Mayor Zohran Mamdani named Rebecca Jones Gaston, who as head of child welfare under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. oversaw the expansion of abuse-prevention services for families, as New York City’s child welfare commissioner on Tuesday.
Her hiring as head of the city’s Administration for Children’s Services comes after two finalists for the post who had worked outside of government, including one who called herself a child protective services “abolitionist,” were not appointed last month.
Before serving as the commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Ms. Jones Gaston, 56, oversaw child welfare in Maryland and then in Oregon.
In her past roles, Ms. Gaston Jones, who is Black and was adopted from foster care as a child, has spoken of the need to strike a balance between policing families too much and not policing them enough.
The job of child welfare commissioner is one of the most challenging and thankless in the city. The Administration for Children’s Services, which investigates about 40,000 allegations of neglect and abuse each year, is under constant pressure from family advocates to be less intrusive.
But when children known to the agency are badly mistreated or killed, A.C.S. is routinely pilloried in the press and accused of not having done enough to prevent disaster.
A.C.S. acknowledges that its investigations are often traumatic for children and parents alike and overwhelmingly affect families of color.
Ms. Jones Gaston succeeds Jess Dannhauser, who as commissioner under Mr. Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams, continued the agency’s yearslong trend of steering more families into preventive services, such as parenting education and substance-abuse treatment, rather than trying to remove children from troubled homes in family court.
A.C.S. has also worked to reduce the number of children it removes from their families and places in foster care. Since 1999, that number has dropped more than 80 percent, from nearly 40,000 to 6,300.
The selection of Ms. Jones Gaston over more contentious candidates is the latest example of Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, picking a more mainstream choice for a major cabinet position. Other examples include First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan and Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, whom Mr. Mamdani asked to stay after he was elected.
On Tuesday, Mr. Mamdani praised Ms. Jones Gaston’s “local experience, state experience and national experience” and said she had dedicated her career to “building smarter and stronger systems that keep children safe and families together.”
In Mr. Biden’s cabinet, Ms. Jones Gaston expanded child-abuse-prevention services for families and increased support for foster care placements with relatives, a system known as kinship care.
Last year, in an interview with Law360 as she left the federal government, she emphasized the importance of figuring out how to “meet the needs of kids and families in a way that doesn’t cause further trauma, that doesn’t have people moving in fear, but also ultimately prioritizes that kids are OK.”
“Even when it’s necessary, there is a trauma involved in that experience of separating children from their families,” she added. “And so we want to minimize that impact and that experience only to the instances where it’s absolutely necessary.”
In 2020, as Oregon’s child welfare director, she released a “vision for transformation” in which she wrote, “We recognize that white supremacy and systemic racism are deeply embedded in the history, fabric and institutions of our country, including child welfare systems. Long-lasting social change comes from communities of color and other marginalized communities’ leadership and power in social movements and systems transformation.”
Ronald E. Richter, who served as A.C.S. commissioner under Mayor Michael Bloomberg from 2011 to 2014, called Ms. Jones Gaston a “really balanced choice” who “appreciates the complexity of child welfare work.”
“It appears that the new commissioner understands that while there certainly are issues like implicit bias and racism that have affected the agency’s work, A.C.S. has acknowledged that and is working hard to make these investigations as processional as unbiased as possible, and I think she will support that continuing,” Mr. Richter said.
He added, “I feel very strongly that the A.C.S. work force is among the most committed people in New York City government, and they’re entitled to a commissioner who believes in their mission.”
But Joyce McMillan, the executive director of JMac for Families, which supports families with A.C.S. cases, described Ms. Jones Gaston’s appointment as a “check box hiring.”
“She checked three boxes — she’s Black, she’s a systems person and she has lived experience because she’s an adoptee, but that does not correlate necessarily into being a good leader for change,” Ms. McMillan said.
Ms. McMillan noted that in a statement in the news release announcing her appointment, Ms. Jones Gaston said that she saw her hiring as an opportunity “to move beyond managing crisis and instead invest in prevention” and “ensure every family and child has a real pathway to stability, belonging and opportunity.”
“What I would want her to do,” Ms. McMillan said, “is not strengthen the system that exists, but to dismantle” A.C.S.’s preventive-services structure “and leave families alone.”
Andy Newman has reported from the New York region for The Times for more than 30 years.
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