Officials on Long Island said they're making changes to child protective services in response to the 2020 death of an 8-year-old boy whose police officer father forced him to sleep overnight on the concrete floor of a freezing garage.
Suffolk County Social Services Commissioner John Imhof, who took over in May, said a number of the changes are aimed at strengthening the process of removing a child from a family.
He said at a new conference in Hauppauge that child protective services officials are no longer given identifying information such as a parent’s occupation in cases where a child might be removed from a home.
Imhof said the “blind removal” process, mandated by the state in 2020, is meant to eliminate the sort of biases that likely allowed Michael Valva, then a New York City police officer, to retain custody of his son despite nearly a dozen separate reports alleging abuse.
“We all have unconscious stereotypes,” Imhof said.
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Officials said other changes in the works include hiring more child protection services workers in order to lower caseloads, increasing salaries and providing workers with mental health treatment.
The efforts followed an April report from a special grand jury investigating the department’s handling of the case.
Valva and and his then-fiancée, Angela Pollina, were convicted of second-degree murder and child endangerment charges in 2022. They're both serving sentences of 25 years to life in prison.
The son, Thomas Valva, died in January 2020, the day after sleeping in the garage in the family’s Long Island home in temperatures that dropped under 20 degrees (minus 6 Celsius).
A medical examiner ruled the boy’s death a homicide and found that hypothermia was a major contributing factor.
Prosecutors said Thomas Valva and his 10-year-old brother spent 16 consecutive hours in the freezing garage leading up to the 8-year-old’s death.
They also said Michael Valva did nothing to help him as the boy died in front of him and then lied to police and first responders.
