The Children's Aid Society

The Role of Public Schools In Child Protection

February 10, 2006

Testimony Before the New York State Assembly
Standing Committees on Children and Families and
Oversight, Analysis and Investigation
February 10, 2006

The Role of Public Schools In Child Protection
Good morning. The Children’s Aid Society thanks the Assembly Standing Committees on Children and Families and Oversight, Analysis and Investigation for holding these hearings. The protection of children has been central to our mission for over 150 years. Children’s Aid provides services for over 150,000 children and families in New York City through neighborhood community centers, camps, community school programs, medical and mental health clinics, foster care, adoption and preventive services, early childhood programs, housing for homeless families, and legal advocacy. In addition, our PINS mediation and diversion programs intervene with children and parents in the family court and in children’s schools.

One question you pose in your request for testimony is “Are the necessary resources available to help educational institutions protect children.” Based on our experience in child protection, and in education and youth development services, we are well qualified to comment and make recommendations in two areas related to this query: student support services and early childhood programming.

I. Our experience has shown that student support services, co-located with education programs, contribute significantly to a coordinated approach to child protection and well-being.

In 1992, The Children’s Aid Society formed a unique partnership with the New York City public schools to create a model approach for addressing student and family needs in selected schools. Initially launched at I.S. 218 in Washington Heights, Children’s Aid and the Department of Education have continued to expand this partnership throughout the years, working with and receiving support from six school chancellors. Student and family support services, including school based health and mental health programs, have been core components of our model since the beginning of this work.

Since the onset of the program, we have worked closely with school principals in the area of child protection. Our school-based social workers consult with school staff, coordinate and facilitate communication with ACS child protection officials during referrals and investigations, and counsel families during the process. While school officials know that they are mandated reporters, they welcome the help of our on-site skilled social workers and medical staff when a child abuse report must be made and when police are involved in protecting children.

Children’s Aid’s school-based health clinics provide another pivotal opportunity for the identification of child abuse and neglect during the regular preventive visits made by children in the school. In addition, our doctors and nurses carefully evaluate the children who are frequent users of our health services as part of our regular protocol for identifying signs of abuse or neglect. Besides a careful physical exam, evaluating a child who comes in daily with vague complaints of a headache or stomachache involves, as a matter of course, asking the question, "What else is going on? Is everything okay at home?"

Furthermore, a recent report in the pediatric literature found that when parents change their children’s health care providers frequently, these children are much more likely to be victims of abuse, as the abusive parent seeks to avoid detection. But those children identified in the school setting at our school-based clinics are consistently seen by the same medical team, circumventing those efforts.

II. Early childhood programming located in the schools provides an excellent prevention strategy for promoting and enhancing child safety and well being.

In two of our Washington Heights Community Schools, P.S. 5 and P.S. 8, Children’s Aid has developed Zero-to-Five Head Start programs. These remarkable interventions insure that low-income families receive social and medical support during pregnancy, at delivery, and perinatal; appropriate education in early childhood development during the most critical years; comprehensive ongoing social support; extended-day childcare; and family development, health and nutrition services. The Early Head Start teachers and family workers make regular home visits to enrolled families, providing parents with appropriate in-home child development activities and health and social service interventions. Families also attend small group socialization sessions with their children (ages 0-3) twice each week at well-equipped classrooms in each school under the tutelage of the same teachers who make the regular home visits.

Last year, Children’s Aid and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine co-sponsored a study of this early childhood programming entitled Relationship-Based Early Head Start at the Children’s Aid Society: Maternal Health Impacts, in which Dr. Ronit Kahana-Kalman documented:

* Decreases in maternal depression
* Decreases in maternal stress related to parenting
* Increases in maternal perception of social support
* Increases in positive parenting during play with children, and
* Decreases in parental intrusiveness during play with children

Tragically, with new cuts in federal Head Start funding, it is unlikely that such programs can be expanded. Nonetheless, similar replications can be developed, such as the Nurse Family Partnership (NFP) Program, launched by the City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in several low-income communities and recently showcased in an NBC Live at Five broadcast. The Nurse Family Partnership Program is a national nurse home visiting program for low-income, first-time mothers, their infants, and their families. The program uses public health nurses to conduct home visits about every two weeks during pregnancy and throughout the first two years of the infant’s life. This program, if expanded, could be an important component of a broad-based child abuse and neglect prevention initiative. And families with more intensive needs could receive the additional support of, for example, a full-time homemaker, in conjunction with intensive preventive services.

Research has shown that the Nurse Family Partnership program is effective in improving health related-outcomes and general social well being for both mothers and children. An independent RAND Corporation study estimated the cost savings over a program participant’s lifetime to be at least four times greater than the cost of the program itself.

III. Recommendations
We believe, based on our direct, hands-on experience in the City’s public schools, that The Children’s Aid Society is uniquely qualified to urge the committees to implement the following recommendations, referencing New York City Schools and agencies, but also applicable for schools throughout our state.

1. The City Department of Education, in partnership with private organizations, should establish school-based family support service teams in all schools to provide triage assessments and immediate on-site support; such teams can generate and handle child abuse and neglect referrals much more effectively than educators alone.
2. The Department of Education should create a new model for more effective collaboration between public school teachers and private mental health/social service providers, including comprehensive training and staff development. Pupil Personnel Teams should be utilized as a pre-referral resource for children at risk of abuse and neglect, and for those children whose challenging behaviors put their own safety at risk.
3. The State should develop new financing models to identify discretionary Department of Education funding to create replicable, on-site services that benefit students in need and to offer alternative assessment and intervention approaches. Non-reimbursable mental health counseling should be funded, along with a commensurate revision of New York State’s Medicaid regulations. Where possible, local and state public funding should be redirected to provide a match for Medicaid funds. Title V Maternal and Child Health Program funds, as well as monies generated by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, are other potential sources of funding for these school-based services.
4. Continued adequate funding for Early Head Start should be a federal legislative advocacy priority for New York State as an integral part of the State’s child abuse and neglect prevention programs.
5. The Nurse Family Partnership should be expanded in low-income neighborhoods as part of a broad-based child abuse and neglect prevention intervention to improve health related-outcomes and general social well being for both mothers and children.

We look forward to hearing the recommendations you make as a result of this hearing and to the changes in policy and practice that that you will initiate in the coming months. Thank you for extending to the child welfare community the opportunity for input. The resources of The Children’s Aid Society are at your disposal to assist in these developments as the process goes forward.