Public Employee Press

LAYOFFS: The human toll
Layoffs tear the heart out of children’s services

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Layoffs and contracting out have plunged the Administration for Children’s Services into chaos.

“We tried to warn the agency about the problems that could occur when they laid off workers and eliminated programs,” said Faye Moore, president of Social Service Employees Union Local 371.

“We expressed our concern that a lack of planning would send the agency into chaos — and that appears to be exactly what’s happening.”

Local 371 members report that a restructuring at the agency and the related layoff of 300 workers in October is disrupting services, creating a backlog of cases and breaking off relationships between clients and ACS staff as work is farmed out.

“The children are being pushed by the wayside because it’s all about numbers now,” said Maria Santiago, Local 371’s delegate, or shop steward, at the Children’s Center at 492 1st Ave. in Manhattan.

And members are suffering hardships because the restructuring has bumped workers into lower-paying jobs and sent them to offices farther from home.

The root of the chaos at ACS is the restructuring under its Improved Outcomes for Children plan. Essentially, the agency is getting out of direct oversight work by eliminating the umbrella Office of Contract Agency Case Management and handing its work to private agencies. ACS has also downsized its family preservation program and totally eliminated the family visiting program.

Couple faces economic ruin When she joined the city workforce eight years ago, Child Welfare Specialist Vaughn Charles looked forward to a stable and rewarding career dedicated to helping children. But her dream was shattered Sept. 25 when she was among 300 members of SSEU Local 371 laid off by the Administration for Children’s Services, which is reducing its civil service ranks as it farms out work to contractors. “The justification for the layoffs that they gave us in a letter was that the agency has a financial problem,” Charles said, “but I just don’t see it. They continue to hire directors and managers, so you have to wonder what financial problems they are talking about.” Only a week after the layoffs, Charles and her family got more bad news: Her husband Patrick, a construction worker and member of the Laborers International Union, also lost his job. Now among the nation’s 16 million unemployed workers, the Charleses are deeply worried about paying their mortgage and supporting their three children, Jacquee, 22, a part-time college student, Patrick, 19, a full-time college student, and Kendra, 12. The couple lives in East Stroudsburg, Penn., an hour-and-half drive from New York City. Luckily for the family, Jacquee works part-time job directing a cerebral palsy day-care center, so she is able to help out financially. Immediately after receiving her layoff notice, Charles sent out feelers to ACS contractors and filed for New York State unemployment benefits. She is cautiously optimistic about her prospects, but she noted that the private agencies offer poorer benefit packages than the city. “When I was looking for work eight years ago, everybody said that the best thing I could do was to get a job with the city,” Charles said. “Times are changing.” — GNH

Backlogs and work overload

At the Children’s Center Office of Placement, workers expressed their concern about a slowdown in referring children to families or residential facilities. Workers from the office, which was hit by a reduction of more than a third of the staff, identified these problems:

• a backlog in placing abused children
• a work overload at the hotline caused by a reduction in staff
• greater difficulty in ensuring that siblings go to the same foster home
• insufficient oversight of the agencies managing cases formerly handled by city workers, and
• violations of procedures.
  

“You’ve got to cut corners,” said a worker concerned that the complex cases of children with disabilities or mental illnesses could be mishandled.

“You are not going to able to spend as much time on cases,” she said. An agency may reject a referral if ACS forwards the case without complete background information.

The higher workload has seriously stressed the staff. Hotline workers have called in sick.

“They are pushing us to do more with less,” said Santiago. “Morale is very bad.”

Local 371 filed a lawsuit contending that the layoffs violated civil service procedures, including seniority rights.

Teenage moms left in a lurch

The firings have gutted the Teenage Services Act Program and pulled the rug out from under the young mothers who relied on the services.

After axing half of the workers in the program that helps teenage mothers, the agency closed its borough offices and sent the workers to ACS headquarters at 150 Williams St. in Manhattan.

Local 371 members used to oversee the entire program. They signed up expectant mothers, mediated family conflicts, helped with paperwork to secure Medicaid and public assistance, counseled the young women and sometimes even accompanied them to give birth in the hospital.

Because the agency decided to farm out case management, the city employees are restricted to intake work. The restructuring has severed relationships between city workers and the teenage mothers, who now must begin anew with counselors at private agencies.

Some of the five private agencies that will handle case management lack expertise in counseling teen mothers, said Local 371 members, while workers with extensive experience helping the needy teens are frustrated in their current paper-pushing assignments.

“It takes a lot of time and effort to establish trust,” said a Local 371 member who asked not to be identified for fear of being disciplined for going public with his concerns. “Now you’re telling the teenage mothers they have to start all over with someone they don’t know at an agency they don’t know.”

“All of this happened unexpectedly,” said Local 371’s Eulyn Damon. “My teens are on my cell phone asking, ‘Why can’t you continue to help me?’ This is really going to lead to a loss of kids.”

Carla Elboustani, 16, who has a 9-month-old son, Jayden Torrulla, said a private agency had called to schedule an appointment with her. But she said she regretted losing her relationship with Damon.

“I worked with Miss Damon for almost a year,” said Elboustani, who lives with her parents in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn.

“When I was pregnant, she helped me and my boyfriend with my parents. She’d give me milk and diapers for the baby. We had meetings and we used to discuss a lot of things,” Elboustani said. “This is really bad.”