Damaris B. Acosta

This Fall 2025 update details the progress of the ACS FY25-26 Strategic Priorities, aiming to foster a safer, more just, and equitable New York City for children and families. Key priorities include strengthening community-based prevention services, expanding access to affordable child care, and refining child protection responses with increased family supports. The update also highlights initiatives for supporting youth in foster care and juvenile justice systems, enhancing facility safety, improving mental health services, and investing in workforce development and technology. The organization is committed to continuous learning, improving equity, and partnering with communities to ensure every child is safe, every family is supported, and every community flourishes.

This document outlines the strategic priorities for the New York City Administration for Children's Services (ACS) for Fiscal Years 2023-2024, aiming to create a safe, just, and equitable New York City where children and young people thrive, and families are supported as their primary resources. Key strategic pillars include supporting community investments for families, ensuring child safety through family-driven solutions, providing quality care, fostering the success of young people, integrating first-hand experiences into their work, reducing unwarranted involvement and disparities for Black, Latinx, and LGBTQAI+ families, investing in the workforce, and strengthening infrastructure.

This document provides a Spring 2023 update on the New York City Administration for Children's Services' (ACS) FY 2023-2024 Strategic Priorities, which aim to create a safer, more just, and equitable environment for children and families. The update details progress and initiatives across key areas including increasing access to subsidized child care and family enrichment, implementing family-driven solutions to enhance child safety and reduce unnecessary child welfare involvement, improving quality of foster care and permanency outcomes, supporting youth success with educational and vocational programs, ensuring stakeholder experiences inform policy, addressing disparities in the child welfare system, investing in workforce development, and strengthening organizational infrastructure.

This strategic plan for the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) outlines priorities for creating a safer, more just, and equitable New York City for children and families. The plan focuses on six key areas: increasing access to family services, reducing unnecessary child welfare reports, providing concrete support and stable housing for ACS-involved families, enhancing child safety, fostering the success of young people through comprehensive programs, and investing in workforce development and operational infrastructure.

This document is a Spring 2025 update to the FY25-26 Strategic Priorities for the New York City Administration for Children's Services. The plan's overarching goal is to foster a New York City that is more safe, just, and equitable for children and families. Key strategic areas include expanding access to subsidized child care, decreasing unnecessary child welfare involvement, strengthening supportive services, enhancing educational and employment opportunities for youth in foster care, and improving organizational infrastructure through workforce investment, technology solutions, and administrative process enhancements. The strategy emphasizes advancing equity, committing to continuous learning, cultivating a safe workplace culture, and evolving based on lived experiences to ensure children, youth, and families achieve success.