The goal was to secure evidence from an independent, well-respected therapist that Ms. Green possessed the temperament and capability of raising her child safely. What insights have they gained? Brooklyn, NY. 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. Commn on Parental Legal Representation Pub. . Hybrid remote in Brooklyn, NY 11201. And by so doing, these defenders improve child welfare practice for everyone: the agencies, the court, and, of course, the families who are brought into the system. New York law does not require that the agency prove how certain injuries were sustained.71 Instead, when the injuries appear to be the result of abuse, it is sufficient for the agency to allege that the child sustained an injury that most likely was the result of child abuse, creating a rebuttable presumption where the parent may present evidence either proving how the injury was sustained or why the parent should not be held legally accountable for the injury.72 When a petition alleges no direct evidence of abuse, but rather that the nature of the injury is such that it must have been the result of abuse, parents and attorneys are placed in a difficult position. Whether it is the removal of children, incarceration, deportation, eviction or houselessness, the people we represent face long periods of forced family separation. In the weeks leading up to the status conference, Ms. Anderson and the team worked to ensure she was able to attend all visits with her daughter, that she completed the mental health evaluation the judge requested, and that her service providers were serving her well. What the previous articles did not disclose in any depth is what is actually involved in representing parents in child welfare cases and what the staff do in individual cases. But because she would be applying for shelter housing at a time when her children were not in her custody, she would be counted as a single person living alone and would be eligible only for a studio-sized apartment, unsuitable for children. Natl Council of Juv. 347-592-2500. American law protects a parents constitutional rights to make critical decisions concerning a childs upbringing, including decisions involving medical care for their children.83 But in my experience, it frequently happens that poor parents are deprived of the same rights accorded to wealthy parents and are charged in court with failing to provide a specific kind of medical care for their child even when the parent is not entirely ignoring his or her childs health needs. They communicate frequently with caseworkers to rearrange meetings and services, to plan for the next steps, and for many other reasons. 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. 64. Because the agency caseworker failed to attend this medical conference, however, the agency continued to insist in court that the surgery was required and assert that the surgeon considered Mr. Sanchezs refusal to consent to the surgery as placing Eduardo at serious risk of harm. .). . Id. Judges, Improving Parents Representation in Dependency Cases: A Washington State Pilot Program Evaluation. 20. 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. mediarequests@bds.org. This meant the team not only had to work towards regaining the custody of her two children; it would have to prepare for the possibility that the agency would seek the removal of her newborn. General Inquiries. You will receive assistance in areas impacting your life, such as immigration, housing, benefits, education and employment. Caseworkers visit parents in their homes and talk to them and their service providers on a regular basis. . The three officesBrooklyn Defender Services (Kings County), The Bronx Defenders (Bronx County), and the Center for Family Representation (New York County)are each structured somewhat differently.19 The characteristic all three offices have in common is that they are multidisciplinary: they employ lawyers on their staff along with social workers and/or parent advocates (individuals who themselves experienced the child welfare system as a parent accused of neglecting their child).20 Each office spends considerable time on their cases out of court, working closely with their clients and advocating for and with them at child welfare agencies meetings.21 Several years later, a fourth officethe Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlemwas awarded a contract to share the representation of parents in Manhattan with the Center for Family Representation, using their community-based model to represent families living in Harlem zip codes.22 In 2011, the Center for Family Representation was awarded a second contract to provide parental representation in Queens County.23 To date, these four providers handle the vast majority of parental representation in New York, Kings, Queens, and Bronx Counties. 