The latest from National Coalition for Child Protection Reforms ... ACS ... BRIC

Picture the Homeless declared victory after a recent decision by the New York City Department of Homeless Services to end the LINC voucher program. A post on the nonprofit’s website outlines objections to the program, which provided housing vouchers for homeless families that could only last five years.

“Homeless people have been demanding a better program for 14 years, and we’re elated that the city has finally heard our voice,” Monique George, executive director of Picture the Homeless, said in the blog post. “The devil will be in the details, however, and we look forward to working with the Department of Homeless Services and the de Blasio Administration to ensure that this new voucher works for everyone.”

There’s a new president at BRIC, an arts nonprofit in downtown Brooklyn. Kristina Newman-Scott, director of culture for the state of Connecticut, was a little skeptical about taking on the role when BRIC’s executive-search team first reached out, The Bridge Brooklyn reports. The Jamaica native will start in her new role in September. She will replace Leslie Griesbach Schultz.

As one of the few women of color leading a New York cultural institution, Newman-Scott aims to raise the profile of BRIC, which is best known for its Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival, she told The New York Times.

“I am committed to ensuring that in the future, there will not be one person in Brooklyn who won’t know what BRIC is,” she told the Times. “Everyone — whether it’s the guy that developed the building down the block or the woman who has the bodega — should feel like BRIC is the place that they get to see authentic Brooklyn through arts and culture.”

The Administration for Children’s Services is looking to get into the app business. Three requests for information, all with an Aug. 17 deadline, outline plans for software that would streamline the foster/adoptive parent certification process, a platform that would allow peer-to-peer communications among parents, and another platform that would help older youth receive crisis support. More information is available here.

The agency is also getting ready to release a concept paper in anticipation of a RFP that would seek vendors to provide farm-to-table programming at detention facilities overseen by the agency. The concept paper will be posted on the ACS website on July 27 until Sept. 10, according to the City Record.

Increasing child removals, overworked caseworkers and packed family courts are worrying The National Coalition for Child Protection Reforms. The organization’s blog has released its own take on a recent report from The New School’s Center for New York City Affairs, which found a dramatic spike in the number of emergency removals of children by the New York City Administration for Children’s Services.

The coalition’s analysis took particular issue with ACS’ explanation for the increase in emergency removals, which the agency has attributed to increased vigilance and reports since the high-profile deaths of two children in late 2016.

“More people calling in reports is the standard excuse for foster-care panics,” the blog post reads. “Agencies say, in effect: Well, of course we’re taking away more children, we’re investigating more reports! In fact, during a foster-care panic a far greater percentage of reports is likely to be false, so there should be no such assumption.”

Three nonprofits have teamed up to produce a new FAQ on migrant children separated from their families at the U.S. border with Mexico. This handout, produced by the Center on Child and the Law, Women’s Refugee Commission, and The Center on Immigration and Child Welfare, includes information on how the separated children are similar and different from other unaccompanied children, the ins-and-outs of how the Office of Refugee Resettlement places them in the child welfare system, among other details in the four-page primer.

Immigration protests hit home on July 25 for Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase. Representatives from nonprofit advocacy organizations picketed his Park Avenue home that morning in protest of the bank’s investments in immigration detention centers. Besides chants, the protesters also brought a petition with 100,000 signatures calling on Dimon to make the bank divest from such businesses. Gothamist has the full story here:

Happening now: Immigrants and activists outside of the condo of @Chase CEO Jamie Dimon playing the recordings of the children from detention centers demanding that they stop financing hate #BACKERSOFHATE #FamiliesBelongsTogether @MaketheRoadNY @CPDAction pic.twitter.com/bgOCP5GAgQ

— NY Communities (@nychange) July 25, 2018

Send your press releases, photos, and word of your latest happenings to reporter Zach Williams at zwilliams@nynmedia.com.