At the end of 1993, a commission appointed by then-New York City Mayor David Dinkins issued a report intended to guide New York City in its foster care policy for the remainder of the decade of the 1990s and beyond. This study was released under the title of Child Welfare at a Crossroads: Rethinking Redirecting Reinvesting. This report actually contains the reports of three distinct committees, the Foster Care Committee, the Adoption/Independent Living Committee, and the Courts Committee. The emphasis in the following discussion is upon the report of the Foster Care Committee, though it will be seen that this report has ramifications reaching into every area of child and family services.
Most of the Foster Care Committee's specific recommendations are purely administrative in nature. Thus, for example, Recommendation Number Three under "Appropriate Geographical Services," proposes that "CWA Case Managers should be stationed at local field offices" (Mayor's Commission, 1993, p. 40). However, taken as a whole, the Foster Care Committee's report asserts a distinctive and potentially controversial position in child care services. As stated in the Introduction to its report,
The Committee decided to carry out its deliberations
within the framework of a model depicting the range of services needed by all the city's families, at all
economic levels -- and not just those "in" the foster
care system. It proposed a comprehensive "Spectrum of
Care Model," which categorizes existing services into several stages of appropriate care....
(Mayor's Commission, 1993, p. 26)
The Spectrum of Care is graphically presented (p. 33) not as a linear spectrum, but as a wheel or cycle, each stage leading logically into the next. Although it is acknowledged that courses of action may diverge at various points around the wheel, an impression of sequence pervades the graphic picture, with its clockwise progress...