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. This, in turn, most commonly means focusing on how parents have changed since the case began. Because the new offices ethical duty is to strive to accomplish their clients objectives, and because almost all of their clients want to keep or regain custody of their children as quickly as possible, family defender offices are in the business of trying to achieve the identical objective everyone else in the child welfare field has: keeping children safely with their families and avoiding the needless placement of children into foster care.95, The interdisciplinary approach is recognized as a best practice.96 In 2019, a panel commissioned by Judge Janet DiFiore, the chief judge of the Court of Appeals in New York, recommended an expansion of interdisciplinary law offices from New York City throughout the state of New York due to their success.97, The impact created by high-level law offices devoted to representing parents in child welfare cases goes well beyond the statistics from the study. Today, we are the primary provider of legal representation to parents facing the removal of their children to the foster system in Brooklyn Family Court. These factors included demographic characteristics of parents and children, family size, severity of allegations and types of allegations, judge, court borough, and prior involvement with the child welfare system. See N.Y. Fam. One of the family defender offices responded to this practice by creating a special unit assigned to handle cases of this kind.80 The special unit is designed to better represent pregnant mothers who become enmeshed with the child welfare system. from Columbia Law School and graduated from Amherst College summa cum laude with a B.A. (June 5, 2008), https://perma.cc/L2CZ-Z64X. . In addition, by being such a careful listener and advocate, the defender team also ensured that Mr. Sanchez felt supported during an especially challenging time in his life when he was forced to divert his attention from taking care of his son to defending his right to remain his sons parent. 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. 11. 67. . Law 409-e(2) (McKinney 2020) (mandating preparation of case plans by the social services district in active consultation with the childs parent or guardian). When the conference took place one day after the babys birth, the defense teams social worker and parent advocate attended with Ms. Barrow. for Child.s Servs., Children in Foster Care by Borough/CD of Foster Care Placement, /content/aba-cms-dotorg/en/groups/family_law/publications/family-law-quarterly/volume-54/issue-1/how-family-defender-offices-new-york-city-are-able-safely-reduce-time-children-spend-foster-care, Preserving Families: Parent Representation, Immigration Reform, and LGBTQ+ Rights, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.04.022, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105163, http://ww2.nycourts.gov/sites/default/files/document/files/2019-02/PLR_Commission-Report.pdf, https://www.bronxdefenders.org/our-work/family-defense-practice/, https://www.cfrny.org/our-work/team-model/, https://neighborhooddefender.org/services/family-defense/, http://bds.org/wp-content/uploads/2018.08.16-BDS-testimony-to-the-Commission-on-Parental-Representation-FINAL.pdf, http://www.opd.wa.gov/documents/0047-2003_PRP_Evaluation.pdf, https://cbexpress.acf.hhs.gov/index.cfm?event=website.viewArticles&issueid=208ionid=2&articleid=5378, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/child_law/project-areas/parentrepresentation/, https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dhs/downloads/pdf/CITYFEPS/CITYFEPS-fact-sheet.pdf, https://www1.nyc.gov/site/acs/child-welfare/will-acs-take-my-child.page, https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/cchr/downloads/pdf/publications/Pregnancy_Report.pdf, nycourts.gov/ip/Parental-Legal-Rep/PDFs/NYCPublicHearing9-27-18_F.pdf, https://caseyfamilypro-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/media/SF_Quality-parent-representation_fnl.pdf, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/child_law/resources/child_law_practiceonline/january---december-2019/providing-parents-multidisciplinary-legal-representation-signifi/, http://www.nycourts.gov/ip/Parental-Legal-Rep/PDFs/InterimReport-FINAL.pdf, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53ee4f0be4b015b9c3690d84/t/54138debe4b037d2d5803f6b/1410567659179/CWW-vol9.pdf, https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/acs/pdf/data-analysis/2020/incarefostercare.pdf. Lawyers Assn, 763 N.Y.S.2d at 407 (finding that because of the rate levels assigned counsel do not . at 4648. . Easily apply. 42 U.S.C. 