As the Mamdani administration restarts the search for the next Administration for Children’s Services commissioner will it choose a leader committed to genuine transformation and ready to champion bold solutions? Or will it choose a leader who will preside over the status quo?

The next commissioner will inherit a system that remains more adept at surveillance and separation than support. To truly transform child welfare, the mayor must appoint a leader ready to dismantle the architecture of suspicion and replace it with a foundation of family support.

This is because the scale of ACS intervention in family life is staggering. Last year, ACS conducted more than 65,000 investigations. About 70% of these investigations were ultimately unsubstantiated, meaning ACS did not find evidence to prove there was child abuse or neglect.

Meanwhile, although many of these families were grappling with real crises and deserved support, what they got instead were interrogations, intrusive home inspections and their daily lives uprooted. These harms are overwhelmingly felt by Black and Latino children, who accounted for about 80% of ACS’s investigations last year.

Even when ACS wants to support these families, “help” is often wrapped in court orders and severed family relationships. No wonder so many children and parents are afraid to reach out for the assistance they need and deserve. The system makes asking for help dangerous.

ACS primarily exists to investigate maltreatment allegations and pursue legal remedies. That’s an enforcement role. Asking the same agency to acknowledge that most of the time the interests of children and parents are aligned would mean reimagining the city’s entire approach to child welfare.

We need a commissioner who recognizes ACS’s structural limitations and champions well-informed solutions, implemented as community-led initiatives. Solutions that address the flaws in how children enter the system in the first place. This includes mandatory reporting and statewide screening practices that subject families that seek support to punishment and surveillance instead. And an overreliance on congregate facility placements that are used as a stop gap when mental health resources fall short.

We need a commissioner who recognizes that what truly makes children safer is stable families and communities. Family supports such as affordable housing, reliable employment, accessible health care, quality child care, and strong community ties are essential. But providing services is also fundamentally different work than conducting investigations.

Families should be able to access help without fear of triggering ACS involvement by default. The proposed Office of Family Well-Being would create a hub outside of ACS to coordinate across city agencies, invest in trusted community organizations, and offer peer-based support. At the state level, the proposed Child and Family Well-Being Fund would invest $30 million in voluntary, community-based support, specifically targeting areas with the highest rates of child welfare involvement and racial disparities.

The next commissioner must be willing to acknowledge past failures, center the voices of youth and families who have experienced the system’s harm, and prioritize racial justice in every decision. They must understand that supporting families and protecting children are aligned, not competing priorities. Without this type of bold leadership, the results are predictable: families investigated for material hardship and over-burdened systems that miss opportunities to keep children safe.

New York doesn’t just need a new manager; it needs a visionary who understands that the best way to protect children is to empower their families. Anything less is just more of the same.

Sandy Santana is executive director at Children’s Rights.

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