Assemblyman, DA: ‘Fix the broken child welfare system’

Assemblyman William Scarborough, chair of the Assembly Committee on Children and Families was joined recently by Gordon J. Campbell, chief executive officer of Safe Horizon, the nation’s leading victim assistance organization, and Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown, to discuss significant funding contained in the Legislature’s bipartisan budget aimed at addressing New York’s broken child welfare system.
Following hearings into not only New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, but also the state’s entire child welfare system, the Assembly advanced The Child Protective and Abuse Prevention Package. While many provisions of the legislative package were agreed to by both houses, Scarborough urged on the Senate to join the Assembly in calling for minimum caseload standards for child protective workers.
“New York’s child protective system is a flawed system. One of the greatest outcries we heard throughout our statewide hearings were from case workers who were overloaded with cases and under-equipped to face the daunting challenges of this broken system,” said Scarborough. “Unless we ensure that the people who have been charged with the well-being of neglected and abused children are equipped to handle the job, we will continue to see a repetition of the string of recent senseless tragedies that horrify us all.”