mediarequests@bds.org. It is used whenever the office is representing a mother who becomes pregnant during the course of the case, whether she already is court-involved or not. This is written both to clarify why this kind of representation is so successful and to help export the model to jurisdictions that have yet to embrace it. In countless cases over the past decade in New York City, pregnant parents have had the benefit of representation by one of the family defender offices before any case was brought against them. N.Y. Comp. Federal law requires states to have written case plans for every child in care in order to ensure that an appropriate long-term plan is identified for each foster child. 9. This catch-22 problem made preventing Ms. Barrows eviction vital on multiple fronts. 42 (2019), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.04.022 [hereinafter Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach]. Ms. Green did not provide a clear answer, and she said she wondered whether it happened when Sophia fell off a bed. Are you concerned that you or someone you know may be arrested by ICE? After family defender offices complained about the problem and lobbied for a solution, the New York City Administration for Childrens Services changed its policy in 2019 in an announced All Staff Bulletin clarifying that If the parent is eligible for coverage, or assistance that they are not receiving, such as Medicaid or private insurance, the CPS or case planner must assist the family with applying for such assistance. Easily apply. Ct. Act 262. 96%. On the judicial side, petitions are filed in family court and the allegations in the petitions are (sometimes) resolved through contested evidentiary hearings. Only six babies (8 percent) were placed in foster care with strangers. Among the reasons it is crucial that parent defenders actively participate in these conferences is that when an inappropriate case plan is developed, that plan may be in place for many months even before a court might review it. 24. 76. Moreover, the amount of time the lawyer put on the case was a minor fraction of the time and attention the social worker gave the case. . Sophia sustained a new facial injury after tripping on a door frame when attending a birthday party at Ms. Greens sisters home while under Ms. Greens supervision. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of these agency meetings. Once these favorable reports were introduced, the team focused on settling the case instead of undergoing a highly contested trial focused on whether the original injury was sustained as a result of an accident. The offices help parents negotiate all aspects of the process throughout the life of the case. . Find out what works well at brooklyn defender services from the people who know best. When the surgeon understood that Mr. Sanchez was willing to consent to the surgery if the next round of nonsurgical treatment in Mexico did not prove helpful, the surgeon concluded that Mr. Sanchezs choice was perfectly reasonable. Part II briefly describes the findings in the quantitative analysis. Part I provides a brief history of parental representation in New York. Once in court, families often face prolonged separation and years of supervision by the Administration for Children's Services. Special thanks go to Caitlin Becker, Michelle Burrell, Michele Cortese, Emma Ketteringham, and Lauren Shapiro for making it possible for this Article to have been written. Since it began, the Brooklyn Defender Services Family Defense Practice has represented nearly 11,000 parents involving more than 20,000 children.24 The Center for Family Representation represents approximately 1,300 new clients each year in child welfare cases and between 2007 and 2018 has represented more than 7,000 parents with more than 15,000 children.25 Between 2007 and 2017, the Bronx Defenders represented more than 11,000 parents and, as of 2018, had a staff of more than 50 attorneys, social workers, and parent advocates. & Youth Servs. The first was that Ms. Barrow was in jeopardy of being evicted from her apartment. Beginning that year, the Office funded a new model of public defense for families facing charges of abuse or neglect in three counties in New York City. The agency then filed a neglect petition in family court charging Mr. Sanchez with failing to provide his son with medically necessary treatment and seeking an order that the agency be granted permission to consent to the required surgery. There are too many heroes in those offices to name here; this Article is a celebration of the remarkable work they do every day supporting and fighting for justice for the many parents living in poverty who have to endure the coercive intervention of the child welfare system. 