Audit Report on the Investigation of Child Abuse and Maltreatment Allegations Received by the Administration for Children’s Services

AUDIT REPORT IN BRIEF

The Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) was created in 1996 to ensure the safety and well-being of New York City children and to strengthen families. The ACS Division of Child Protection (DCP) is responsible for protecting all children who are abused or neglected and for ensuring that the appropriate services are provided to them and their families. The Child Protective Services Borough Offices (borough offices) within DCP are in charge of investigating an average of 55,000 reports of alleged child abuse each year. A Child Protective Services investigation must be initiated within 24 hours of the receipt of a report.

The reports of alleged child abuse are entered in CONNECTIONS (CNNX), a child welfare computer system developed and maintained by New York State.  CNNX allows for the documentation of information about families and children, including the investigation of alleged child abuse. The objective of this audit was to determine whether ACS ensures that investigations of child abuse and maltreatment reports are conducted in accordance with established guidelines and regulations. This audit focused solely on the investigative process performed by DCP and did not test any aspects of preventive or foster care services provided by ACS or its contracted agencies subsequent to those investigations.

Audit Findings and Conclusions

ACS generally ensured that investigations of child abuse and maltreatment reports were conducted in accordance with established guidelines and regulations. We found for our sampled investigations of child abuse reports that case workers made face-to-face contact with the children involved in the allegations of child abuse within the required time frames and that they completed the Safety Assessments, the Risk Assessment Profile (RAP), and the Investigation Conclusion Narratives on a timely basis. Unit supervisors conducted the required pre-investigation conferences with the case workers and performed the necessary case reviews. In addition, the investigations of the sampled reports were properly approved.

However, our review of the progress notes of the sampled investigations showed that case workers were not always making timely entries in CNNX of the various investigative activities performed. The delayed recording of these events increases the risk that case workers may enter inaccurate or incomplete information.  It also interferes with the supervisors’ ability to adequately oversee the investigations and offer meaningful directives in a timely manner. In addition, we found that ACS Child Protective Managers (CPMs) were inconsistent in the performance of random managerial reviews.  These managerial reviews are of particular importance, since CPMs are not required to give final approvals for the closing of investigations (except for cases coded 1 and 13) and may not otherwise be familiar with how they are handled.  Accordingly, failure to perform all of the required reviews increases the risk that some investigations may not be handled in accordance with established guidelines, and that such occurrences may go undetected.

Audit Recommendations

To address these issues, we recommend that ACS should:

• Ensure that case workers document entries into CNNX on a timely basis.
• Continue to provide case workers with periods of time dedicated to entering into CNNX their investigative activities.
• Ensure that Deputy Directors follow up with CPMs to make certain that all random reviews are performed and completed in a timely manner.

ACS officials agreed with the audit’s three recommendations.