The city’s child welfare agency is putting a new protocol in place that it says will better protect infants and toddlers who are at highest risk of abuse.

The Administration for Children’s Services has been hiring retired police detectives for several years. Now these detectives will be part of every investigation that involves a child who's three years old or younger and who was allegedly seriously injured, sexually abused, or had died.

“We know that these young people are particularly vulnerable, so we want to make sure that we’re focusing on doing everything we can in investigations that affect them,” said ACS Commissioner David Hansell, during a press conference in Harlem on Friday.

Hansell said the new protocol was piloted this year and proved successful, allowing ACS to make “better judgments faster.”

“We consider these cases high risk and complex because these children are often too young to tell us what happened to them,” said Susan Morley, who oversees 173 retired police detectives who now work for ACS. “There are people out there that will intentionally hurt children this young.”