69. Without the defense teams constant communication with Ms. Barrow and her providers about her service plan, she would not have had the support necessary to achieve the progress in her mental health treatment. Over the course of five months, Ms. Green fully engaged in therapy and her therapist wrote enthusiastic letters of support that her defense team was able to present in court. Mr. Sanchez further explained that he did not rule out giving his consent to the surgery, only that he wanted one more time to see if it could be avoided by securing alternative treatment. Admin. Ct. & Youth Servs. The teams lawyer then filed a motion for an immediate court hearing to determine whether removal was necessary to protect the childs safety. The teams strategy was to have two opportunities to present the judge with positive impressions of the mother even before conducting the formal hearing seeking the babys return to her custody. Because of Ms. Barrows concern that continuing her medication during her pregnancy was dangerous for the fetus, she stopped taking the medication that was court-ordered. Schreibersdorf & Shapiro written testimony, supra note 24, at 5. These plans are best developed out of court in conjunction with the agency overseeing the case.64 No good lawyer can afford to ignore the administrative process, which commonly begins when a family comes to the attention of an investigating caseworker following a report of suspected maltreatment made to the child protection agency. Hearing (Aug. 16, 2018) (written testimony of Michelle Burrell, at 2). All of this was reported to the judge at the status conference. Ms. Shapiro oversees an interdisciplinary staff of over 90 attorneys, social workers and administrative staff and directs the litigation and policy activities of the practice. The father abused her after the babys birth and the agency brought a case against Ms. Anderson for failing to protect her child. Instead, the agency has conducted the conferences within a day or two after a newborns birth, at a time when the mother is not in a position to participate effectively. Brooklyn Defender Services, Family Defense Practice Main Industry Manufacturing, Test & Measurement Equipment Website www.bfdp.org Contact Information Headquarters 195 Montague St Fl 5, Brooklyn, New York, 11201, United States (347) 592-2500 Brooklyn Defender Services, Family Defense Practice Profile and History Ct. Act 1089 (McKinney 2020). Our Work. The lack of out-of-court work that characterizes panel attorney legal representation in New York City goes well beyond leaving parents to fend for themselves in emotionally challenging meetings such as family team conferences and case planning conferences. 66. Office of Research & Analysis, Emergency Removals Subcommittee (Sept. 16, 2015). Missing from the quantitative study are the number of times out-of-court advocacy persuades the local child welfare agency not to file a court case in the first place. Hybrid remote in Brooklyn, NY 11201. Immigration. 105163 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105163 [hereinafter Understanding the Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach]. It's time to renew your membership and keep access to free CLE, valuable publications and more. See About Us, Casey Fam. of 12th graders in Family Foster Care graduated high . Unlike the other two offices, which were part of larger organizations that secured income from multiple sources, CFRs only work was in parent representation. The investigator also met with Eduardos primary care physician, but not with the orthopedic surgeon. According to Tina Luongo, chief attorney for New York City's Legal Aid Society's criminal defense practice, new crime trends . Agencies too often offer parents little help or guidance in obtaining services, commonly doing little more than providing a parent an address and expecting the parent to find the service, make the appointment, and wind his or her way through a maze of confusing requirements. In this case, the office was assigned to represent Carlos Sanchez, after a petition was filed by the local child welfare agency accusing him of neglecting his son by failing to consent to what the agency asserted was necessary surgery. 82. There are still other differences between the offices, including the number of staff employed and the various positions each office created. info@bds.org. The cases described in the previous section go well beyond demonstrating the importance of helping shape the services parents will be required to complete as a condition to regaining the custody of their children. To counter this concern, the team asked that the court order an additional service calculated to provide the best opportunity to demonstrate that Sophia should be in Ms. Greens care. These lead to tragic outcomes, such as death at the hands of police or in jail and oppressive environments in schools and neighborhoods where low-income people of color live. After waiting two additional months, the team filed a motion for enhanced, unsupervised visits, arguing that the agencys refusal to grant unsupervised visits was arbitrary and damaging to the long-term purpose of child protection. BDS provides innovative, multi-disciplinary, and client-centered criminal, family, and immigration defense, as well as civil legal Read more about this organization Issue Areas Include Family Immigrants or Refugees Legal