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Honoring Nixzmary's Memory By Avoiding A Panicked Response


Recently a brother and sister got into a scuffle at the office of the Child Welfare Organizing Project, where I am the executive director. It was nothing serious, just play fighting. But the mother broke it up by saying, "God forbid that one of you get a mark on you and someone sees it!"

I work with parents who at one time or another have lost their children to foster care, and they are once again living with a fear that such families last felt a decade ago.

As soon as they, and I, saw the sensationalized press coverage about the death of seven-year-old Nixzmary Brown, we were afraid the progress made in the last few years would unravel, due to subsequent political pressure.

It was in January, 1996, in the aftermath of the death the previous month of six-year-old Elisa Izquierdo, that the city reorganized and renamed the relevant city agency, calling it the Administration for Children’s Services, and making as part of its mission statement the policy that any ambiguity regarding a child’s safety would be resolved by removing the child from his or her home.

In the two years following the new agency’s inception, there was an increase of about 50 percent in the removal of children from their families. At the same time, since then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani believed that overzealous efforts to preserve families contributed to Elisa’s death, he slashed preventive services by 18 percent. Preventive services are anything provided to a family to help make it unnecessary to remove a child, such as housing, food stamps or day care.

Child neglect became criminalized during that time. Low-income mothers were arrested and prosecuted for offenses that were basically the result of being poor -- such as leaving their child alone while they worked in a sweat shop or living in “substandard housing” that was actually city housing.

Having worked in preventive services and seeing firsthand how much it can accomplish, I believe that many of the parents who had children removed in the 1990’s could have had it handled in a way that would better serve the long-term interest of their children.

Of course, none of us at the Child Welfare Organizing Project felt that parents who mistreat their children should be molly-coddled, and I’m not saying that parents whose kids were removed back then were totally blameless. Many needed help and many made mistakes. Some who had substance abuse issues truly were not in a place where they could take care of their children.

But we also felt that the Administration for Children’s Services was oversimplifying the issue. We knew that families caught up in the system were much more complex than the way they were being handled. And reflexively removing children tends to weaken and destroy the bonds in families that are fragile to begin with. It permanently undermines the parents' authority and the children's faith in their parents' ability to protect them. And many of the children who have been in care for any length of time have experienced abuse in their foster homes, often far in excess of what their parents were accused of.

We invited those parents to share their experiences. Theirs was a perspective to which nobody had paid attention. Eventually they were speaking to professionals in the child welfare system and in other venues where their voices had previously not been heard. The child welfare system became aware that birth parents were not criminals, but complicated people leading challenging lives, often struggling with issues related to being poor.

Things began to change in the direction for which we at the Child Welfare Organizing Project had hoped. The Administration for Children’s Services became less ideologically driven -- subscribing neither to the ideology of “when in doubt, remove the child,” or the equally extreme “preserve families at all costs.” It moved closer to taking into account the actual, individual needs of specific children and their families.

The number of kids going into foster care decreased and the city reinvested in preventive services. The number of kids known to the Administration for Children’s Services who died annually did not increase, as some feared it would.

But now the fear is that all the publicity and public outcry around Nixmary is bringing us back to the time where a birth parent was an object of suspicion, and all the progress made is in danger of being lost.

The birth parents who work at CWOP are also afraid on a much more visceral level. They know that once a parent has had a kid in foster care, that parent is much more likely to lose that kid again, because of that history.

Since Nixmary’s death, whenever a school teacher or guidance counselor calls a parent at CWOP, and I hand the phone to them, I see their hearts leaping to their throats. They’re wondering what has happened that could have resulted in a call to ACS.

There are definite signs that a panic like the one a decade ago is underway. There is reportedly a 30 percent increase in protective removals already this month so far, compared to January 2005. Meanwhile, our phone at CWOP hasn’t stopped ringing. We are trying to ride out this media frenzy and use it to make the points we want made. We hope to introduce parents’ testimony at the forthcoming city council and state assembly hearings. We want people to be aware of how parents are experiencing this, and why the Administration for Children’s Services should be very careful in how they respond.

The changes that the mayor recently announced were largely to add staff and money. The workers are supposed to respond more energetically to abuse complaints. These changes do not in themselves mean the agency will be any more likely to remove children from their families.

We believe that the best way to honor Nixzmary’s memory is not by going back to a time when the Administration for Children’s Services was just one more threat to family life in poor communities, but by continuing to change the system for the better.

