New Publication | Urban Matters
Child Welfare and the Intended Consequences of the War on Drugs
By Aarin Michele Williams
In order to properly understand the child welfare system we must grasp its connections to race, class, drugs, and reproduction. Many recognize that our nation’s shameful mass incarceration rates are fueled by our long carceral history and the infamous “war on drugs” with its intentional targeting of Black and Brown communities and impoverished people. We know the statistics, read the books, watch the documentaries. However, we think less about the ways this “war” pollutes the systems -- medical, educational, social, and child welfare -- we have been convinced to believe exist for our, or others,’ protection.
NEW report
The Paradox of Choice: How School Choice Divides New York City Elementary Schools
By Nicole Mader, Clara Hemphill, and Qasim Abbas
The conventional wisdom is that most elementary school children in New York City attend their zoned neighborhood schools and that the city’s high levels of school segregation merely reflect segregated housing patterns. But a more nuanced and in some ways disquieting story emerges from our analysis presented in a new policy report from the Center for New York City Affairs, “The Paradox of Choice.”
new report | CHILDREN, YOUTH & FAMILIES | REPORTS
Small Children, Big Opportunities
The Department of Education Will Soon Take Charge of Child Care for Babies and Toddlers. What Can They Do to Build Capacity and Improve Quality?
The last in a series of briefs looking at child care for babies and toddlers in New York City's subsidized early education centers, this report presents our key findings. It also provides recommendations for building the centers’ capacity to provide quality infant and toddler care. With the City preparing to move its subsidized child care system from its current home at the Administration for Children’s Services to the City’s Department of Education, our advisory board of early education stakeholders, argues that now is the time to dream big when it comes to babies and toddlers, and to build a rich continuum of early education from infancy onward that will prevent the need for more costly interventions down the line.
NEW REPORT | CHILDREN, YOUTH & FAMILIES | REPORTS
Making Room for Babies?: Lessons for the Field
By Kendra Hurley
Many child care centers have seen their enrollment of 4-year-olds decline due to New York City's pre-K expansion, which has dramatically grown the number of early education options available to kids this age. In response, some centers have become interested in “aging down” to serve younger children. This would be a tremendous boon in New York City, where quality affordable and subsidized infant and toddler care is in high demand and short supply. However, "aging down" is difficult. This report looks at ways that affordable and subsidized centers who do provide infant care make it work.
New Report | Child Welfare Watch
Keeping Teenagers out of Foster Care: Do Teen-Specialized Services Make a Difference?
By Abigail Kramer
In 2013, New York City launched an array of programs designed to keep teenagers out of the City’s foster care system.
The programs—known collectively as “teen-specialized preventive services”—represent a pivotal piece of the City’s ongoing child welfare reform agenda: to keep whittling down the number of kids who enter foster care by providing intensive, evidence-based therapy to families in crisis.
Data & Statistics | Child WelFare Watch
Watching the Numbers
Our six years of key indicators spotlight trends in New York City’s foster care and preventive services systems.
Full Survey
New Release
Monitoring the Minimum Wage: Brief 4 on How Businesses are Adapting to the Increasing Minimum Wage
By James Parrott
CNYCA partners with the Workforce Field Building Hub, an initiative of the NYC-based Workforce Professionals Training Institute (WPTI) on the Monitoring the Minimum Wage issue brief series. The briefs are intended to track the implementation of the $15 minimum wage in New York City by engaging businesses, workers and workforce practitioners, and by assessing the impacts in other jurisdictions around the country.
Monitoring the Minimum Wage: Brief 4 on lessons from other cities is available here.
Previous issues in the series are available here.
By Kendra Hurley
Growing interest in early education has led to more infant classrooms in child care centers—but they’re mostly for wealthy families.
After a series of widely publicized child deaths in 2016, New York City's child welfare system continues to struggle under a glut of new cases.
In response to a surge in child abuse and neglect reports, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) has drastically increased the number of families it brings into the system, filing more cases in Family Court and placing more children in foster care.
But the resulting system-overload, they say, increases the risk of breaking up families unnecessarily, and may make children less safe.
NEW INITIATIVE
Across the city, social service agencies are increasingly employing staff who’ve themselves had run-ins with the law as “Credible Messengers” to other court-involved youth. It’s a recognition of the powerful positive impact mentors who’ve had similar life experiences can have in changing young lives.
To foster this important work, the Center for New York City Affairs is pleased to announce the launch of the Institute for Transformative Mentoring (ITM). ITM is a training program focused on the professional and personal development of such Credible Messengers. It’s a semester-long course, developed with Credible Messengers and the help of training and education experts and foundation and non-profit leaders, that’s designed to enhance the practical skills of Credible Messengers and also further the healing of their own lives. ITM will support the work of this unique and growing workforce.
For more information, click here.
This week, collective bargaining negotiations between the administration of The New School and the union representing academic student workers stalled. This has prompted two reactions here at the Center for New York City Affairs. First, we hope for a quick and mutually satisfactory resolution of the outstanding issues between the two sides. And second, this seems the right moment to showcase a few examples of the varied and valuable research and reporting done by New School students – some of it on their own initiative and some in collaboration with the Center’s staff – that we’ve published in recent months. It’s a reminder of the high regard we have for all the work New School students have done for and with the Center over the years.
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Are cities a curse on land, air, water and mineral resources, not to mention on animals, birds, plants and creatures of the sea – an insult to nature? Contrarily, are they the best alternative that humans have for protecting the natural environment and its many resources and ecologies? What can be done in the face of continued population growth and the unrelenting urbanization that together fuel consumption and deplete and degrade the material world?
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RT @NAPW: Read NAPW Senior Staff Attorney Aarin Williams' post "Child Welfare and the Intended Consequences of the War on Dru… https://t.co/ARfiAtw2bA
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