Office of Children and Family Services
New York City Administration for Children's Services

Accounting for and Contacting Children in Foster Care (Follow-up)

New York State's foster care programs are administered by 58 local social services districts (57 counties and New York City) that are overseen by the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS). In New York City, the programs are administered by the Administration of Children's Services (ACS), and many of the program services are provided by agencies under contract with ACS. In audit report 2004-N-05, we examined whether ACS could physically locate the foster children in its custody, including children newly entered into care; whether the voluntary agencies under contract with ACS provided foster children with the required number of caseworker contacts; whether ACS made diligent efforts to find children reported as AWOL; and the extent to which the New York City foster care program complies with Title 18 and relevant ACS guidelines. As a result we focused on the actions taken by ACS.

We found that ACS could locate or otherwise account for the children in our sample, and the contracted agencies were able to document almost all their required contacts with these children. However, the agencies could not always show that they had made diligent efforts to find children when they were reported as missing. When we followed up on our prior audit recommendations, we found that OCFS and ACS implemented three recommendations and partially implemented one recommendation.

For a complete copy of Report 2007-F-46 click here.