ARCHIVES OF THE MAYOR'S WEEKLY COLUMN Archives of Rudolph W. Giuliani

City's New Children's Center a Monument to Caring

On November 16th, we will be holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Manhattan for the new Administration for Children's Services (ACS) Children's Center, the first building in New York City's history specifically designed to serve children entering the foster care system.

The Center, which also features a state-of-the-art child welfare training and education facility, is the physical manifestation of the City's commitment to reforming the child welfare system. That reform began in January 1996 when I established ACS as the first City agency solely dedicated to ensuring the safety and well-being of the children of New York. Since then, my Administration has made ACS' reforms and the creation of the Center a top priority.

These days, people from all over the country visit ACS to find out how they should run their children's services agencies. Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta has upgraded training and education, raised standards and salaries for child protective managers and workers, and introduced accountability to the system. And we are seeing results.

ACS completed a record-breaking 18,400 adoptions over the last five years. New York's foster care population of 32,000 is the lowest since 1988. In addition, the City collected $404 million in child support payments in Fiscal Year 2000, an increase of nearly $52 million over FY 1999, and the largest amount of child support ever collected by the City. And according to the 1999 "Accountability Review Panel Report" released last month, child fatalities in families "known" to ACS dropped by 36%, the lowest total since 1983.

To create the ACS Children's Center, the City committed $67 million toward renovating part of the Bellevue Hospital complex on the East Side that had been vacant for nearly two decades. The result is a building of great beauty that will serve children and families for decades to come. The architect Richard Dattner, who designed the renovation, was the recipient of the Excellence in Design Award from the City's Art Commission last year.

The Center will serve two purposes: providing protective services for children, and training for child welfare staff. And the Center will be staffed around the clock. During evenings and weekends, the Emergency Children's Services staff will respond to and investigate reports of child maltreatment, and Placement and Evaluation Services staff will work in the reception center -- often the first place children are taken after being removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect.

Children will find reception offices and play areas that were carefully designed just for them, to help reduce the trauma of entering foster care. Everything from the lighting scheme and colors to the fabrics and furniture style and size was selected with the purpose of creating a soothing and safe environment.

The Satterwhite Academy, occupying the top three floors of the six-story Center, will provide training for all ACS staff and implement research projects that will strengthen services for children. In addition to multi-use classrooms, the Academy will have a resource library and the ability to produce its own video- and print-training materials. With these expanded resources, the Academy has the potential for being a national center for child welfare training and research.

The ACS Children's Center stands as a monument to the City's determination to make the safety and well-being of children our top priority. It also symbolizes Commissioner Scoppetta's efforts to implement meaningful reform for a new era of service and care for our youngest and most vulnerable New Yorkers.