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 . The social workers on Ms. Greens defense team tapped into their knowledge of local community resources and helped Ms. Green find accessible services that would fit into her busy school and work schedule. Our team works to find temporary custody arrangements, refute false allegations and help inform parents of their rights at early stages of an ACS investigation about their family. When Mr. Sanchez told the surgeon that he would not consent to the recommended surgery, the surgeon made a call to the New York Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment, which resulted in an investigation being commenced by the local child protection agency.84. The Center for Family Representation was awarded the contract in New York. Being involved at the earliest stages of a case in designing a case plan, or in accurately assessing the needs (if any) of a parent, is a critical step in minimizing the amount of time children need to spend in foster care because the most important factor courts consider when deciding whether to return children from foster care to their family is whether the circumstances that led to the placement have sufficiently changed. 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. Lucas A. Gerber et al., Understanding the Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach to Parental Representation in Child Welfare, 116 Child. Since the family defender offices opened in 2007 in New York City, the community whose children have been wrested from poor families has had a collective voice in the form of lobbying efforts by the newly created family defender advocates. Without Ms. Anderson having the team working with her, she would be expected to attend this conference alone with agency caseworkers and supervisors. . But often the agency seeks to remove newborns from the hospital in a case in which the agency has an ongoing involvement with the mother. at 14. Hearing (Sept. 27, 2018) (written testimony of Ctr. We were very lucky to have [our lawyer] on the day that [my son] got in trouble. . & Fam. They then returned to their permanent residence in New York. In late 2016, Ms. Barrow, the parent of a ten-year-old child and a one-year-old child, was charged in family court with neglect resulting from her struggle to manage the challenges of mental illness and a cognitive disability.68 The petition was filed shortly after she was discharged from a short-term hospitalization for mental health treatment. . This sometimes happens when the mother has no prior involvement with the child welfare system but behaves at the hospital in a manner that leads hospital personnel to call in a report of suspected child abuse. 63. Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 1, at 45. Brooklyn, NY 11201. 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. See Will ACS Take My Child?, N.Y.C. We push for equitable and humane policies by advocating for better laws, filing systemic litigation and educating the public. Ignoring them as part of the defensive strategy is only a tiny step away from ignoring the case conferences. Part III briefly describes the findings in the qualitative study. Article 10 Attorney for the Family Defense Practice Team. 13. See Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 1; see also Understanding the Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 4. Prior to joining the Center, Alice worked as a Staff Attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services' Family Defense Practice, where she represented indigent parents charged with neglect and abuse. Services Provided:NA Specialties: Other Address: 195 Montague Street, 5th Floor, is Brooklyn, is New York 11201 Phone: (347) 592-2500 Email: lshapiro@bfdp.bds.org . Mr. Sanchez took his son to Mexico and completed the treatment. Admin. Alice received her J.D. 61. Every administrator of New York Citys child welfare system in this century has been committed to the principle of eliminating the unnecessary placement or retention of children in foster care. for Child.s Servs., Children in Foster Care by Borough/CD of Foster Care Placement (Dec. 31, 2019), https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/acs/pdf/data-analysis/2020/incarefostercare.pdf. Ms. Greens attorneys used this knowledge to start planning their settlement and trial strategy.73. Because Ms. Green was unable to provide a clear explanation for the injury, the hospital called the child protection agency, which immediately began an investigation. Generally, family court judges look most favorably upon parents who attend visits frequently and are able to work with the foster care agency to gradually increase the independence of visits from those supervised at the foster care agency to unsupervised overnight visits in the home of the parent. 24 Public Defender jobs available in Bay Terrace, NY on Indeed.com. Once Ms. Barrow was living in an apartment too small for her children to live in with her, a new barrier to the childrens return would be to secure suitable housing, which would certainly extend the childrens stay in foster care. Get the inside scoop on jobs, salaries, top office locations, and CEO insights. 