Mike Arsham is executive director of the Child Welfare Organizing Project  

A Checkup for City Services


In New York City, a dead animal is picked up by the Department of Sanitation if it is on a street or sidewalk, by the Department of Transportation if it is on a highway, by Parks and Recreation if it is in a park, or by the New York City Police Department Marine Unit if it is in the water. If it's in your own home, it's your responsibility. That is not public property.

Dead animals suffered similar variable fates in Baltimore -- until city officials there determined that this was inefficient, costly and confusing. They came to this conclusion in 2000, thanks to something called CitiStat.

CitiStat is part of an approach to government that has become increasingly popular over the past decade. Officials in Baltimore collect statistical information about city services, analyse it, and then share it in meetings with the mayor and the heads of city agencies, where they compare notes and discuss how to fix problems. They have to answer to others when their agency is doing poorly, and they are rewarded when it succeeds.

It was during this process that the problem of animal disposal came up, and the officials decided that there had to be a better way. Now, when any animal dies in Baltimore, its carcass is most likely to be picked up by just one agency, the Department of Health, which got a bigger budget to do so.



A new approach to government accountability -- officially called "performance assessment" but more colloquially, compstatmania -- compiles, analyzes and interprets statistics in order to spot trends, gaps and overlaps in city services. It's not magic -- it's hard work, and follow-up. In this series, Gotham Gazette looks at this approach to improving city services.

That is just one example of the success of a system that could come to New York. A bill, introduced last year by City Councilmember Eric Gioia, would establish CityStat NY, modeled after Baltimore. One of the keys would be data -- collecting, reporting, analyzing, mapping and making it public. It might seem like a topic that only an egghead could love. But data gathered together into report cards about how well a city government agency is performing -- at say, delivering food to the hungry, or finding homes for foster kids -- could prove useful to many New Yorkers.

Call it Compstatmania; it is no exaggeration to say that this approach to city services -- an approach that many would say began in New York City -- has become a national movement. At the very least, such an approach shows how an agency spends its money and how it measures up to its prior performance. But the data can also be sorted and picked apart, analyzed and made into charts, graphs and maps to identify trends, gaps and overlaps in city services -- which, if followed up, would result in improved service to the public.

Centuries Of Record Collecting; The Mayor's Management Report

New York City has been collecting "data" since the early 1600s; the Municipal Archives on Chambers Street is awash in centuries' worth of office records, manuscripts, images, vital records, maps, blueprints, and photographs -- from 1939 to 1941, the city snapped pictures of every single building in all five boroughs, as a tool for property tax appraisals. The City Hall Library has been collecting the budgets, reports, procedures and meeting minutes of city agencies and officials since 1913.

One could date the modern era of slicing and dicing and disseminating this data to 1977, when Mayor Ed Koch released the first annual Mayor's Management Report. Preliminary findings laid out in January and a final report every September provide statistics and information about dozens of city government agencies. The report lists how many potholes are filled, the average cost of housing an inmate, crime statistics, the number of people on the welfare rolls, emergency room visits by residents, how dirty the streets are...the list can seem endless, and overwhelming.

The report has changed over the years. "It used to be the size of the Manhattan phone directory, and now it is a readable size," says Dennis Smith, an associate professor of public policy at New York University's Wagner School. Average citizens, he says, "can find data that experienced scholars had a hard time finding 10 years ago." One major change Bloomberg made was the introduction of "My Neighborhood Statistics," which lets Internet users research information on how well city services are being delivered down to the level of their own neighborhoods.

But some people still find the report overly complex to navigate and yet, at the same time, not informative enough. The report, "while it may display improvements in techniques, has never been lauded as a document that helps a reader pull all of it together so that it is the most understandable," says Peter Mameli, an associate professor in the Department of Public Management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Compstat, Parkstat, Healthstat, Capstat...

In the early 1980s, the sanitation department began issuing scorecards for itself. It was one early effort to take the idea behind the Mayor's Management Report one step further by focusing not just on data, but on outcomes that actually matter to citizens. In this instance, the department realized that what was important was not necessarily to measure how much trash was collected, but how much was left behind.

By 1994, that idea merged with technological advances to transform once again. That was the year the New York Police Department implemented its Compstat program. Then Police Commissioner William Bratton began tracking where and how many major crimes were being committed. Police then poured the data into a computer database and generated maps and charts of problem spots. Now, instead of focusing on how many police officers were deployed throughout the city as a way to gauge crime-fighting efforts, the department focused on sending them to where they were needed most. Precinct captains endured regular meetings where they were either praised for reducing crime in their areas or chastised for failing to do so. The method was widely lauded as helping slash crime in the city.