Assistance Location $65,000 - $87,880 a year. Admin., The CITYFEPS Rent Supplement Program Fact Sheet, https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dhs/downloads/pdf/CITYFEPS/CITYFEPS-fact-sheet.pdf. The case examples described in the previous section were provided to give the reader some sense of how the defender offices are able to achieve dramatically better results for their clients as compared with the panel members assigned to represent parents. These conferences are expected to take place in front of the judges court attorney, rather than the judge, and are commonly used to provide a forum to resolve issues and move toward settlement. Over the many years of doing this work, the four offices that have contracts to represent parents in child welfare cases in New York City have developed and refined innovative approaches to secure the safe return of children from foster care. They also reveal the critical importance of addressing the needs of clients concerning matters beyond the child welfare system itself. Such services might include attending parenting skills or anger management classes, or participating in therapy, counseling, or drug treatment programs. Yet it was the out-of-court advocacy that made all the difference. for Child.s Servs., All Staff Bulletin, Child Welfare Watch, Tough Decisions: Dealing with Domestic Violence, N.Y.C. Apply to Staff Attorney, Family Medicine Physician, Project Supervisor and more! 65. In this sense, family defenders make child welfare work better. The third office, the Center for Family Representation (CFR), was a relatively new start-up 501(c)(3) office whose only purpose was to provide legal representation for parents in child welfare cases. When parents are unrepresented at these conferences, the plans are more likely to be boilerplate, requiring parents to do things of little value. The first article, Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach to Parental Representation in Child Welfare, was published in 2019.1 It described the results of a multiyear study in New York City that compared the outcomes of child welfare cases in which parents were represented by multidisciplinary family defender offices with cases in which parents were represented by solo practitioners assigned from a rotating panel of lawyers.2 The outcomes were dramatically better in cases handled by these offices, as measured by the reduced amount of time children were kept from their parents custody as compared with parents whose lawyers were solo practitioners.3 The second article was a qualitative analysis that described the interviews conducted of a wide group of professionals and former clients who work closely with the two different kinds of legal representation models that were compared.4 That article revealed the opinions of a broad range of professionals working in the courts on what distinguishes the family defender offices practice from the work done by panel lawyers.5. If the study discussions in the previous section show anything, it is that being at the table when the agency fashions the case plan is a critical stage in the proceeding with profound long-term implications for all that follows. 40592/88, 1989 WL 1715714 (N.Y. Sup. If I hadnt had the support of BDS, I wouldnt have been able to stop ACS from removing my kids. The Article proceeds in five parts. 91. Whether it is the removal of children, incarceration, deportation, eviction or houselessness, the people we represent face long periods of forced family separation. 93. In fiscal year 2018, the office was assigned to represent more than 1,500 parents with approximately 3,500 children.26 The Neighborhood Defender Service has represented over 1,600 parents between 2014 and 2017.27, This arrangement, assigning a portion of new filings to a family defender law office and the remainder to panel lawyers, created an opportunity to study which kind of representation works best. Instead, the agency staff members told Ms. Anderson and her team that they would not allow Ms. Anderson to leave the hospital with her baby and to prepare to go to court the next day when they would be filing a petition alleging neglect based on the allegations in the case of Ms. Andersons previous child. Most importantly, the team also began planning for the Initial Child Safety Conference that the agency would certainly convene when the baby was born.70 Unfortunately, the New York City child protection agency would not conduct the conference before the child was born (because New York does not recognize fetuses as within the purview of child welfare law). When the conference took place one day after the babys birth, the defense teams social worker and parent advocate attended with Ms. Barrow. Neighborhood Defender Services of Harlem shares cases in New York County with the Center for Family Representation, and the Center for Family Representation has a second contract to provide parental representation in Queens. Then she engaged a cleaning service to address the roaches and the condition of Ms. Barrows home. The medications began working after only a few weeks and Ms. Barrow quickly regained her focus. Wholly apart from holding conferences during the time a case is being prosecuted in court, an even more critical component of the administrative process is ongoing. Lauren Shapiro has been working as a Managing Director, Family Defense Practice at Brooklyn Defender Services for 16 years. To provide even a sense of the breadth of this work, the Brooklyn Defender Services Family Defense Practice litigates more than forty emergency hearings each month (or about 500 a year) to keep children home or have them returned from foster care sooner than the agency is prepared to allow. 