The event, titled “A Conversation About the Well-Being of America’s Children,” included the presentation of distinguished chair medals by Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

“Thank you for dedicating your lives to the protection and the cultivation of hope in the hearts of children, especially children who have been forced by circumstance to live at the margins of society,” he said.

In a short talk following her induction, Gatenio Gabel thanked the Quaranta family for funding the chair honoring Mary Ann Quaranta, D.S.W., who died in 2009. Quaranta, a graduate of the GSS class of 1950, would go on to serve as dean of the school from 1975 to 2000, taking it from a small local school to one that ranked eleventh in the nation. She also established the school’s doctoral program. Like Dumpson, she was named a Social Work Pioneer by the National Association of Social Workers.

Gatenio Gabel has served as a consultant to UNICEF, UNESCO, and U.N. member countries on child poverty, advocacy, and protection. She’s twice been awarded Fulbright Scholarships to study child and family policies.

Her talk detailed how racial inequities have become embedded into the American child welfare system. She said that in the early part of the 20th century, social work pioneers identified potential harm that could come to children and pushed for laws on child labor, welfare, schooling, and a juvenile justice system—all of which ignored class and race disparities.

“Many scholars have questioned whether the reformers were acting in the best interest of children, or whether the intent was to extend governmental control over children of the poor,” she said.

She noted that the 1980s was the last time white children were in the majority; by 2040, she said, they will comprise 43% of the child population. Black children are three times more likely to live in deep poverty than white children, and Hispanic children are 2.5 times more likely to live in low-income households. Yet child welfare, health care, and educational systems continue to harken back to the turn of the last century when race was not a consideration.

“Our cries for justice for children today rest on our ability to build new anti-racist systems in social services, education, law, health, and law enforcement.  Only when new systems are implemented will we be able to bring justice to all children in this country,” she said.

Following her induction, Williams-Isom noted that her chair’s namesake, James Dumpson, Ph.D., was an educator before he became New York City’s first Black welfare commissioner, and, later, dean of GSS, a position he held from 1967 to 1974.

“Social work and education are brother-sister professions,” said Williams Isom, who served as CEO of the anti-poverty organization Harlem Children’s Zone from 2014 to 2020. There, she oversaw all programs in the cradle-through-college pipeline to improve services and outcomes for 25,000 children and parents in Central Harlem. She agrees with Gatenio Gabel that the child welfare system needs a complete overhaul.

“There are 12 million children living in poverty today, making them the poorest age group in America,” she said, emphasizing that overall 32% of Black children and 23% of Hispanic children live in poverty. “And 320,000 children have been pushed into or near poverty due to the pandemic’s economic downturn.”

“I think that Dr. Dumpson would have been calling for us to reimagine literally everything that has been done before because it has not been working for so many children in our nation,” she said. “Many of the systems that serve Black and brown children are imbedded with systemic racism and so they can never achieve the outcomes that we seek.”

She said that while the pandemic may have shocked some about the inequities it exposed, people in affected communities weren’t surprised. Yet, she said that much could be possible in the post-pandemic world.

“We have agency and we have choices,” she said.

She said that the necessary changes will take what journalist Isabel Wilkerson calls “radical empathy.”

“Radical empathy is not about you and what you think about a situation that you have never been in and probably never will be in,” she said. “It is a kindred connection from a place of deep knowing that opens your spirit to the pain of another as they perceive it,” she said.

Taking on that perspective will allow policymakers, social work practitioners, and public and nonprofit leaders, as well as faculty at universities, to understand that child welfare systems need drastic change—even at the institutions they serve.

“We must finally admit that these systems were not designed with abundance in mind, they were not designed for people that we love and respect,” she said. “They’re designed as if resources were scarce and we just have to tolerate black and brown bodies.”

“Our frontline staff are the direct heroes in this work during the pandemic,” said Denise Hinds, assistant executive director of Good Shepherd Services, a social service agency. “They have been the heroes for us, they have been the heroes for our children, our youth, and our families.”

Hinds joined other leaders in the New York City child welfare industry on August 12 for a virtual discussion titled “The Current and Future Impact of COVID-19 on Child Welfare in NYC,” which was organized by Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service (GSS).

Shirley Gatenio Gabel, holder of the Quaranta Chair for Justice for Children at GSS, said that the goal of the of webinar was to understand how children and families who are a part of New York City’s child welfare system were receiving help during this time, and discuss new challenges and needs that have arisen. Children and families in the child welfare system are among those hit hardest by this pandemic, said Gabel, who served as moderator.

“The coronavirus pandemic has affected us all yet it has disproportionately hit hardest on those who were marginalized and vulnerable before the pandemic,” she said.

That’s one of the reasons why Gabel asked the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) for the impact of drops in cases and referrals for preventative services. According to data from the New York statewide central register, intakes in April 2019 were 5,037 compared to just 2,292 in April 2020. Referrals to preventative services went from 1,299 in April 2019 to just 887 in April 2020, according to the data.

A Concerning Drop in Referrals

“Reports of cases to be investigated are significantly down from last year and referrals to preventive services are down from last year—the question is can we assume that this is good news or cause for concern?” she asked.

David Hansell, New York City commissioner of the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) said that cases dropped abruptly at the start because many of the usual people who referred children were no longer seeing them regularly at school.

“The chart showed that in mid-March, at the very beginning of the pandemic in New York City, and right after the schools closed, we did see a very significant drop,” he said. “The month of April the number of reports dropped by 50%. That’s not entirely surprising, because in routine times, about a quarter of our reports come from school personnel. Others come from other providers who stopped seeing children in the early days of the pandemic.”
Still, Hansell said that the numbers of referrals has been slowly going back up to normal with community members, friends, and family stepping up when a child is in need.

“The number of reports we’re getting is almost back to the typical level we’d be getting during a summer month,” he said. “That suggests that community members and family and friends were really stepping up and providing good oversight of kids and making sure they were safe.”

Throughout the pandemic, case workers and social workers were often still seeing children and families in-person through home visits and at other meetings, such as children in foster care meeting with their biological families, particularly for those most in need.

Continuing to Serve Vulnerable Families

“We know that the critical work that we do on the ground for our children, youth, and families—we knew we needed people on the ground,” Hinds said.

She and Bill Baccaglini, president and CEO of New York Foundling, credited ACS with providing guidance, funding, and personal protective equipment for those who had to continue to work in the fields during this time.

Raysa Rodriguez, associate executive director at the New York Citizens’ Committee for Children, said that it’s going to take a lot in the long run to help stabilize some of these families who have been dramatically affected by the pandemic.

“The truth is that all the families we were worried about and fighting for pre-COVID … all of these communities are exactly the communities that have been hardest hit by COVID,” she said, citing particularly those that experience housing instability, overcrowding, and limited access to health care. “(We’ve seen an) incredible amount of loss—loss of life, loss of income—we don’t fully know the extent. When I think about what it takes to keep children safe, the reality is that it’s pretty simple, it’s stable families.”

New Telecare Skills

Baccaglini said one glimmer of hope he thinks the system should take out of this is the skills social workers learned in providing telehealth and telecare services.

“Coming out of this, I think if we don’t take the opportunity to fully examine how telecare, not just telehealth, fits in our system, we’re doing a real injustice to the kids and families we serve,” he said. “It’s not a home visit or a Zoom meeting—I’m talking about how this fits into the continuum of care. I am convinced that this will, going forward, play a critical role.”