It was seen as so successful, in fact, that it was replicated throughout the city and country. It even served as the model for Baltimore's CitiStat. The key to the effectiveness of this kind of analysis, which in some circles is called "performance assessment," is in how the numbers are used. "Anybody who thinks this is just measuring is missing it," says Smith, from the Wagner School. "It has to do with figuring out what measures you need to know, and who needs to know those things when. It's leadership, it's resources, it's creative thinking."

The Department of Parks and Recreation, for example, had been collecting stats on cleanliness and safety in public parks. But it did not manage to cut crime and clean up parks significantly until after it took a cue from Compstat. It began reporting data more often than just once a year and held meetings to discuss problems and hold managers accountable. The percentage of clean, safe parks jumped from 40 percent to 80 percent.

There are yet more measurements for the city. Just last week, the Department of Health launched a new tool on its Web site that lets diners run detailed searches of New York City's 20,000-plus eateries.

What's more, at least 17 city agencies participate in the Citywide Accountability Program (Capstat), a system that is somewhat like having a CityStat for each agency: they measure performance and report results on the Internet. But, according to a 2002 report by the Independent Budget Office, "Capstat mostly reiterates operational information in the Mayor's Management Report and does not reflect the kind of results that really matter to residents."

Why The City Council Wants Citystat

For such a dweeby topic, performance assessment is becoming hipper all the time. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has focused on using technology to streamline government. The 311 system he implemented in 2003 has gleaned useful information about New Yorkers' grievances.

New City Council Speaker Christine Quinn was even more specific in her acceptance speech. Quinn referred to "using technology to find patterns of problems across the city. If multiple neighborhoods can't get stop signs installed in a timely fashion, we should know that is a systemic problem and treat it as such," she said. "If some neighborhoods are saddled with higher unemployment than others, we should quantify it and then direct economic development money to those communities that need it most." Other city council members applauded loudly. Quinn acknowledged what good data can do -- identify problems large or small.

CityStat could do that. Based on the Compstat model, it is an accountability system that would provide analyses of how well city agencies are performing and then put that information on the Web. Each city agency would have to produce a report card on its own performance using data from specific indicators relevant to the work it does. It would then have to report that information to the city council and put it on the Internet at regular intervals. In theory, there would be a central location to access the different report cards and data produced through Compstat, Parkstat, Capstat and the Mayor's Management Report.

"It's based on the theory that sunlight is the best disinfectant," says Gioia, chair of the Committee on Oversight and Investigations and the bill's sponsor. He and other proponents of such a system point to the success of Citistat in Baltimore, which cost under $300,000 to launch but saved that city some $43 million in its first three years. It almost immediately helped slash overtime, improve productivity and reduce absenteeism among city employees; it quadrupled the amount of graffiti removal in the city and cut complaints about potholes.

The details of how it would work in New York are somewhat unclear. In Baltimore, for example, a citizen cannot search a massive database and come up with whatever specialized information he wants. Instead, the CitiStat staff releases a report each week about a different government agency. Here, however, public access is one of the key selling points of the system.

The Bloomberg administration does not seem impressed with the proposal. The bill as it stands now "is riddled with problems," says Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for the mayor, whose Office of Operations would be instrumental in implementing such a system. For example, Barowitz says, the CityStat bill "demands that some figures be reported monthly, when they are collected semi-annually. The bill needs to be completely overhauled," he said.

Roadblocks And Miracles

Despite Capstat and the Mayor's Management Report, some city agencies are still just catching up. Two years ago, homeless New Yorkers with HIV or AIDS might have found themselves dumped in leaky, unlocked apartments without heat, hot water, electricity, mattresses or toilet paper. Sometimes they ended up trapped there for months, despite legal mandates for the city's HIV/AIDS Services Administration to move them quickly to permanent housing. Nearly three-quarters of the emergency and transitional rooming had housing violations, according to a 2004 investigation by the City Council Committee on Oversight and Investigations.

As stultifying as the problems the committee found was a roadblock it encountered along the way: a dearth of data from the AIDS services agency itself. Most shockingly, the agency kept no master list of referrals and placements where people with AIDS could go for emergency shelter. The lack of a centralized system meant that caseworkers usually did not know whether a landlord was negligent or an apartment was sub-standard. So some clients waited months, if not years, for permanent placement while others got shoved back into rooms that had already been found to be uninhabitable.

"It was everything you are afraid of in government, that there is no one in charge and no one monitoring results," Gioia said. "It was a broken system that was failing miserably at its goals."

