Many vulnerable young people in New York City are falling between the cracks in government systems.
Who decides what’s best for children? These days, many people believe that the government should, to the extent possible, stay out of it. But what happens when parents are harming each other and/or the children? What is the government’s role then?
Policymakers thinking about this question tend to focus on child protective services, or the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) as it is called in New York City. ACS’s actions — or lack of action — make headlines, drive debate and frustrate advocates. But the overwhelming majority of children in New York City who are experiencing violence at home are not in ACS custody or even under ACS supervision. They often do have cases being heard before judges in Family Court, however — because one parent, a grandparent, or another relative has filed custody, visitation, guardianship or order of protection cases. In these scenarios, judges are being asked by the family itself to help stop the violence.
Unfortunately, many of these families fall through the cracks when it comes to accessing services. Children in ACS custody and their parents get government assistance — but families with histories of domestic violence that have never been under ACS’s watch are effectively forgotten, even when kids are in desperate need of help. That’s a huge blind spot that needs to be addressed.
As I saw firsthand when I was on the bench, once a case reaches Family Court, it is rarely easy to figure out what is best. Families are often marked by histories of intergenerational trauma, racial bias, abuse, mental health issues, substance use, economic hardship and more. In the middle of these cases, there are children who — because of their age, a lack of resources, family conflict or all of the above — may not have a voice or a choice in the matters that affect them the most.
For families entangled with ACS, there are well-established rules and procedures intended to ensure that kids get the help they need. But when ACS is not involved, it is up to the litigants to decide what to put in the paperwork that the Court sees. Frequently, these litigants, most of whom don’t have lawyers, focus on violence between the adults and issues around “fair” parenting. Judges may not even know whether a child has been hit or witnessed violence — the adults filing out the paperwork are doing so based on their own perspective, not what the children have experienced. The Court’s forms don’t help in this regard: court statistics don’t track allegations of violence towards children in custody or order of protection cases. It is difficult to address what we don’t even see.
Many parents simply won’t take advantage of services if they think that ACS is lurking around the corner.
The Children’s Law Center, the organization I now lead, has been working on trying to figure out the scale of the problem. Conservatively, based on triangulating sources, we estimate that between a third and a half of all the children whose fates are being decided in Family court custody, visitation and guardianship cases come from families that have experienced domestic violence. There were over 150,000 of these filings in New York City Family Court in 2024, so that is a lot of children.
Until just 25 years ago, children could be removed from their own home just for witnessing a parent experience domestic violence. In the seminal case of Nicholson v. Scoppetta, the New York Court of Appeals set an important new standard. It said kids should not be removed from a home just because their parent has been a victim of domestic violence. It may seem obvious that a parent does not become unfit just because they were a victim of violence, but it required litigation to set the standard.
After Nicholson, the City generally stopped charging the protective parent — meaning the one who tried to shield his or her child from the abuser — with neglect. But children who remained with their non-abusive parent during a domestic violence case were considered effectively under the control of the Administration for Children’s Services and subject to intrusive home visits and the risk of being removed.
Thanks to two recent appellate decisions, A.R. v. ACS and Sapphire W., ACS is no longer automatically able to put children who are exposed to domestic violence under its supervision. Generally, ACS’s rationale for supervising the home was to make sure the abuser didn’t come back. But children under ACS supervision often feel unsafe in a different way. They want to be with the family they know and love. It is very rare for children to want to go into foster care.
The Appellate Court rulings are therefore an important step in recognizing children’s rights to self-determination and family integrity. But ironically, these decisions may mean that children and their parents are less able to access services. Remaining at home in the care of a parent is only one basic priority when it comes to court proceedings. Another is to try to prevent more exposure to violence and provide access to vital programs and services — from therapy to supervised visitation to legal counsel — to support the children’s well-being.
Right now, most services for children exposed to domestic violence remain tied up in systems connected to ACS. This produces a strange distortion: Children and parents who are actively under supervision of the child protective agency or are in foster care are able to access a lot more services than other kids who experience violence at home. So, for example, kids not under ACS supervision rarely have a safe place to see a parent. In practical terms, this means that kids may not see their other parent for six months or a year while they wait for services. They don’t get access to counseling or housing support or childcare vouchers. Nor do they have a right to an attorney. Those services should be available to all kids who have been exposed to violence in the home. Kids shouldn’t have to be subject to ACS supervision to get the help they need to be safe and maintain relationships with both parents.
The Children’s Law Center recently released a report that documents the experience of children who are outside the child protective system but exposed to violence in the home. Our analysis suggests that fewer than a third of children exposed to domestic violence in Family Court were connected to any therapeutic or social services at all.
ACS not long ago issued a strategic plan that aims to increase access to services for families that are not subject to official ACS supervision. The problem is that many families are understandably reluctant to get services from the very agency that has the power to remove a child from the home.
At the Children’s Law Center, we represent more than 5,000 children each year. That includes a client we’ll call Jennie, who recently told us that she was being sexually abused by two men living in her father’s apartment. Luckily, the judge in her case assigned an attorney for her and we were able to get her to a safe place without involving ACS. But finding services for her or a program to help her dad? That was much harder to do. Stopping the violence is critical but preventing further harm is also essential.
As someone who has worked in family justice for over 30 years — and as someone who grew up in a home marked by violence — I don’t have all the answers, but I do have some ideas about how to fill the child-sized holes in our safety net.
We must start building the infrastructure for community-based, voluntary services for children exposed to domestic violence outside the Administration for Children’s Services. Many parents simply won’t take advantage of services if they think that ACS is lurking around the corner.
A good first step would be to recognize that children in custody, visitation and guardianship cases have a particular need for services. Resource coordinators should be embedded in all Family Courts, so that service referrals become a standardized component of court proceedings. The new mayor could have it both ways: reducing ACS involvement in families’ lives while also reducing the impact of violence on children by separating the issue of children exposed to violence at home from child welfare debates.
At the legislative level, we should pass the bill authorizing the Child and Family Wellbeing Fund. The state legislature should also ensure that all children who have been exposed to domestic violence have a right to counsel in Family Court. The interests of children often overlap with those of one or both parents, but not always. Providing young people with their own attorney is the best way to ensure that their voice is truly represented as decisions about them are being made.
Kids want to be safe, but they also want to see both parents, and they deserve access to support. Let’s make sure they have the right to be heard.