With child welfare Commissioner Gladys Carrion sitting next to him, Mayor de Blasio declared Wednesday at a City Hall presser that the mission of her agency is “to save every child. Period.”
Hizzoner’s comments came a day after Carrion said in a TV interview that the city “can’t keep every child safe” in the wake of the fatal beating of 6-year-old Zymere Perkins in Harlem.
De Blasio announced a series of reforms intended to help the agency protect children from physical abuse.
But he refused to answer questions on Zymere’s case – repeatedly citing a criminal probe by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance.
Further charges are possible pending the result of an autopsy.
“The central question is did something go profoundly wrong here? Yes,” the mayor said at a City Hall press conference. “I want to be very clear the buck stops here.” The mayor also refused to acknowledge a steady increase in the average number of cases per child protective staffer – which has ballooned from 8.2 per worker in fiscal 2013 to 10.6 per worker in fiscal 2016, according to city data.
He called the latest numbers both a “spike” and an “abnormality,” while Deputy Mayor Herminia Palacio insisted the the average number of cases per worker was 9.
Palacio also claimed that not a single case worker currently handles more than 12 cases. A Department of Investigation report found that as recently as fiscal 2015, 28 percent of child protective workers had handled more than a dozen cases at a time.
Perkins was the target of at least five prior probes into allegations of child abuse going back to 2010 – three of which were confirmed, police sources have said.
The substantiated cases were in June and August 2015, and February 2016, according to sources.
In April, a school social worker reported bruises and scratches on Zymere’s legs, but that case was not substantiated. A separate allegation in June 2010 was also not confirmed by city authorities, sources said.
ACS has placed five workers who were involved in Zymere’s case on administrative duty pending the result of investigations.
In addition to the Manhattan DA’s probe, three other city and state investigative bodies have also launched investigations.
The reforms announced by Carrion and de Blasio include:
Requiring the agency to approve every time a contracted services provider determines that a case should be closed
Creating additional oversight of child protective staffers by teams assembled outside their division
Providing additional in-house training for dealing with suspected physical abuse
The agency is also creating liaisons for each DA’s office and will work with the Department of Education on when student absences should trigger investigations.
“I am devastated by this tragedy. The death of one child is one too many,” Carrion said. “There is no excuse.. no child should fall through the cracks in our city.”
City officials insisted they couldn’t talk about the case because of recommendations from city lawyers, but that didn’t stop them after a similarly tragic child death in early 2014.
At a press conference following that case in January 2014, Carrion answered a number of specific questions on the death of Myls Dobson.
“Every time that we went to that home to visit, the child was with a caregiver, with a babysitter, and was well-cared-for,” she said at the time.
Public Advocate Letitia James complained “there hasn’t been a lot of transparency” and called for a significant ACS overhaul. She said that while the decision to keep Carrion was up to the mayor, “If you ask me whether or not she’s doing a good job, I would say that the answer is no.”