44. BDS is a public defense office representing low-income New Yorkers in criminal, family, immigration, and civil legal matters. Fighting for you, your family & our community. Until such assistance is available, the CPS or case planner must ensure that appropriate services are provided, including payment for such services. N.Y.C. Martin Guggenheim is the Fiorello LaGuardia Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law. Our team of attorneys, paralegals, advocates, social workers and administrative staff provide a broad range of family defense representation, advocacy and support. See Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923); Pierce v. Socy of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925); Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158 (1944); Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972). None of this work is possible when parents are assigned panel attorneys who work as solo practitioners on their cases. Commn on Parental Legal Representation Public Hearings 38 (Sept. 27, 2018), http:/nycourts.gov/ip/Parental-Legal-Rep/PDFs/NYCPublicHearing9-27-18_F.pdf (oral testimony of Jeanette Vega, Training Dir., RISE). It added over the years an immigration practice and, in 2007, with this new contract, a family defense practice as well. An X-ray revealed that Sophia sustained a skull fracture. The notes of the interviews are on file with the author. Very commonly, abuse petitions involving physical injuries to children are filed in the absence of direct evidence concerning how the injury was sustained. For most parents, this conference, occurring at one of the most emotionally laden moments of their lives, and which will fatefully determine whether they will be allowed to bring their child home with them from the hospital, is something they endure alone without representation or support. . From $74,000 a year. Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 1, at 45. Easily apply. at 17, 3839 (oral testimony of Angeline Montauban, parent). Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) is seeking Entry Level Attorney Candidates for the Family Defense team. See id. With the positive evaluation from the court mental health clinic and letters the team gathered from Ms. Barrows service providers, the judge agreed to allow the children to return home for overnight visits, commonly a crucial step that leads to the eventual return of children to their parents custody. Disclosing the news of her pregnancy and her decision to stop taking the court-ordered medication was an extremely delicate action risking not only her right to continue visiting with her children but losing custody of the newborn upon birth. The defense team was able to dispose of it in less than three months. This Article is designed to bring to life the proactive nature of the multidisciplinary practice. In Queens and Richmond County (Staten Island), no change to the legal representation landscape occurred at that time. for Child.s Servs., https://www1.nyc.gov/site/acs/child-welfare/will-acs-take-my-child.page (last visited Oct. 6, 2020). of BDS' family defense clients were reunited with their children at the conclusion of their family court case. The strategy worked. The parties agreed to a settlement, where Ms. Andersons daughter would be returned to her care immediately. 41. In child welfare cases, victories often prove to be short-lived. Despite a formal agency policy known as Child Safety Alert 14,74 which called for the agency to conduct a meeting prior to the birth in every case,75 agencies routinely fail to hold pre-birth planning conferences with pregnant women unless a client or her legal team advocates for or requests the court to order its convening.76 Even when such conferences do take place, experienced practitioners complain that the discussion and recommendation from the pre-birth conference is, in reality, largely irrelevant to whether the baby will be taken after delivery.77 Instead, the really important meeting takes place at the hospital, within hours of the babys birth. Part III briefly describes the findings in the qualitative study. They specify the steps an agency must undertake to reunify a family and the tasks the parent must perform as the condition for keeping or regaining custody of his or her child. An ill-advised case plan not only wastes money; it wastes the most precious commodity in the field: time.
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