NYC puts social justice over child safety with deadly results: ACS caseworker

In October, New York City was horrified when 4-year-old Jahmeik Modlin died hours after being found malnourished and suffering from hypothermia, with reported burns on his skin, in his family’s Harlem apartment.It was just the latest in a much-too-long line of kids who died despite their guardians having been investigated by the Administration for Children’s Services.Here, an anonymous child protective specialist at ACS tells policing and public-safety expert Hannah E.Meyers how the organization’s CARES program puts kids at risk in the name of promoting social justice by fighting racial disparity:I joined New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services as a child protective specialist to protect vulnerable children.

Many children require such protection, and my caseload at any given time often exceeds 10 cases involving over 20 children.These cases range from neglect to severe abuse.I’ve seen horrors — like an infant blinded by shaken baby syndrome, with irreparable brain damage. In October, when 4-year-old Jahmeik Modlin became the sixth child in the city to die of malnutrition within three months, I, sadly, was not surprised. Despite this grim reality, ACS and city leadership have deprioritized investigations into child welfare, acting out of a false sense of compassion and social justice.Likely because minority families are disproportionately the subject of investigations, the ACS Commissioner Jess Dannhauser has vowed to reduce them — instead channeling 70% of cases into a family-led, non-investigative track called Collaborative Assessment, Response, Engagement & Support.The problem? CARES is meant for “low safety and low risk” cases, but determining risk without an investigation is guesswork.

Under current guidelines, even cases involving drug addiction or abuse qualify for CARES.Before CARES, trained professionals investigated all reports of suspected child abuse or mistreatment. Today, a desk worker in the applications depa...