Child Welfare

The child welfare system is a group of services designed to promote the well-being of children by ensuring safety, achieving permanency, and strengthening families to successfully care for their children. The child welfare system provides a variety of services such as:

Preventive services to build stability in families at risk of entering the child welfare system
Foster care services to keep children in safe, nurturing environments in times of crisis
Group home and residential care services for children in need of specialized care and attention

Recent Advocacy:

FPWA is actively advocating for a Foster Care Higher Education Scholarship (FCHES) to help bridge the cost for Foster Care youth to attend post-secondary school.

To learn more about this exciting pilot, please see the Overview.

Are you a foster care youth who is struggling or struggled to pay for school? Do you want to share your story to help support the FCHES? Click to share your story.

Recent Publications:

Policy Matters: Analysis of Projected General Preventive Slots
December 2009 I Policy Matters-projected loss of general preventive slots pdf (61735 bytes)

Recommendations:

Provide families in need with preventive services that strengthen the family structure and keep children safely at home when possible.
Ensure that all children who enter the child welfare system are treated with care and moved quickly and efficiently towards permanency.
Recognize the valuable role of foster care and preventive services agencies and assist them in providing high-quality services to families, including measures that support improved service delivery and promote the child welfare workforce.
Address the needs of youth aging out of the foster care system with services that help them in transitioning into adulthood.

Portfolio Expert: Nicole Lavan, PhD

Fact Sheet: Key Facts on Child Welfare pdf (28587 bytes)

GET INVOLVED:

Help preserve vital funding for child welfare services.

Did You Know?

*Statewide, there were approximately 157,407 reports of child abuse and/or neglect made to the Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment.

*Approximately 32,000 children received preventive services from non-profit service providers under contract with New York City in 2009.

*There are about 16,500 children in foster care through 38 foster care agencies in New York City. The number of youth in foster care has continued to decline recently, as there were 28,215 youth in foster care in 2002 compared to 16,500 in 2009, a 40% decrease.

Where We Stand

FPWA believes that every child has the right to a permanent home and a stable environment, and that supporting and protecting the family structure is critical to ensuring that these rights are preserved. It should be the goal of the child welfare system in New York to strengthen and support the child’s existing family (biological, adoptive and/or extended), and to create new families for children where necessary and appropriate.
{Link to full Policy Statement in the folder}

Strategic Collaborations

The Preventive Services Action Network (PSAN): FPWA is a central part of PSAN, an alliance of non-profit advocacy and membership-based organizations dedicated to improving the quality of, and increasing access to, neighborhood-based preventive services in New York City.

Click here for a list of additional collaborations.