The city council passed three new laws after the committee released its report on the city's AIDS agency. One of those laws requires that the agency create and maintain a referral and placement master list.

If some city agencies don't seem to get what all the fuss about keeping records and analyzing data is about, others have become true believers -- thanks to some apparent miracles. This is what happened at the Department of Corrections, which since 1995 has run TEAMS, short for Total Efficiency Accountability Management System. As part of that system, officials noticed a spike in inmates trying to sneak in contraband material that could be made into weapons. Paying close attention to the data, they realized that the increase came mostly from one facility, and intuited a larger problem brewing among inmates. All this helped the Department of Corrections cut inmate-on-inmate violence, officials say, by 97 percent.

 

City Council Committee Assignments


Untitled Document

2006 City Council Committees

Approved January 18, 2006 (updated February 2, 2007)

Standing Committees

Aging
Maria del Carmen Arroyo, Chair
Gail Brewer
Helen Foster
Dennis Gallagher
Vincent Gentile
Sara Gonzalez
Domenic Recchia
Kendall Stewart
James Vacca

Civil Rights
Larry Seabrook, Chair
Bill de Blasio
Darlene Mealy
Hiram Monserrate
Michael Nelson

Civil Service & Labor
Joseph Addabbo Jr.
James Gennaro
Melissa Mark Viverito

Michael Nelson
Larry Seabrook

Consumer Affairs
Leroy Comrie, Chair
Charles Barron
James Gennaro
Oliver Koppell
John Liu

Contracts
Yvette Clarke, Chair
Robert Jackson
John Liu
Melissa Mark Viverito
Michael Nelson
Kendall Stewart
David Weprin

Cultural Affairs, Libraries & International Intergroup Relations
Dominic Recchia, Chair
Leroy Comrie
Inez Dickens
Daniel Garodnick
Vincent Gentile
Eric Gioia
James Vacca
David Weprin
Thomas White, Jr.

Economic Development
Thomas White, Jr., Chair
Alan Gerson
Letitia James
Michael McMahon
Annabel Palma
Diana Reyna
Albert Vann
David Weprin
David Yassky

Education
Robert Jackson, Chair
Maria del Carmen Arroyo
Bill DeBlasio
Simcha Felder
Lewis Fidler
Helen Foster
Daniel Garodnick
Melinda Katz
Oliver Koppell
Jessica Lappin
John Liu
Miguel Martinez
Domenic Recchia
James Vacca
Peter Vallone Jr.
Albert Vann
David Yassky

Environmental Protection
James Gennaro, Chair
Bill DeBlasio
Oliver Koppell
Melissa Mark Viverito
Dominic Recchia
Kendall Stewart
Peter Vallone Jr.
Thomas White, Jr.

Finance
David Weprin, Chair
Maria Baez
Gail Brewer
Leroy Comrie
Bill DeBlasio
Lewis Fidler
Dennis Gallagher
James Gennaro
Vincent Gentile
Alan Gerson
Eric Gioia
Robert Jackson
Oliver Koppell
Michael McMahon
James Oddo
Diana Reyna
Joel Rivera
Helen Sears
Peter Vallone Jr.
Al Vann
David Yassky

Fire & Criminal Justice Services
Miguel Martinez, Chair
Joseph Addabbo Jr.
Tony Avella
Vincent Gentile
Alan Gerson
Eric Gioia
Hiram Monserrate
James Vacca

General Welfare
Bill Deblasio, Chair
Gale Brewer
Jessica Lappin
Annabel Palma
Thomas White, Jr.

Governmental Operations
Simcha Felder, Chair
Joseph Addabbo Jr.
Inez Dickens
Erik Martin Dilan
Dominic Recchia
Larry Seabrook
Peter Vallone Jr.

Health
Joel Rivera, Chair
Maria del Carmen Arroyo
Maria Baez
Inez Dickens
Helen Foster
John Liu
Miguel Martinez
Michael McMahon
Rosie Mendez
Helen Sears
Kendall Stewart
Albert Vann

Higher Education
Charles Barron, Chair
Tony Avella
Gale Brewer
Miguel Martinez
Larry Seabrook

Housing & Buildings
Erik Martin Dilan, Chair
Tony Avella
Maria Baez
Leroy Comrie
Lewis Fidler
Dennis Gallagher
Robert Jackson
Rosie Mendez
James Oddo
Joel Rivera
Thomas White, Jr.

