OP-ED: NYC’s next mayor must reform our child welfare system

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She was 11 years old when the State took custody of her. They said it was for her protection. Today, at 15, she has given birth to two children — both while under the supervision of Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) — the very agency tasked with keeping her safe. And she’s only a decade older than her firstborn. If this sounds like the kind of tragedy that should spark public outrage, that’s because it is. It’s a systemic failure, negligence at the hands of city officials bankrolled by New York City taxpayers. But for many families across our city, especially Black and Brown families living in poverty, stories like this are all too common and yet equally ignored. Despite the benefits of kinship care, including better outcomes in adulthood for children, of the 6,728 children living in foster care in 2023, only 44% were placed with kin.

Now, as the city looks toward the next mayoral race, we must ask every candidate: what will you do to reform a child welfare system that’s become complicit in the exploitation and abandonment of the children it claims to serve?

ACS is charged with one of society’s most sacred duties: protecting our children. But often, it becomes a pipeline to deeper trauma, rather than stability. In this case, this 15-year-old child was trafficked while living in a city shelter. She ran from an ACS-approved group home — only to be exploited, neglected, and ultimately abandoned by the bureaucracy that should have wrapped her in care and protection. And through it all, her mother begged for help, filed complaints, made calls, and pleaded for someone, anyone, to intervene.

No one did.

The child’s assigned advocate tried every network she could access: sending emails, digging through old contacts, and reaching out to every possible lead. But no one called back. No replies came. Now, her mother is entangled in red tape, trying to gain custody of her second grandchild, while already raising the first. She didn’t ask to become a full-time parent a second time over. But she stepped up, after the agency punished her financial insecurity by seizing the daughter she was working to raise. Her household has become the refuge ACS should have been. It is time to hold the system accountable. Not just ACS, but every agency, every official, and every policy that allowed this to happen. We can’t spare the child welfare system from scrutiny for another campaign season.

More than 146,000 NYC public school students are experiencing homelessness, a number that only accounts for students actively enrolled. In reality, it means there’s an undisclosed number of children, somewhere in the hundreds of thousands, that ACS could technically make the case to place in foster care. But plucking children from parents who simply lack resources — not affection, patience, or a sense of duty — just isn’t a remedy. And families like this one can’t afford more silence. Had our city offered deeper, sustained services to help them find stable housing in the first place, this 15-year-old might have still been in classes, learning and growing with her peers, confident in the safety and comfort of her family’s home.

Real child welfare means investment in housing, mental health care, family therapy, and community-based support. It means shifting funding away from unnecessary family surveillance and overcrowded, poorly-run shelters, toward real, preventative support and evidence-based practices. It means transparency and accountability at ACS –– not just after harm has occurred, but before it does. And, it means listening to families, not labeling them “unfit” because they’re in crisis or low-income. 

We need mayoral candidates who aren’t afraid to speak up about this, and more importantly, who are willing to act. To be clear: this is both a racial and gender justice issue. Candidates often talk about “public safety” and “the future of our children,” but none of that means anything if, while in office, they continue to enable a system that removes children from loving homes, only to place them in unsafe conditions with no real path toward healing or justice. Every New Yorker should be asking those in the running: will you commit to dismantling policies that punish poverty? Will you invest in solutions that keep families safe and united? Will you support community-driven reform, not top-down fixes that ignore the people most affected? Because until they do, families will continue to experience this trauma. Children will continue to land in shelters filled to capacity, only to age out of the system with deeper, more complex pain to untangle.

The next Mayor can’t just dodge this issue. They must confront, name, and promise to change it. 
Rhonda Jackson is a lived experience community engagement consultant and Senior Fellow with the Family Homeless Coalition.