The city’s problem-plagued child welfare agency failed to save two abused kids from death despite multiple chances to help them, a blistering investigation has found.
The Administration for Children’s Services is so rife with “investigatory failures and deficient casework, lax oversight of foster care providers and a lack of data collection’’ that it may “actually have put [kids] in harm’s way,’’ according to Mark Peters, commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation, which conducted the probe and released its findings Tuesday.
The DOI’s 18-month investigation focused on glaring ACS missteps — including violations of state and federal laws — in three cases.
The victims were identified only as a preschool-age girl killed by her mother; another young neglected child who died “under suspicious circumstances,’’ and a boy who nearly succumbed to starvation and physical abuse by his parents.
DOI noted that all of the families had a prolonged history with ACS — which “had multiple opportunities to effectively intervene before a child died or nearly died, but did not do so.’’
“Equally troubling, data obtained by DOI suggests that these are not isolated instances,’’ Peters said.
In the case of “Alex,” her mother fatally beat her “after years of ACS intervention and after an ACS provider agency returned Alex to the dangerous home,’’ the report says.
ACS had already conducted 13 investigations into the cocaine-abusing mother of eight before Alex was killed — and found that she had beaten the little girl so hard in the face that she caused disfigurement, the report said.
A year before Alex was killed, ACS received two hot-line “reports’’ alleging abuse, but the agency ruled them unfounded. Because of ACS’s lax record-keeping, DOI said, it can’t tell whether the reports should have been deemed founded.
The second fatality involved another young child, “Morgan,’’ whose mother had already been investigated by ACS 11 times before her death.
Morgan and her siblings had been in and out of foster care after substantiated reports of neglect but were returned to their mother despite this, the report found.
In the third case, a boy, “Chris,’’ was found “severely malnourished and sustained a life-threatening injury [by one of his parents] during an improperly conducted ACS investigation,’’ the DOI said.
It was suspected that Chris was being physically abused for at least two years, prompting four ACS investigations.
During one botched probe into the family, an ACS worker guessed at the child’s weight — and overestimated it by 30 pounds, never seeking input from his pediatrician as required by law, the report said.
“It was not until Chris suffered the life-threatening injury that ACS took many of the critical investigative steps that it should have taken prior,’’ the document said.
In all three cases, DOI found that ACS failed to:
- Report allegations of abuse to a state hot line as required.
- Identify issues such as chronic neglect and child abuse and take steps to prevent them.
- Follow basic casework practices to ensure kids’ safety.
- Properly oversee the foster care agencies it works with.
DOI noted that it recommended several changes to deal with the issues, including taking “disciplinary action’’ against seven workers involved in the cases.
Only one has been disciplined, the department said.
ACS responded in a statement, “Since these tragedies occurred in early 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio has invested over $100 million to strengthen the child welfare system.
“This massive investment has increased access to preventive services, reduced caseloads to historic lows, and launched a new professional development institute for case workers.”