The City Budget Must Adequately Fund Critical Youth and Children’s Services
Testimony & Public Comments
May 28, 2026
On May 28, Senior Policy Associate Caitlyn Passaretti and Policy Associate Jenny Veloz submitted testimony to the New York City Council Children and Youth Services Committee Executive Budget Oversight Hearing. On behalf of CCC, the testimony outlines a number of critical programs and services for children and youth that were not adequately funded in the Executive Budget and what funding is needed. This includes, Runaway and Homeless Youth shelter funding, school transportation for youth in foster care, child welfare prevention contract funding, child care voucher access, and more.
Read the testimony below.
Testimony of Caitlyn Passaretti and Jenny Veloz
Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York
Submitted to the New York City Council FY2027 Executive Budget Oversight Hearing
Children and Youth Services Committee
May 28, 2026
We would like to thank Chair Stevens and all the members of the City Council Committee on Children and Youth for holding today’s important hearing on the Mayor’s FY27 Executive Budget. We are grateful to City Council and Mayor for restoring and baselining the $19.6 million for the Summer Rising program. This provides essential child care for parents but also summer programming and field trips for youth. However, there are a number of critical programs and services that were not adequately funded in the Executive Budget, which we highlight below.
Ensure Transportation for Youth in Foster Care
While both federal and state law require the City to provide transportation to students in foster care so they can remain in their original schools, New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) currently does not guarantee any form of transportation to students in foster care. It can take weeks or even months for NYCPS to arrange bus service causing disruptions that sometimes force school or foster home transfers. In fact, during the 2024-25 school year, 55% of students in foster care were chronically absent—missing at least one out of every ten school days—and one in five transferred schools at least once.[1]
The City must invest $3 million to provide interim transportation for students in foster care awaiting bus service, ensuring uninterrupted access to school at a critical time.
Restore Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) and Supportive Programming for Youth and Young Adults
Extensive research demonstrates the positive impacts of Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) and reentry programs, including lowering recidivism and crime.[2] Moreover, studies estimate between $3.46-$5.54 in returns for every dollar invested in ATI programs in addition to reduced costs for the criminal justice system and better community health outcomes.[3]
Despite the well-established benefits of these programs, since 2023, the City Administration has cut millions from probation programs proven to support re-entry by connecting young people to mentorship and services. Failing to provide robust reentry services or supportive probation programs is counterproductive to building safe communities.
CCC supports the recommendations of the New York City Youth Justice Coalition, including the following investments and restorations in the FY27 Budget:
- Restore and invest $4.1 million for the IMPACT program to provide increase family court alternatives to detention
- Invest $40 million for the Community Justice Reentry Network
- Baseline $2.4 million with a cost-of-living adjustment to each new year of funding for the Mentoring and Advocacy Program (MAAP)
- Expand Parent Support Services and create an open door policy for Family Support Services for youth as a prevention intervention
- Invest $8.1 million for the Anti-Gun Violence Employment Program
- Invest $8.5 million to reinstate, expand and fully fund YES services with original work scope as an effective impactful preventive tool
- Invest $59.1 million for ATLAS funding
- Invest $3.2 million for NeON program funding
- Invest $3.7 million for the WorksPlus Program
- Restore and baseline $5 million for the NextSTEPs program
Deepen Investments in the Runaway and Homeless Youth System
Numerous challenges face Runaway and Homeless Youth (RHY) in New York. The Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) is responsible for supporting this population; however, it is not uncommon for RHY to also be involved with ACS, DHS, and HRA in efforts to access permanent housing or social services. We must ensure that RHY have access to more beds and more support. Since youth do not have a right to shelter and DYCD does not have sufficient capacity for young people (especially older youth), many young people resort to living the streets or other dangerous living situations. We urge the City to increase provider rates, which have not been updated since 2017, to $70,000 per bed to provide safe, temporary housing for youth who otherwise would be without a stable housing option. We also must expand housing capacity for older youth ages 21–24, ensuring that all 100 planned beds for this population are brought online (currently only 60 beds are operational).
