Office of Children and Family Services

NY Gov. Kathy Hochul's proposed budget includes serving more than 113,000 additional kids through subsidized child care programs.

New York county leaders say there are too few secure detention facilities for teens awaiting trial, but greater capacity could be years away.

In child welfare, host homes can be a community-based solution to address families who need help with their children, writes BJ Walker. 

The state conducted 26 COVID tests in 9 juvenile detention facilities in first 6 months of pandemic, according to records obtained by The Imprint.

In a sign of the nation’s rapid rethinking of the justice system prompted by protests against racism and police brutality, dozens of elected prosecutors, corrections officials and probation chiefs have called for all youth prisons to be shut down.

Following the horrific death of a 16-year-old foster youth in a Michigan residential treatment facility – who died of cardiac arrest after staff pinned him on the ground and constricted his breathing – New York advocates are calling for the state to bar face-down restraints in facilities for the highest-needs children, calling the practice “dangerous” and “barbaric.”  

When she turned 21 last year, seven years after entering foster care in New York City, Jeanette Rivera suddenly found herself fending for herself — and her three young children.  “They didn’t wait to make sure that I was ready to be on my own, they didn’t make sure I had food, that my bills were paid or that I even understood how to pay my portion of my rent,” Rivera said.

After nearly two months of shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic, much of New York state began reopening in the last week, with the exception of hard-hit New York City, Long Island and the Lower Hudson counties.