Insiders reveal why ACS decided to leave kids in hands of abusive parents

“Pathetic.”That’s how Kevin O’Connor describes the response from Administration for Children’s Services Commissioner Jess Dannhauser in The Post last week to accusations that his agency is prioritizing progressive ideology over children’s safety.O’Connor, a 35-year NYPD veteran who retired two years ago, knows whereof he speaks.His whole career — rising from a school cop in Hell’s Kitchen to the Bronx Juvenile Crime Squad to assistant commissioner for youth strategies — has been devoted to serving the vulnerable kids of this city.O’Connor tells me, “ACS is a complete disaster.

There is no accountability by the administration whatsoever.”O’Connor points to two developments in particular that have set ACS on its unfortunate path.First, “they destroyed ACS when they went to Family Assessment.”The Family Assessment Program (FAP) is, according to the state Office of Children and Family Services, “a non-investigative, family-centered approach to addressing some reports of child maltreatment.”Rather than take seriously claims of child abuse and neglect, agencies like ACS shift what they see as the less serious problems and then move them onto this more cooperative track.Unfortunately, many caseworkers have no way of knowing what is serious or not based on a single report, and without a real investigation they may never find out.This shift happened before the Adams administration, and it’s a practice that has been adopted in other jurisdictions as well.But O’Connor says this move in New York to offer families voluntary services instead of having official investigations with actual consequences for those who failed to comply was the beginning of the end.The CARES program, instituted by the most recent administration, has pushed an even larger percentage of families into the voluntary services track.The assumption of the program is that what families mainly need are material resources — housing, assistance with utility bills, access ...