It’s no secret that the Administration for Children’s Services has been falling down on the job.
asserted
Administration → ’ → job
Adonis Jarvis — the nonverbal, autistic 16-year-old who starved to death this year while in the care of his mother and grandmother — is only the latest tragedy in a long list of kids who were known to the city’s child-welfare agency but were nevertheless left in a dangerous situation.
asserted
who → starve → situation
Why is ACS so often missing signs of risk?
asserted
ACS → miss → risk
Earlier this month, ACS posted that the agency is “actively recruiting for the Child Protective Specialist (CPS) role.”
asserted
agency → post → role
With a starting salary of almost $60,000, a city pension plan, health insurance, a deferred compensation plan, 37 paid days off during the first year of employment and openings in every borough, you’d think they’d have no lack of strong candidates.
asserted
they → start → candidates
For instance, ACS requires a bachelor’s degree with at least 24 credits in fields including social work, psychology, sociology, criminal justice, education, nursing or cultural anthropology.
asserted
ACS → require → work
Sure, some courses in criminal justice or nursing might help a front-line child protective specialist.
uncertain
courses → help → specialist
Who are they kidding?
asserted
they → kid → Who
To be clear, the job of an ACS investigator is to enter a potentially dangerous home, gather evidence, ask difficult questions and make life-or-death decisions about potential risks to a child.
asserted
job → enter → child
Who would you send?
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you → send → Who
Here’s a hint: The NYPD doesn’t require recruits to have a bachelor’s degree at all, let alone one in a useless field focused on woke notions of race, class and gender.
asserted
NYPD → ’ → race
The Police Department does, however, require an exam that measures the skills law enforcement wants in candidates.
asserted
enforcement → require → candidates
ACS has an exam, too — technically.
But it also hires employees provisionally without asking them to take the test, let alone pass it.
asserted
it → have → it
Those employees can go through ACS training and be placed in the field indefinitely; it only becomes a problem if someone who has passed the test comes along and “bumps” them out of the position.
asserted
who → go → position
With a vacancy rate of 10% or even higher, that’s unlikely to happen often.
asserted
that → ’ → %
Yet the exam measures important skills like problem sensitivity, inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning (all required by the NYPD, too) — core abilities for a child-protective specialist.
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all → measure → specialist
Problem sensitivity means spotting when something is wrong or likely to go wrong.
asserted
something → mean → ?
Inductive reasoning includes being able to take a general idea or policy — such as an agency rule about when a situation should be escalated — and apply it to a particular family situation.
asserted
situation → include → situation
And deductive reasoning involves taking specific observations about different families and using them to spot broader patterns about the dangers children are experiencing in our city.
asserted
children → involve → city
The idea that ACS employees are bypassing such aptitude tests is absurd.
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employees → bypass → tests
Over the past several years, ACS has continued to ignore clear risks to kids from parents who are suffering from substance abuse or severe mental illness, leaving children in homes with adults who are unwilling or unable to care for them.
asserted
who → continue → them
Some of this is no doubt the result of leadership that believes drug use is just another lifestyle choice, or that a black child should remain in a dangerous home as a means of fighting systemic racism.
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child → believe → racism
But some of it is because decisions are being made by folks who are just not very good at assessing risk.
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who → make → risk
And it’s not just how ACS is screening candidates; it’s who is being recruited in the first place.
asserted
who → ’ → place
A recent ad for the New York City Bridge Exam, the test you take for a variety of civil-service positions, was aimed at anyone who wants to be a “child protective specialist,” “maintenance worker,” “clerical associate” or “secretary.”
As if these positions, and the skills required for them, are interchangeable.
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positions → take → them
Compare that to the approach of former ACS Director John Mattingly, who sought to increase recruitment under Mayor Mike Bloomberg.
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who → compare → Bloomberg
Mattingly launched a subway ad campaign that asked, “Are you strong enough . . . Are you smart enough . . . Are you kind enough to be a Child Protection Specialist?”
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you → launch → campaign
Applications immediately spiked: About 1,100 resumés came into the agency in the month after the ads ran, compared to 5,800 in all of the previous year.
asserted
ads → spike → year
Mattingly told me the current strategy of advertising the job along with secretarial and janitorial positions is “useless” and seems “crazy.”
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strategy → tell → positions
Let’s be clear: ACS has a reputation problem.
asserted
ACS → have → problem
Who wants to work for an organization that is tarred as needlessly intrusive, racist or downright incompetent?
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that → want → organization
Child-welfare agencies, here and elsewhere, are caught in a downward spiral — the worse their reputation, the worse their applicant pool becomes.
asserted
pool → catch → spiral
If City Hall wants to turn ACS around, it needs to raise standards, not lower them.
asserted
it → want → them
The Aporia
