February 6, 2020
This week, CCC released its latest report assessing children and families’ well-being throughout New York City.
Formerly referred to as the Community Risk Ranking, the new report, “Child & Family Well-Being in New York City: Ranking Risks and Resources Across 59 Community Districts, is the newest edition of Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York’s (CCC) annual well-being index.
The report finds that many children and families throughout all five boroughs still face significant barriers to well-being.
This report is relevant to State Budget discussions, which are currently underway.
In past years, the State’s Medicaid Redesign process drew attention to the need to leverage the health and human services infrastructure to address the social determinants of health for low-income New Yorkers and reduce runaway health care costs.
Alarmingly, despite the continued and multiple risks that many NYC families and children face, in our report, the State Executive Budget for SFY’21 includes deep reductions across a wide range of health and human services and shifts $1.4 billion in costs on to New York City.
As our analysis illustrates, these cuts and cost shifts would further put well-being at risk.
If the Governor is truly committed to structurally reforming health care and producing better outcomes for New Yorkers, the State budget must not be balanced as he has proposed. As it now stands, the State Executive Budget exacerbates unmet needs, setting up a situation where an entire population may well develop costly, complex needs as adults.
Our analysis of Gov. Cuomo’s FY 2021 Executive Budget highlights how his proposals would cut funding — or shift costs to the City — for programs essential to the well-being of NYC children and families.
New York cannot continue to pursue a short-sighted approach to health care cost containment that results in cuts to preventive services for vulnerable populations, especially children. Our State must develop a vision for the budget that recognizes that early investments are the key to improving long-term outcomes for children and families, and for achieving long-term cost savings for the State.
In NYC, there are over 63,600 homeless people staying in NYC shelters each night — of whom more than 40,000 are families with children. Statewide homelessness impacts 250,000 people. A delay in implementing a statewide subsidy misses the opportunity to reduce the number of people in shelters by 60% percent in NYC alone.
The Executive Budget does nothing to address the current child care crisis that is facing New York families. Child care in New York costs an average of $15,000 annually per child, and helpful subsidies serve only 20% of eligible families across the state.
To sustain the reduction of children placed in foster care and keep families together, New York State must invest more funding in preventive services.
Under current New York State law, children as young as 7 years old may be arrested, subject to police questioning, pre-trial detention with older youth, probation, and mandatory confinement.
New York’s children did not create the State’s budget deficit nor should they or their families shoulder the burden of budget cuts now.
CCC is calling on Governor Cuomo and the State Legislator to address the following in the budget negotiation process: