Last Tuesday, a four-year-old boy living in a homeless shelter died after being rushed to the hospital. The questions about the case keep piling up.
Authorities charged his parents, Miriam Elkayam and Witzchok Sklar, with drug possession and child endangerment. Investigators originally assumed the boy died of fentanyl exposure. Medics at the scene administered Narcan, and the boy’s parents were caught on camera hiding a bag of heroin and fentanyl in their BMW. As it turns out, the child died of a viral infection.
Do Elkayam and Sklar have a history with the city’s Administration for Children’s Services? ACS would not comment on the record. If they don’t have a history, why not? According to the New York Daily News, Sklar has been arrested more than 21 times, including six times for drug possession and once for gun possession. His wife has been arrested once, for domestic assault.
Wouldn’t the parents’ criminal records have triggered an ACS investigation? Not necessarily. In recent years, the agency has determined that parental criminal activity and drug use are not sufficient to open an investigation for child maltreatment.
Why didn’t authorities at the homeless shelter notice something amiss with the family? Jajaira Morales, who lives at the shelter, told the New York Times that she has seen police arrest people there but doesn’t think the private security firm that the shelter hired is paying enough attention. Another resident told the Times she is pretty sure that people are using drugs in the shelter.
Did these people have to pass any kind of criminal background check to live at this “family shelter?” The law allows such checks, but aside from excluding convicted sex offenders, the answer is: probably not.
Shelter staff have a legal right to search any room daily. If a resident has a four-year-old and a long rap sheet that includes drug crimes, wouldn’t it be prudent to check occasionally for drugs on the premises? That a grown man would be living at a shelter called “Women in Need” also seems strange, but a shelter spokesman assured me that he was indeed a resident. Two women residents interviewed by the Times also reported having three sons between them, ages 18, 20 and 21. Do these men belong at a shelter dedicated to women and young children?
It is a common refrain among people working in the child welfare field that many families caught up in the system just need material resources—money, housing vouchers, food stamps. Their children are experiencing poverty, not neglect, we are told.
But the truth is that most of these families also require other interventions. They need someone to ensure that they are not using drugs, that they’re taking their medications if mentally ill, and that their kids are safe. If we can’t trust that will happen inside a shelter, how can we imagine it will happen anywhere else?
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