Permanency in New York City (2009)
Overview
Children’s Rights is implementing a study to assess the barriers to achieving permanency for children in foster care in New York City. This project has the support and participation of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), the Legal Aid Society Juvenile Rights Practice (JRP), the Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies (COFCCA), and other organizations.
Foster care is supposed to be a temporary situation for children who have been abused and neglected and cannot remain safely at home. Unfortunately, far too many children languish in foster care in New York City for many years without a permanent family. Some children are never placed in a permanent home and “age out” of foster care. In 2005, a new law was passed at the state level that was intended to improve the process of finding permanent homes for children in foster care. The law was passed with no additional resources, no planned evaluation of its impact and without addressing other issues.
In this project, Children’s Rights will review the status of 150 children currently in foster care, who have had a permanency goal of either reunification or adoption for two years or more. Children’s Rights will systematically examine case files and conduct interviews and focus groups with caseworkers; parents and foster parents; attorneys for children, parents, and ACS; and judges and referees.
Based on our findings from this review, we will develop a set of recommendations for necessary policies, practice approaches, and resources to address barriers to placing children in permanent homes in a timely manner. We will widely disseminate our findings and recommendations and work with ACS, JRP, COFCCA, and other organizations to advocate for the implementation of these recommendations.
This project is funded with generous support from the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, the Ira W. DeCamp Foundation, the Stella & Charles Guttman Foundation, and the Marion E. Kenworthy-Sarah H. Swift Foundation.
For more information about the project, please contact Julie Farber, Children’s Rights director of policy, at jfarber@childrensrights.org.
