Council Member Epstein Questions Outreach for Vacant Prevention Slots
Council Member Harvey Epstein asks about ACS's commitment to conducting outreach in communities to ensure vacant prevention slots are filled before cutting program capacity.
Councilmember Epstein, followed by Councilmember Ressler.
Is he here?
He's somewhere.
Okay.
We can go get him if you want.
But uh Commissioner, welcome.
Um, thank you.
Uh uh just uh disclose I was uh foster care worker back in the day, so I appreciate your commitment to this issue.
I do want to focus on the prevention.
Uh you know, as someone who worked in foster care, you know, we're hearing a lot of about the spaces uh you know v vacant slots in prevention, but I want to talk about maybe the the need to do additional outreach to prevent that that to happen.
And maybe there's slots that are vacant is maybe related to the agency not doing enough a good enough job doing the outreach in communities to get people into those services.
I'm wondering, obviously you're new into this, kind of what commitment you're gonna make to ensure that there's outreach into our community to make sure people get know about those prevention services so they can get into those slots.
Great.
Thank you for the question and the welcome.
Yeah, as I am getting my feet underneath me and um uh uh learning all the acronyms.
Um I one of the things I'm committed to is looking at all of the programs and processes that we have and really um find ways that we can continue to improve and outreach and how people know about what's available and our relationships with providers and community are really really critical to that.
Yeah, I I would encourage you to do that and to to work with us uh to ensure that happens because I do worry that when you reduce prevention slots, then we will, you know, obviously we've heard a lot about this, the the negative impact that it'll have on families and you know the cost that'll you know obviously the human cost to the city and well the human cost to those families who aren't getting the support that they need to to prevent bad things to happen to their families.
Absolutely, and I look forward to working with uh sister agencies also um as collectively thinking about how are we serving kids and families as a whole.