Sheila Poole

Three leading firms that represent children in New York City and Buffalo have filed a lawsuit seeking to halt "extrajudicial" host home programs from operating.

Amid an uptick in crime in recent years, some New York lawmakers are calling to roll back Raise the Age laws that keep teens out of adult prisons.

The New York state child welfare agency has approved regulations authorizing families in times of crisis to place their children with “host family homes.”

On Aug. 5, Commissioner Sheila Poole of the Office of Children and Family Services emailed her staff condemning Cuomo’s actions, but stopped short of calling for his resignation.

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

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.

A statehouse hearing on child welfare last week began with Brooklyn Assembly member Latrice Walker (D) comparing the Trump administration’s family separation policies at the nation’s border to New York’s foster care practices.