ALBANY — The state’s top child welfare agency is doing a poor job overseeing foster care providers in New York, according to an audit made public Friday.
State Controller Thomas DiNapoli’s report blasted the Office of Children and Family Services for failing to ensure that local governments and volunteer agencies provide foster care that meets state requirements.
“The agency is not ensuring that caseworkers are making timely and frequent contact with children, their parents and their foster parents,” DiNapoli said. “While the demands on the agency are significant, oversight needs to be improved.”
DiNapoli’s auditors reviewed a sample of 150 cases from a group of upstate and suburban counties and found that in 33 instances there was no record of caseworkers making the required two visitations within 30 days of a child’s placement.
In one instance, a foster child in Schenectady County did not receive a visit from a caseworker until 91 days after placement.
DiNapoli’s auditors also found instances where there was no evidence that foster care providers had been properly certified or that criminal background checks had been conducted on foster care providers or others who come in contact with the children.
The failure to ensure certification increased the risk that children would be placed in an “unacceptable environment,” the audit stated.
In a blistering statement, OCFS officials rejected DiNapoli’s findings.
“This audit contains fundamental and egregious errors in the interpretation of state regulations,” the agency said in a statement. “The OSC ignored voluminous documentation provided by OCFS refuting the accuracy of its findings. The audit is factually incorrect and cannot be responsibly viewed as reliable in assessing OCFS’s performance in its oversight of New York State’s foster care program, which currently helps 16,000 children whose parents are unable to care for them.”
