaries and management, while the city upgraded its own staff and supervisors. The expert panel has urged the city to lobby the State Legislature for better agency reimbursement, and a new formula rewards agencies that quickly return children to their own homes or place them for adoption. With such financing as the carrot, Mr. Courtney said, real change might be possible this time if Mr. Scoppetta stands firm on the new rules and the next administration embraces his neighborhood plan.

"If not," he said, "there's going to be a retrenchment and a resistance, and we'll see much of the gains start to deteriorate."

Mr. Tobis said he feared that Mr. Scoppetta may have already squandered the best chance to intensify the agencies' work with parents to prevent foster care placement, which the panel called the heart of any lasting overhaul.

Mr. Giuliani's initial budget cuts sharply reduced these prevention programs, and money for them has remained flat for four years, even as Mr. Scoppetta commanded a $43 million increase in his agency's budget.

Sympathy for parents with children at risk of foster care placement probably reached a low point at the end of 1995, when Elisa Izquierdo, 6, was beaten to death by her mother while under the city's watch. The case seized public attention just as Marcia Robinson Lowry, a leading litigator for children, was preparing a broad class-action lawsuit against the system.

What Mr. Scoppetta has achieved since then is still more road map than highway, with many dotted lines where construction is under way, said Monica Drinane, attorney in charge of the juvenile rights division of the Legal Aid Society. That helps explain the apparent contradiction between those who marvel at how much has been accomplished, and those on the front lines who say that for children and families, almost nothing has changed.

The panel has found that caseworkers are sometimes so ill prepared that they are unable to explain to a judge why children were removed from their homes. Judges, operating out of fear, frequently approve placing children in foster care even when the city fails to provide sufficient evidence of abuse and neglect, the panel said.

But now, Ms. Drinane said, the Administration for Children's Services is supporting a push for legal representation for all parents who appear in Family Court. She said the five-member panel, financed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a child welfare philanthropy, has provided the right mix of prodding and praise to begin to rebalance the agency in fundamental ways.

And last week, at Mr. Scoppetta's invitation, panel members agreed to stay on to advise him.

"I was very naïve when I took office," Mr. Scoppetta said. "I thought two or three years till reform will take hold. I think it has taken hold, but there is much more to be done."