Why is ACS so often missing signs of risk?<\/p>\n
One reason is its workforce.<\/p>\n
![\"Geneva](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2026-charged-child-abuse-regarding-136003023.jpg\")
Geneva Jarvis seen with her son Adonis and his twin brother \u2014 who survived the hellhole Bronx apartment. Facebook\/Geneva Jarvis<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, ACS posted that the agency is \u201cactively recruiting for the Child Protective Specialist (CPS) role.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a starting salary of almost $60,000, a city pension plan, health insurance, a deferred compensation plan, 37 paid days off during the first year of employment and openings in every borough, you\u2019d think they\u2019d have no lack of strong candidates.<\/p>\n
Not so, in part because of the agency\u2019s head-scratching recruitment strategy and hiring criteria.<\/p>\n
\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNaomi Schaefer Riley<\/p>\n
For instance, ACS requires a bachelor\u2019s degree with at least 24 credits in fields including social work, psychology, sociology, criminal justice, education, nursing or cultural anthropology.<\/p>\n
Sure, some courses in criminal justice or nursing might help a front-line child protective specialist.<\/p>\n
But sociology and cultural anthropology? Who are they kidding?<\/p>\n
To be clear, the job of an ACS investigator is to enter a potentially dangerous home, gather evidence, ask difficult questions and make life-or-death decisions about potential risks to a child.<\/p>\n
Who would you send?<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a hint: The NYPD doesn\u2019t require recruits<\/a> to have a bachelor\u2019s degree at all, let alone one in a useless field focused on woke notions of race, class and gender.<\/p>\n The Police Department does, however, require an exam that measures the skills law enforcement wants in candidates.<\/p>\n ACS has an exam, too \u2014 technically.<\/p>\n But it also hires employees provisionally without asking them to take the test, let alone pass it.<\/p>\n Those employees can go through ACS training and be placed in the field indefinitely; it only becomes a problem if someone who has passed the test comes along and \u201cbumps\u201d them out of the position.<\/p>\n With a vacancy rate of 10% or even higher, that\u2019s unlikely to happen often.<\/p>\n Yet the exam measures important skills like problem sensitivity, inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning (all required by the NYPD, too) \u2014 core abilities for a child-protective specialist.<\/p>\n Problem sensitivity means spotting when something is wrong or likely to go wrong.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet opinions and commentary from our columnists\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter!\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n Inductive reasoning includes being able to take a general idea or policy \u2014 such as an agency rule about when a situation should be escalated \u2014 and apply it to a particular family situation.<\/p>\n And deductive reasoning involves taking specific observations about different families and using them to spot broader patterns about the dangers children are experiencing in our city.<\/p>\n The idea that ACS employees are bypassing such aptitude tests is absurd.<\/p>\n Over the past several years, ACS has continued to ignore clear risks to kids<\/a> from parents who are suffering from substance abuse or severe mental illness, leaving children in homes with adults who are unwilling or unable to care for them.<\/p>\n