“It’s incumbent upon us to make sure these children are safe,” Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said at a press conference recently. “That’s job No. 1.”
Blakeman launched a program in 2023 to hire more workers for child protective services in order to reduce caseloads at the Department of Social Services. But Blakeman’s January decision to bring on former police officers and detectives as special investigators to work on child abuse cases with DSS signifies that (unlike many policymakers and agency leaders) Blakeman has not lost sight of child protection’s most important function — protecting children.
All over the county there is a shortage of workers at child welfare agencies. A 2023 report from Casey Family Programs noted that “for about 15 years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, child welfare turnover rates hovered between an estimated 20% and 40%, with an estimated national average of 30%.” The pandemic and ensuing labor shortage only made things worse; a recent study shows the 2023 turnover rate hitting 60% in New York in some residential facilities.
The pay, of course, has never been great for these jobs. And the demands have gotten even harder — one worker in Texas told me she had to quit when her bosses asked her to stay overnight in the office with children who had been removed from their families. And the public campaign in recent years to abolish child welfare or defund CPS has not helped. Who wants to work for an agency that is now referred to by advocates and politicians as the “family surveillance system”?
One consistent problem, though, has always been the pipeline. Who wants to do this work? Who is cut out for it? People go into this field expecting to solve problems and bring families together. But the reality of frontline CPS work is something else entirely. Here’s how former ACS commissioner John Mattingly described the job to an audience a few years ago:
You’re a 24-year-old woman. You have a degree in sociology with a history minor . . . And you find yourself within two, three months on the job walking into a public housing apartment building, walking past the gangbangers who hang out in front, taking what you have to take from them as you walk by. You don’t use the elevator if you’re smart because the elevators are either broken or they’re not safe at all . . . You walk into a situation in a family that is only Spanish speaking.
And that’s only getting to the door. Mattingly continues:
The report you got was that this mother was making her living by selling drugs out of that apartment and that the children periodically get bumped around by the drug users who are coming in. That’s all you know. You don’t know who made that report.
But, says Mattingly, the children’s grandparents run out the door with the kids once they realize who you are. Now it’s your job to figure it out — questioning the mother, trying to get the kids back so you can ask them what happened, looking around the apartment to see evidence of drug use or other criminal activity, and all while making sure you are not in danger.
If this doesn’t sound like a police officer’s job, what does? And yet there has been a reluctance to engage police in this work because they are seen as too combative for such sensitive jobs.
There have been exceptions. Arizona, for instance, hired 120 detectives to work with CPS several years ago. (The state’s child protection agency was led for a time by a former homicide detective.) And in 2018 some members of New York’s Administration for Children’s Services were being trained in investigative techniques and safety by the NYPD. It was a positive development, but does not seem to have continued. Still, all of this work could be done further upstream. Why not provide a track in criminal justice programs or police academies for people who are interested in child protective services?
More and more child welfare agencies think that their responsibility is promoting “family well-being” or fixing racism or rehabilitating parents. But, first and foremost, the public expects them to protect children. Hiring a few people with experience in law enforcement is a first step to rediscovering that mission, but we could do better.
