When a New York City child dies or suffers severe injury due to neglect or abuse, it’s not only a tragedy — it’s a failure that should prompt city government to ask where we went wrong and what we can do better.

If the child and family are known to the city Administration for Children’s Services, only an independent, objective look at ACS’s work can answer that question.

But right now that is impossible.

Why?

Because New York state law prevents any independent oversight body from accessing the full record of ACS’s involvement with the city’s children and families.

The law effectively shields ACS from outside review.

This must change.  

The New York City Department of Investigation should have the power to conduct such probes.

This type of work is what we do every day at each of the city agencies we oversee, from investigating contraband smuggling by city correction officers at Rikers Island to exposing NYCHA superintendents who solicited bribes from contractors.

DOI has the experience and skills to evaluate ACS’s assessment of danger to a child, its response to that assessment and the agency’s compliance with its own policies and procedures.

DOI can also recommend changes to improve the system.

Based on the limited information DOI has access to, there are at least a dozen children known to ACS who have died of abuse or neglect since 2023 and whose deaths warrant further inquiry — and potentially a full investigation of ACS’s involvement.

Children like 4-year-old Jahmeik Modlin, who weighed only 19 pounds at the time of his death from malnutrition and dehydration; De’Neil Timberlake, age 5, who was found unresponsive and foaming at the mouth in his home; and one-month-old Joseph Heben Jr., who died of starvation.

Current state law precludes a meaningful DOI investigation of what ACS did in any of these cases and impedes DOI, or any other independent oversight body, from examining certain critical records.

This includes records of abuse or neglect investigations where ACS determined that an allegation was unfounded, or where ACS diverted the allegation to CARES, its non-investigatory child protection response — a pathway that requires the family’s voluntary cooperation.

To be clear, even if ACS acted in a plainly improper manner when it decided an allegation was unfounded or it decided not to investigate, the law prohibits DOI from seeing any records related to that ACS decision.

For cases in which ACS substantiated a complaint of abuse, the law lets DOI obtain some records — but puts significant obstacles in our way.

To obtain these records, DOI must first receive written permission from the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, which regulates ACS.

Our investigators must explain to OCFS the need for access — thereby revealing information to an interested third party about a confidential investigation.

DOI does not face such a requirement for any other agency we oversee.

Assemblymember Andrew Hevesi and state Sen. Jabari Brisport recently introduced legislation to close this gap and give DOI access to the records we need to properly investigate cases like the deaths of Jahmeik, De’Neil and Joseph.

We urge the Legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul to enact it.

DOI’s role is to objectively uncover the facts and make public findings, where appropriate, so all New Yorkers are informed about their government’s actions.

Neither ACS nor OCFS currently provides that independent oversight or public transparency when it comes to the protection of the city’s children.

DOI understands the unique privacy interests of the children and families in ACS’s care.

If given full access to ACS’s records, DOI will protect those interests — as we already do with the confidential and sensitive information we obtain from all other city agencies for our investigations.

DOI’s previous oversight of ACS, while limited, demonstrates the value we will bring if given the tools to do so.

In 2024, we issued a report on safety risks to staff and juveniles in the city’s detention facilities that ACS runs, and we made broad examinations of ACS’s handling of child abuse and neglect investigations in 2007 and 2016.

In these inquiries, we made public recommendations to improve ACS’s work.

We have also conducted investigations exposing misconduct like fraud and abuse of authority by ACS employees, which resulted in a range of consequences from discipline to criminal charges.  

Independent investigations are an important way for city government to bring transparency to ACS’s handling of abuse and neglect allegations.

They can help hold employees and officials accountable, improve policies and procedures to prevent future tragedies — and perhaps most importantly, restore public confidence in the city’s child welfare system.  

The actions of all city agencies, especially the one whose job it is to protect our most vulnerable, must be subject to rigorous oversight.

New York City’s children, particularly those who have suffered abuse and neglect, deserve no less.

Jocelyn E. Strauber is commissioner of the New York City Department of Investigation, the city’s inspector general.