Child protection agency in New York City enables parents, resulting in tragic deaths of children
“If they’d taken the kids away from her earlier, she probably wouldn’t have died.”
That’s how a neighbor reacted on learning of the tragic death of 11-month-old Jazeli Mirabel last week, rightly casting blame on the Administration for Children’s Services.
“The whole situation could’ve been prevented,” the neighbor told The Post, noting that ACS had been called on both Jazeli’s parents multiple times before the baby was found “purple” and lying on the floor of her Bronx home.
It’s too bad the neighbor didn’t give her name.
Maybe we could hire her to run ACS.
The agency should be looking for new leadership after a string of tragedies this summer that can only be attributed to the elaborate game of make-believe ACS is playing.
It’s a game where drug abuse is just another choice that adults make and can easily manage, even when young children or children with disabilities are present.
It’s a game where neglect is a problem caused only by poverty, never by mental illness or substance use.
It’s a game whose only goal seems to be avoiding foster care — and teaches caseworkers that their role is to support parents at the expense of protecting kids.
Jazeli’s was the second death in a week of a child who had been the subject of multiple ACS investigations.
Brian Santiago, age 10, who needed a feeding tube to live, likely starved to death after Charlene Santiago, his mother and sole caretaker, died in their Bronx apartment.
She reportedly had a long history of drug abuse and mental-health problems. ACS had previously removed him from her home because of the drugs and the child’s “failure to thrive” — he wasn’t gaining any weight.
Last month, 5-year-old De’Neil Timberlake of The Bronx died after cops found the boy foaming at the mouth from methadone he had ingested.
According to the NYPD, the father’s history with ACS included nine total cases, ranging from neglectful and inadequate guardianship to not providing food, clothing or shelter.
Oh, and he was arrested for assaulting one of his children’s mothers in front of the kids.
The fact that these children were left in these unsafe homes is not surprising, given the agency’s attitude toward abusive and neglectful parents.
ACS Commissioner Jess Dannhauser has directed the agency to divert as many cases as possible away from official investigations and toward its Collaborative Assessment, Response, Engagement & Support system.
CARES, a “non-investigatory” method of child protection, is — according to the agency’s website — “one of ACS’s core strategies for combating racial disparities in child welfare and promoting social justice.”
The program “encourage[s] families to develop their own solutions to their challenges.”
Who besides ACS thinks drug addicts and the mentally ill are going to be good at finding “their own solutions to their challenges”?
A whistleblower at ACS revealed earlier this year that the agency had officially changed the list of criteria for automatic investigations: Two categories, “Caretaker Abuses Drugs or Alcohol and Child under 7” and “Caretaker Mentally Ill/Developmentally Disabled and Child under 7” have been eliminated, along with a category relating to criminal activity in the home.
Now those serious warning signs of dysfunction can just get a CARES response.
In the spring Strategic Priorities update from ACS, Commissioner Dannhauser boasted, “We have increased CARES, our non-investigatory child protection approach, so that now 25% of incoming reports are addressed in a manner that empowers the family to identify needed supports for their children.”
The word “protection” appeared just six times in the update — while the word “support” appeared 39 times.
The agency has also discouraged schools from reporting signs that may indicate poverty — lack of food, dirty clothes, not bathing — but are more often warnings of parental incapacity. (ACS brags that reports from schools to the State Central Registry have declined by 11% this school year compared with last.)
Deplorable conditions in homes are generally symptoms of much larger problems than low income.
Court documents this year described the home of Lynija Eason Kumar, who is on trial for the 2023 murder of her daughter Jalayah Eason after multiple reports to ACS, as being littered with trash, soiled clothing and dirty linens, with open containers of food and other garbage on the floor and a visible insect infestation.
We may have to wait months or years to find out exactly what happened to Jazeli and Brian and De’Neil.
And Dannhauser will be in no rush to tell us.
“I don’t believe that discussing the details of individual families’ lives is the best way to drive system change,” he told NY1 recently when asked to explain his policy on releasing information about child maltreatment fatalities.
“When it’s important, when the public needs to know if we get something terribly wrong, I’ll make sure that they know.”
We shouldn’t hold our breath while Dannhauser dithers.
Three children are dead.
The mayor should demand answers now.
Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
