After Mayor Mamdani passed over their top choice to lead the city’s child welfare system, New York parents whose lives were upended by foster care want answers on how he plans to help keep Black families together.
For decades, Black parents have accused the Administration for Children’s Services of being biased against them, pointing to the disproportionate rate at which their families interact with the agency. Nearly half of the city’s Black children will be investigated by child protective services before they turn 18, according to data in the Columbia Journal of Race and Law.
In Mamdani, some of those parents hoped they had found an ally in the progressive, relative political newcomer, who promised a “new day” for the city.
Their optimism was reenforced this year when Angela Burton, an attorney and influential voice in the push to abolish the child welfare system, was shortlisted for ACS commissioner. But as her subversive positions drew headlines, Mamdani removed Burton from consideration, angering parents who thought sweeping change was needed.
On Tuesday, the mayor appointed Rebecca Jones Gaston, a seasoned child welfare official whose résumé extends from former President Joe Biden’s administration to working as a rank-and-file caseworker. While she is not from the ranks of the city’s child welfare system and her priorities have not yet been revealed, Jones Gaston has called for a more balanced approach to reforming child protective services.
During a news conference Friday with Burton in attendance, which was scheduled before Mamdani tapped Jones Gaston but after Burton was off the shortlist, advocates who have been impacted by the child welfare system as parents or children said Mamdani needs to do more to address allegations of anti-Black racism in ACS.
For starters, advocates are pushing for the creation of an Office of Family Well-Being outside of ACS, leaving the job of responding to child abuse or neglect allegations to the existing welfare agency, while moving family support services under a different umbrella.
“The first thing I want is for them to do only what they are mandated to do,” said Joyce McMillan, executive director of JMACforFamilies, who temporarily lost custody of her now-adult children before starting her nonprofit organization. “We don’t want services from them. We don’t trust them.”
“It is one step toward shifting resources and money out of the system of quote, unquote ‘child protection,’ out of ACS, and into a dedicated space within government, which will be looking at resources and funding and support through a family well-being lens,” Burton said.
ACS and the Mayor’s Office did not immediately comment. While Jones Gaston has not started as commissioner yet, prior interviews suggest she could at least be open to the idea of dividing responsibilities.
“We have got to stop thinking that the child welfare agency is the holder of all the solutions for all the challenges kids and families experience,” she told the podcast WonkCast. “Then you have a child welfare agency responding to the specific issues that need an intervention around abuse, and not just the issues that are very much connected to the experience and impact of poverty.”
“We in child welfare have kind of said historically, ‘Send all kids to us,’” she said in a separate interview with the child welfare news source The Imprint. “We should actually get really good at what we’re supposed to be doing, and that is responding to abuse and neglect when there needs to be an intervention.”
Two other things may help Jones Gaston make inroads with the parent advocacy community. One, Jones Gaston, who is Black, is a former foster youth who was adopted as a young child by a white family and speaks about how her personal experience informs her work.
The second is that Jones Gaston is seemingly an outsider to the city’s child welfare system.
“I’m grateful that they did not hire someone from within the ranks of ACS,” McMillan, who met with Mamdani’s hiring committee before his ACS commissioner appointment, said at the news conference.
Tanesha Grant, executive director of Parents Supporting Parents, who also was adopted as a child, said she felt “overlooked” by the mayor when he passed over Burton. Grant supported Mamdani’s campaign by helping him reach out to Black voters, a demographic group that he struggled with during the primary.
“I recall the enthusiasm I felt in supporting our current mayor during his campaign. I organized for him to speak at my church, and encouraged many Black individuals to consider voting for him,” said Grant, who wished she’d had more of a voice in Mamdani’s commissioner hiring process.
“Our experience,” she said, “holds way more weight than people who have worked in this system for decades and have kept it anti-Black.”