Child Abuse and Neglect in New York City - Essay Sample

Introduction

Child abuse and neglect have become a prevalent issue in New York City in these contemporary times. It is manifested in the way parents or guardians expose children to physical injuries, inability to access basic needs or sexual abuse. Child neglect in New York entails parents or guardians abandoning their responsibilities of providing the basic needs for children such as food, shelter, clothing, education, protection and parental or guardian love (Debowska, Willmott, Boduszek & Jones, 2017). Children experiencing child abuse and neglect undergo physical and emotional torture which can lead to death or mental conditions. It is imperative to explore child abuse and neglect in New York as a critical approach for developing possible interventions for addressing it.

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Components for Child Abuse and Neglect in New York City

New York City has encountered many cases of abuse and neglect cases over recent years. In 2015, a total of 156, 994 cases of child abuse and neglect were registered in New York (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019). This manifested a rate of 15.8 per 1,000 children which marked an escalation from 2.5 % in 2014. From this figure, 95.3 % of children were neglected, 3 % encountered sexual abuse and 9.7 % were physically tortured. Further, in the same year, the child abuse and neglect resulted to 108 deaths of victimized children in New York who underwent child abuse and neglect (Debowska, Willmott, Boduszek & Jones, 2017). 2015 also recorded 20,921 children in New York who lived apart from their families in out-of-home care.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) fiscal year 2018, child abuse and neglect report indicated 19.1%. Further, CDCP noted that child abuse and neglect ushers situations such as early deaths of children, health issues, emotional, social and cognitive impairment, and adverse childhood experiences.

Possible Approach for Human Service Collaborative Response

Administration for Children's Services (ACS) is the largest government agency in New York City that works towards eradicating child abuse and neglect in New York City. It operates with other entities, for instance, the Casey Family Program through implementing their strategies to Casey Family Programs, a body responsible for child protective investigation (Finkelhor, Turner, Shattuck & Hamby 2015). In 2016, ACS requested Casey Family Program to accomplish a multidimensional evaluation and independent systematic matters in line with children's safety. Casey Family Program conducts an assessment of the comprehensive scope of Administration for Children's Services initiatives, casework practice, and strategies.

Further, Administration Children's Services provide juvenile justice, child welfare, and early childcare and education services to the children undergoing child abuse and neglect in New York City. ACS manages more than 60,000 investigations of suspected child abuse and neglect (Finkelhor et al., 2015). They then determine the services that can be offered to the alleged child abuse and neglect cases and root the home environment and family measures of the affected children. Administration for Children's Services provides foster care for children who are not able to remain safe in the abused and neglected homes. Efforts are administered to either upgrade the home through educating the people subjecting the children to abuse and neglect or find a new, safe and permanent home for the children. For these reasons, the Administration for Children 's Services embodies a protective structure for the abused and neglected children in New York City

Ethical Considerations

Administration for Children's Services is inclined to ethical operations that enhance its evaluation of child abuse and neglect in New York City. ACS uses predictive analytics to conduct its survey on claims of child abuse and neglect. This ethical consideration used by ACS involves the use of both historical data and new information to predict and find the results of cases of child abuse and neglect.

Administration for Children's Services uses predictive analytics to investigate and come up with solutions on how to manage child abuse and neglect cases in New York City. This is done through the predictive model house which involves confidential information about past cases of child abuse and neglect, and it is compared to the data of recent cases of child abuse and neglect. This model then predicts the future situations that will be related to child abuse and neglect.

According to Finkelhor et al. (2015), the predictive analytic system forecasts a possibility that a child will be exposed to abuse or neglect at some instant in the two years after the commencement of a survey. Further, predictive tools are mainly used to direct families to acquire the correct services from Administration for Children's Services or other related human service organizations. This means that predictive analytics are calculated to identify and mitigate high-risk cases of child abuse and neglect in the future.

However, many relevant agencies such as the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform criticize ACS's ethical considerations regarding the predictive analytic system. They argue that ethical concerns about predictive models are not reliable because their dependence on historical data may unintentionally undermine particular groups of the population (Fernandes, 2016). In this light, Administration for Children's Services prefers to consider ethical concerns when selecting challenges to predictive model and being critical on the data being used in the model to avoid potential biases and to alleviate possible ethical concerns (Van der Kolk, (2017).

Administration for Children's Services

Administration for Children's Services is a government agency in New York City founded to offer child welfare services to children in New York City. These services include protecting children facing child abuse and neglect, offering education and early care to children and providing juvenile justice to children.

ACS also signs contracts with other private nonprofit firms such as Casey Family Program to offer foster homes to the children who can no longer remain in their families after claims of child abuse or neglect because of the potential harm that may befall the children. In this light, the private nonprofit organization provides foster care, and there are others that offer preventive service. Preventive service work with families to mitigate cases of child abuse or neglect in New York City. Administration for Children's Services collaborates with the Casey Family Program to provide foster care for children subjected to child abuse or neglect. According to Fernandes (2016), ACS has a new review of a released five-year plan for foster care for child abuse and neglect. This is symbolic in the limitation of child abuse and neglect in New York City.

Administration of Children's Service also hires relevant sources to evaluate, survey and assess its child protective programs. In 2017, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) chose Kroll Associates Inc. to evaluate ACS (Fernandes, 2016). This was primarily to determine any institutional, viable or staffing matters negatively influencing the operation of ACS's survey of child abuse and neglect. Also, Kroll Associate's Inc. was to unfold findings and recommendation to support Administration for Children's Services to upgrade the standard of child abuse and neglect survey and provision of preventive and protective services for child abuse and neglect in New York City.

References

Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (2019, April 8). Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childabuseandneglect/index.html

Finkelhor, D., Turner, H. A., Shattuck, A., & Hamby, S. L. (2015). Prevalence of childhood exposure to violence, crime, and abuse: Results from the national survey of children's exposure to violence. JAMA Pediatrics, 169(8), 746-754. Doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2015.0676

Fernandes, G. M. (2016). Organizational climate and child welfare workers' degree of intent to leave the job: Evidence from New York. Children and Youth Services Review, 60, 80-87. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740915300980?via%3Dihub.

Debowska, A., Willmott, D., Boduszek, D., & Jones, A. D. (2017). What do we know about child abuse and neglect patterns of co-occurrence? A systematic review of profiling studies and recommendations for future research. Child Abuse & Neglect, 70, 100-111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2017.06.014.

Van der Kolk, B. A. (2017). This issue: child abuse & victimization. Psychiatric Annals, 35(5), 374-378. https://doi.org/10.3928/00485713-20050501-02.