Councilmember Epstein questions prevention outreach and Children's Center services

Okay, great.

Councilmember Epstein, followed by Councilmember Ressler, is he here?

He's somewhere.

Okay.

We can go get him if you want.

But Commissioner, welcome.

Thank you.

Just to disclose, I was a foster care worker back in the day, so I appreciate your commitment to this issue.

I do want to focus on the prevention.

You know, as someone who worked in foster care,

You know, we're hearing a lot about the spaces, you know, vacant slots in prevention, but I want to talk about maybe the need to do additional outreach to prevent that to happen.

And maybe there's slots that are vacant is maybe related to the agency not doing 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 are you going to make to ensure that there's outreach into our community to make sure people know about those preventive 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 learning all the acronyms,

One of the things I'm committed to is looking at all of the programs and processes that we have.

have and really 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 would encourage you to do that and to work with us to ensure that happens because I do worry.

Then when you reduce prevention slots, then we will, you know, obviously we've heard a lot about this, the negative impact that it will have on families and, you know, the cost that it will, you know, obviously

the human cost to the city as well as the human cost to those families who aren't getting the support that they need to prevent bad things that happen to their families.

Absolutely.

And I look forward to working with sister agencies also as collectively thinking about how are we serving kids and families as a whole.

Yeah, I want to flag the Children's Center for you because this has been something, you know, before I came to this lovely body, I was an assembly member for eight years and dealt with lots of issues there and

insufficient programming and services available to the young people who are, some people are cycling in in a day, but some people are there for months on end.

And I'm wondering what the plan is to ensure that the young people who are there are getting the support that they need while they're at the Children's Center.

I'm learning.

And one of the things I know is I agree with you.

We absolutely, if children are

In our care, we have a responsibility to make sure that we're meeting their needs.

And working with Deputy, First Deputy Commissioner, I'm getting titles right, First Deputy Commissioner Saunders, who isn't here today, but with

understanding kind of what's happening at the Children's Center, where our needs are, and where there's opportunity for improvement.

Ultimately,

I would love that there's less and less need and utilization of the Children's Center

and that we have the ability to both keep children at home with their families and meet their needs, utilize kinship placements, identify

family home placements outside of having to use the Children's Center, but the quality of care is critical as well.

I'm going to turn it over to Deputy Commissioner Mendez if she has anything else to add.

So just to piggyback on your question regarding services, I won't go into detail.

We can definitely share, but there's a lot of robust service, mental health and well-being services.

JCCA provides mental health support, Children's Villages working with us on our youth that may be trafficked.

We have different organizations providing mentorship program.

We have an eight staff.

ACS staff mental health team that's based in the Children's Center.

So there's a lot of programming that Commissioner Jones-Gaston mentioned that First Deputy Commissioner Wynette Saunders introduced.

I'm happy to report today there are 39 young people at the Children's Center, and we have brought down considerable...

the length of time children stay there.

There are some, yes, that stay older, our teens, but we're working with our foster care providers and also working with their families to see if they can safely be returned home.

So we've made a lot of strides.

I could go on, but...

Yeah, I'm happy to talk offline about that more because it's something that we've seen as an ongoing concern and problem.

Yes, and we work very closely with the 13% in the community district in that area on a regular basis.

So I think those partnerships and the commitment, while we don't want children staying at their children a long time while they are there, we want them to be supported and have their needs met.

I just wanted to add that First Deputy Commissioner Winnett Saunders really wanted to be here today and unfortunately had a medical appointment she couldn't change.

And so I just wanted to put that out for the record because I know she really would have wanted to share updated information about the Children's Center with you.

As you know, we've both been longstanding members of the Children's Center and Community Advisory Board, and I'd be happy to set up a time for the three of us to meet so we can update you more fully.

Four of us, sorry.

Thank you.