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NARR 1: The waiting area outside of Manhattan family court is a tangle of confused parents looking for their lawyers and caseworkers. Many are there to fight a petition filed by ACS asking the judge to rule in favor of removing a child from an abusive or unfit home. Caitlin Gallicker is a social worker for the Legal Aid Society. She says that meetings between social workers, lawyers and parents are crucial in determining what is best for the child.
TAPE (C Gallicker) (:15 ): "Planning with the family, you are getting the family on board, you're engaging them, you are sort of pulling them into the decision making process"
NARR 2: And it is exactly that process which is being called into question with allegations of disorganization and grave oversight at ACS offices all over the city. Last year ACS initiated a program that lets kids stay in their homes but requires families to meet with specialized social service workers. This is viewed as an alternative to immediately removing children from their homes and placing them into foster care. A system, that Gallicker says is wrought with problems of its own.
TAPE (C Gallicker) (:18 ): " Foster care is not a walk in the park for these kids. In fact I have seen foster care, I feel like- I have seen children deteriorate in foster care. So like with the Nixmary case- should she have gone into foster care- absolutely that would have been the best thing for her because of that situation."
NARR 3: Some child advocates say that ACS puts too much emphasis on keeping the family together at the expense of the child's safety.
TAPE (C Gallicker) (:10): "Generally is it best to just throw family preservation out the window and just push kids into foster care. It's very sophisticated judgment to make and it's a really hard one to make."
NARR 4: That judgment: whether or not to separate families, is a critical issue in the child welfare system. That's according to Gabrielle Prisco, a juvenile rights attorney. But she also says that it is hard to point to one problem in the system, especially with the increase in cases.
TAPE (G Prisco) (:09): "The system needs more attention and money and case workers and attorneys need to have a manageable amount of cases."
NARR 5: The city is giving an additional 16 million dollars to ACS, but the agency will still need to deal with finding suitable foster families to care for the children.
TAPE (G Prisco) (:13 ): "I wish more people would become foster parents and maybe that's one thing that the public will take from these stories is the need for safe homes for children and the need for people to volunteer to be foster parents."
NARR 6: Both social workers and lawyers say that ACS will quickly need to deal with the lack of foster care homes and the unusual high numbers of children who can no longer remain with their families.
I'm Gabrielle Galanek, Columbia Radio News.