Mayor Defends Child Services Amid Criticism

Mayor Eric Adams stood firm on Tuesday regarding the city’s management of child services, countering claims that the agency’s progressive approach reportedly jeopardizes children’s safety.

Adams maintained that workers within the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) are capable of making the right decisions about whether to remove children from potentially harmful situations.

Critics of ACS, including some whistleblowers, have voiced strong concerns about the agency’s policies, suggesting that a focus on keeping families together can sometimes be a dangerous practice, and some even argue that it’s rooted in racial bias.

Despite these criticisms, the mayor argued that ACS personnel strive to strike a delicate balance—protecting children from danger while avoiding the trauma associated with removing them from their families unnecessarily.

“To say, ‘Let this kid stay’ is not an unreasonable policy,” Adams stated during a weekly briefing. “No, they’re making the right decision. They’re balanced. Do you want to take your kids out of the house and destroy the home, or do you want to make sure they’re removed because they need to be safe?”

While acknowledging the tragic deaths of several children under ACS oversight, Adams suggested that the agency’s success is better reflected in the number of lives saved. He noted that ACS placed 3,000 children with foster families last year.

“It shows that they make the right phone call based on what’s in front of them,” he remarked. “Any child who loses their life in an unsafe environment breaks our hearts. But I know the men and women in ACS. They respond and repeat, and make the right decision.”

Child services agencies have historically been scrutinized for failing to protect vulnerable children. Notorious cases, like that of four-year-old Jamiek Modlin, who died weighing just 19 pounds, have received heightened media attention.

Interestingly, Adams shared his own childhood experience, revealing that at the age of four, he and his family were trapped in a Bronx apartment for two weeks, during which time ACS and NYPD attempted to intervene.

The mayor indicated that a new privacy law would prevent the city from disclosing specifics about child fatalities linked to ACS.

He confirmed that ACS Commissioner Jess Dannhauser would oversee a review of the agency’s practices but refrained from stating whether caseworkers would face repercussions for their decisions.

“If someone is supposed to do an investigation and they don’t, that’s a problem and we’re going to deal with it,” he asserted. “But if they use their best professional judgment to determine that they should not remove the child, then that process must be respected by us.”