Furthermore, we also urge the city to restore and baseline $1.6 million to maintain funding for the Peer Navigator positions and $1.6 million for the housing specialists in the DYCD-RHY System. The housing and youth services systems are complex, and it is critical to have a trusted support person to offer advice, resources, and answers for young people trying to navigate the system.
Finally, we want to alert the City Council that national advocates warn that potential federal cuts to the Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) can result in all upstate RHY shelters closing further straining NYC youth shelters. It is essential we advocate for the continuation of funding for upstate shelters, as the NYC system is not equipped to meet the needs of homeless youth in both within and outside of the city.
Invest in Child Welfare Primary Prevention and Workforce Stability
Fundamental to preventing child welfare involvement is investing in the primary prevention supports families need to be safe and secure, including housing, child care, healthy food, and economic supports.
At the same time, the prevention workforce currently in place to support families is in crisis. In 2025, CCC and the Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies (COFCCA) surveyed prevention services providers to better understand the challenges facing families involved in the child welfare system and providers’ ability to serve them. Our results echoed the need for upstream prevention and workforce stabilization.
To help ensure that prevention services can best serve children and families, we recommend the following:
- Enhance child welfare prevention contract flexibility to allow providers the ability to aptly respond to different family circumstances
- Invest in salary increases, scholarships and tuition assistance to help agencies sustain a highly trained and credentialed child welfare workforce.
- Ensure that child welfare staff are paid completive salaries and agencies are paid the true cost of services on prevention contracts.
- Reform the current NYC procurement system to ensure timely payments to contracted agencies.
Restore Child Welfare Prevention Contracts
Last week, a number of organizations were alerted by ACS that their prevention contracts are being cut due to utilization rates. Many of these programs are around 60-75% utilization, and these cuts will be incredibly disruptive for families. We urge ACS to provide more transparency about these decisions and to reverse the cuts.
CCC’s report The State of NYC Child Welfare Prevention Services: Findings from the 2025 CCC and COFCCA Survey of Child Welfare Prevention Service Providers found that providers are already underpaid and overworked, often having large caseloads to manage across entire boroughs. Cutting these contracts will move families to other providers, who are already overburdened. This will only further destabilize the sector and impact families who receive services.
Support Families in Need of Child Care
PromiseNYC provides childcare assistance to low-income families who may be ineligible for other, federally funded subsidized childcare. Though some families served through PromiseNYC may receive services through recent 3-K and 2-K expansions, PromiseNYC offers care to a wider scope of families that may not find care through other pathways. The program offers flexibility to enable families to access services regardless of geography or age of child. We applaud the City Council for their support for this program and the Mayor for baselining $25 million for PromiseNYC in the Executive Budget. However, we strongly urge city leaders to increase and baseline $50 million in funding for Promise NYC to strengthen child care access for all NYC families.
Preserving Child Care Voucher Access
In recent years, New York City and other counties have used Child Care Block Grant (CCBG) funds to significantly expand the number of families receiving child care assistance. CCBG funds support child care assistance for families on cash assistance; contracted child care for children 0-2 year olds and 3-and 4-year-olds in extended day/year; and child care vouchers for low-income working families and those engaged in training or other qualified activities. Last year, the City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) projected a funding shortfall for families applying for child care vouchers through the state’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP). Although Governor Hochul’s FY27 Enacted Budget includes increased investments for CCAP, including $475 million in funding over the next two years for New York City, this funding will be insufficient to eliminate the waitlist.
According to our recently published Keeping Track of New York City’s Children, between FY22 and FY25, non-mandated low-income child care vouchers increased by over 500% for children 0-13 years old, from 9,393 in FY22 to 56,931 in FY25. Recently, ACS has stated that the waitlist has increased to over 25,600. Families on waitlists will have to make difficult decisions to ensure that care for their children, including relying on family members to fill the gap, leaving their jobs or reducing employment hours, or putting additional economic strain on already struggling households. The Administration must ensure sufficient funding for child care vouchers to prevent low-income families from sitting on waitlists for care.