Immigration
Kendall Stewart, Chair
Charles Barron
Melissa Mark Viverito
Darlene Mealy
Michael Nelson
Annabel Palma
David Weprin

Juvenile Justice
Sara Gonzalez, Chair
Maria del Carmen Arroyo
Darlene Mealy
James Sanders, Jr.
Helen Sears

Land Use
Melinda Katz, Chair
Maria del Carmen Arroyo
Tony Avella
Maria Baez
Charles Barron
Leroy Comrie
Inez Dickens
Erik Martin Dilan
Simcha Felder
Daniel Garodnick
Eric Gioia
Robert Jackson
Jessica Lappin
John Liu
Miguel Martinez
Michael McMahon
Rosie Mendez
James Oddo
Annabel Palma
Joel Rivera
Larry Seabrook
Helen Sears
Albert Vann

Lower Manhattan Redevelopment
Alan Gerson, Chair
Helen Foster
John Liu
Rosie Mendez
David Yassky

Mental Health, Mental Retardation, Alcoholism, Drug Abuse & Disability Services
Oliver Koppell, Chair
Gale Brewer
Simcha Felder
James Gennaro
Annabel Palma

Oversight and Investigations
Eric Gioia, Chair
Gale Brewer
Jessica Lappin
John Liu
Michael Nelson

Parks & Recreation
Helen Foster, Chair
Joseph Addabbo Jr.
Dennis Gallagher
Alan Gerson
Letitia James

Public Safety
Peter Vallone Jr., Chair
Joseph Addabbo Jr.
Eric Martin Dilan
Helen Foster
Daniel Garodnick
James Gennarro
Vincent Gentile
Melinda Katz
Hiram Monserrate
James Oddo
David Yassky James Oddo

Rules/Privileges & Elections
Diana Reyna, Chair
Maria Baez
Leroy Comrie
Inez Dickens
Eric Martin Dilan
Lewis Fidler
Daniel Garodnick
Robert Jackson
Melinda Katz
Michael McMahon
Christine Quinn
James Oddo
Joel Rivera
David Weprin

Sanitation & Solid Waste Management
Michael McMahon, Chair
Maria del Carmen Arroyo
Dennis Gallagher
James Gennaro
Robert Jackson
Jessica Lappin
Larry B. Seabrook
David Yassky

Small Business
David Yassky, Chair
Letitia James
Darlene Mealy
Annabel Palma
David Weprin

Standards & Ethics
Inez Dickens, Chair
Daniel Garodnick
Eric Gioia
Robert Jackson
Melinda Katz
Jessica Lappin
Helen Sears
James Vacca

State & Federal Legislation
Maria Baez, Chair
Joseph Addabbo Jr.
Erik Martin Dilan
Lewis Fidler
Michael McMahon
Hiram Monseratte
Joel Rivera

Technology In Government
Gale Brewer, Chair
Bill DeBlasio
Letitia James
Oliver Koppell
James Sanders, Jr.

Transportation
John Liu, Chair
Joseph Addabbo Jr.
Daniel Garodnick
Oliver Koppell
Jessica Lappin
Miguel Martinez
Michael McMahon
Darlene Mealy
Diana Reyna
Larry Seabrook

Veterans
Hiram Monserrate, Chair
Tony Avella
Lewis Fidler
Letitia James
Michael Nelson

Waterfronts
Michael Nelson, Chair,
Joseph Addobbo, Jr.
Gale Brewer
Vincent Gentile
Alan Gerson
Melissa Mark Viverito
James Vacca

Women's Issues
Helen Sears, Chair
Charles Barron
Sara Gonzalez
Letitia James
Melissa Mark Viverito
Darlene Mealy
James Sanders, Jr.

Youth Services
Lewis Fidler, Chair
Dennis Gallagher
Alan Gerson
Sara Gonzalez
Melissa Mark Viverito
Darlene Mealy

Land Use Subcommittees

Landmarks, Public Siting & Maritime
Jessica Lappin, Chair
Maria del Carmen Arroyo
Charles Barron
Leroy Comrie
John Liu
Miguel Martinez
Rosie Mendez
James Oddo
Annabel Palma

Planning, Dispositions & Concessions
Daniel Garodnick, Chair
Maria Baez
Inez Dickens

Zoning Franchises
Tony Avella, Chair
Erik Martin Dilan
Simcha Felder
Eric Gioia
Robert Jackson
Melinda Katz
Michael McMahon
Joel Rivera
Larry Seabrook
Helen Sears
Albert Vann

Subcommittees

Drug Abuse (Mental Health)
Annabel Palma, Chair

Public Housing
Rosie Mendez, Chair

Senior Centers (Aging)
James Vacca, Chair



 

 



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