Today, adults who struggle with mental illness are as likely as anyone else to become parents. Yet the city's human services programs are neither structured to support single and low-income parents with mental illness who are trying to raise their children, nor able to systematically evaluate a parent's ability to care for her children despite her illness. The Winter 2009 issue of Child Welfare Watch documents issues facing parents with psychiatric problems who come in contact with the city's child welfare system.

New York City's foster care system has made significant headway in helping create family homes for young people who once would have spent months or even years in group homes and residential treatment centers. Fewer foster teens—especially younger teenagers—are placed in institutions and a fast-growing percentage are moving in with families. But city officials and nonprofit leaders face tremendous challenges in creating effective support systems, crisis teams and training programs that can help foster parents care for these children. The Summer 2008 issue of Child Welfare Watch documents how foster parents are adjusting to their increasingly demanding role, and how the system is struggling to meet their needs—as well as those of the children in their care, which may include anything from mental health care to prenatal care and parenting programs for pregnant teens.

New York City is charging a growing number of families with abuse and neglect, leaving Family Court overwhelmed and more children spending longer periods in foster care. The number of abuse and neglect filings against parents by city attorneys has leapt a remarkable 150 percent since the child abuse murder of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown in January 2006. On the two-year anniversary of her death, the Winter 2008 issue of Child Welfare Watch explores the challenges of moving the city's foster children into safe, permanent homes quickly, a decade after federal laws sought to improve foster care systems nationwide. It also looks at proposed legislation to help parents in prison and residential substance abuse treatment centers hold onto their children, as well as a city program that asks foster parents of infants to prepare to adopt as they simultaneously help the babies' parents bring their children home.

New York City's family support system is at a critical juncture. Since 2005, the city has increased its investment by more than $70 million per year in preventive family support services. But those investments have coincided with a surge in abuse and neglect reports and a 53 percent increase in the number of children placed in foster care in 2006. The Summer 2007 issue of Child Welfare Watch explores the transformation of the city's network of nonprofit family support agencies as they become increasingly central to the Bloomberg administration's strategy for protecting children from abuse and neglect. The latest issue of the Watch uncovers tensions shaping the work of family support in New York City.

There are hundreds of New York City children with developmental disabilities in foster care, and thousands more in families investigated each year by child protective services following reports of suspected abuse or neglect. But due to decades of conflict between the city and state, many of these young people and their families go without the federal- and state-funded support services—such as respite care and in-home assistance—for which they are eligible and which can make it possible for them to live healthy and more fulfilling lives. This edition of the Watch describes the impact of this longstanding interagency dispute. The report also explores new, effective advocacy efforts launched on behalf of the many foster children who rely on special education services.

This issue of Child Welfare Watch reports on the city's Family Court, the beginnings of reform and the chaotic upsurge in cases following the Nixzmary Brown murder. Even before the rapid increase in abuse and neglect cases filed since mid-January 2006, Family Court had long been an institution overwhelmed by the requirements of its mandate. It is the one place in the child welfare system where parents justifiably expect well-informed, top-quality decisions about the future of their children—but most cases take eight months to a year before reaching a fact—finding hearing where judges rule whether or not abuse or neglect has even occurred. Meanwhile, children remain in foster care. Some cases take far longer to resolve. This edition of the Watch also reports on a huge increase in 2005 in the number of juvenile delinquency arrests in NYC, a likely result of increased police activity in public schools.

This issue of Child Welfare Watch highlights some of the new initiatives that are improving parental visits for children in foster care, providing homes where families can reunify after children have been removed from the home, and creating much-needed pilot mental health clinics in foster care agencies. Perhaps most important, new efforts at preventing the placement of children in foster care have helped reduce the number of children in the system to a new low: for the first time in decades, fewer than 5,000 children were placed in New York City foster care in the fiscal year ending in June.

This report documents contradictions that have emerged as the city reduces the size of its foster care system, but struggles to boost investments in the alternative, preventive family support services that help keep families stable and together. The authors explain the changes overtaking the nonprofit foster care sector, look at the impact of the system's contraction on the city's efforts to build a neighborhood-based system, outline the impact on teens of the closure of group homes, and present recommendations and solutions for some of the most pressing problems in the foster care system.

This report documents changes in policy, practice and enforcement in the wake of the federal injunction imposed in the Nicholson v. Williams class action lawsuit. The lawsuit challenged the practice of the NYC Administration for Children's Services, in cases of suspected abuse and neglect that involve domestic violence, of too often removing children from their mothers unnecessarily and circumventing the women's due process rights.

This edition of Child Welfare Watch offers an in-depth examination of the issues facing teenagers in New York City's foster care system.

The Bloomberg administration has an opportunity to gain new trust from communities that have long held deep suspicion for City Hall and the city's child welfare authorities. New policies should build upon the strong accomplishments of recent years to establish a more permanently effective and humane child welfare and human services system. This report provides specific recommendations and proposed policy changes to form a roadmap for a sustained and ambitious child welfare reform effort.