For New York’s Administration of Children Services (ACS), retired law enforcement officers have been working in-house since 2007 to advise their roughly 1,700 caseworkers. Today, the ACS will announce that these former cops are getting a broader child welfare beat that includes assessing the risk brought on by new adults moving into households served by the agency.
According to a new draft protocol shared with The Chronicle, ACS will now share guidance from so-called Investigative Consultants (ICs) with non-profits who contract with the city to provide support services to families, and who ask for guidance.* The investigators will help assess families who are not under active investigation by ACS when a new adult joins a household — a mother’s boyfriend, typically, according to ACS officials — and assumes care-taking duties for a child younger than 7.
“[This] has been evolving for some time — we have expanded the number of families receiving preventive services, and placed fewer kids in foster care,” said David Hansell, who was appointed ACS chief by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio in early 2017. “From our perspective, it’s a significant expansion of our support for providers working with tens of thousands of families each year to address domestic violence concerns.”
[For more on this story by Michael Fitzgerald, go to https://chronicleofsocialchang...-violence-risk/29386]
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