FYI: The mayor’s office announced a massive ad blitz yesterday to recruit foster parents in “high need” neighborhoods, focusing on Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, Central Harlem in Manhattan, Concourse/Highbridge in the Bronx and Jamaica in Queens. Three summers ago, the city launched an ambitious program to make child welfare a neighborhood-based system, in which families could access local programs to prevent problems that prompt the city to remove kids from their homes and, when that’s impossible, to place kids in foster homes located in their own neighborhoods. But, as Alyssa Katz reported in City Limits at the time, that effort faced an uphill battle to recruit foster parents in neighborhoods where many former participants have complained about the low pay and many potential participants have had antagonistic relationships with the Administration for Children’s Services. Now, the Bloomberg administration’s ad campaign will try to put a new shine on what the mayor is calling “today’s foster care.” [4/25/03]