382 (2019) [hereinafter Accidents Happen]. At this appearance, Ms. Andersons lawyer presented the arguments supporting the application that the baby be allowed to remain in Ms. Andersons care, highlighting all the work she had done and providing the court with stacks of supporting documentation. Brooklyn, NY. Find out what works well at brooklyn defender services from the people who know best. & Youth Servs. See also Jason A. Oetjen, Natl Council of Juv. Lauren Shapiro has been working as a Managing Director, Family Defense Practice at Brooklyn Defender Services for 16 years. See Commn on Parental Legal Representation, Interim Report to Chief Judge DiFiore 1215 (2019), http://ww2.nycourts.gov/sites/default/files/document/files/2019-02/PLR_Commission-Report.pdf (discussing history of parental representation in New York State). However, the defense team knew that having this conference in front of the judge provided another advocacy opportunity to build on the judges favorable impression of Ms. Anderson. Medical neglect is a common charge brought against parents in child welfare cases.82 Depending on the severity of the claimed neglect, the local child welfare agency may be seeking to place the child in foster care to protect the child from the parents failure to provide the child with adequate treatment or, less drastically, to secure court authorization to require that a child have a medical procedure it believes is necessary but that the parent refuses to allow. Jail Services Attorney/Advocate. 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). & Youth Servs. Livingston St / Smith St. Ketteringham & Becker written testimony, supra note 26, at 8 (emphasis in original). By 2014, five family defender offices had contracts to represent parents.93 In some parts of New York City, family defender offices handle the vast majority of new cases filed. When that happens, the impact of the defender offices is invisible. The office created a community intake program, allowing residents in the community to secure legal representation before they have been charged in court with neglect and before they are legally entitled to court-assigned counsel. Commn on Parental Legal Representation, Interim Report to Chief Judge DiFiore 1215 (2019). But the offices nonetheless prevented foster care entirely because of out-of-court advocacy. Your membership has expired - last chance for uninterrupted access to free CLE and other benefits. Fighting for you, your family & our community. In 2003, a New York State Supreme Court Justice found that the payment rates for assigned counsel resulted in a shortage of panel attorneys and deprived litigants of effective assistance of counsel.12 Panel lawyers would rarely engage the services of a social worker and have their fees paid by the court.13 These lawyers spent virtually their entire professional time in the courtroom, waiting either for a new assignment or for their cases to be called.14 As a result, they were rarely available to their clients out of court.15 Half of court-assigned lawyers billed for less than five hours of out-of-court work in family court proceedings.16. Then she engaged a cleaning service to address the roaches and the condition of Ms. Barrows home. Hearing (Aug. 16, 2018) (written testimony of Emma S. Ketteringham & Caitlin Becker, at 2) [hereinafter Ketteringham & Becker written testimony]. Family Defense Practice. Moreover, in my experience, judges rarely overrule (or reconsider) the agencys assessment of what services are appropriate. Understanding the Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 4, at 7. 6. 82. It also means that parents represented by panel attorneys almost never are able to benefit from creating pushback by their legal team to reshape a proposed case plan to better address the particular needs of each client. 105163 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105163 [hereinafter Understanding the Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach]. N.Y.C. See Paredes v. City of New York, No. Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) is seeking Experienced Attorney's for the Criminal Practice's legal team. 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. One parent told the Commission she attended between twelve and fifteen conferences over a three-year period, and in every instance, she attended them alone.88 The second parent testified that she attended between twelve and eighteen such conferences over a longer period of time.89 She, too, was never accompanied by anyone to a conference.90 By way of comparison, the social work director at one of the family defender offices testified at the same hearing that her office has a team of nineteen parent advocates and social workers who attended nearly 1,000 conferences with parents in fiscal year 2018.91. Browse 12 jobs at brooklyn defender services near Brooklyn, NY. One such example involves what should happen when a parent is required to perform a certain service that is covered by Medicaid or other programs when the service provider will not commence the service until the funds are made available to it. P 646-971-2722. Res. Although the agency does not permit lawyers to attend these conferences, it does allow parents to bring anyone else to be present. It set up a meeting with the surgeon and invited the child protection agency to attend so that it could hear the more complete picture. 44. It added over the years an immigration practice and, in 2007, with this new contract, a family defense practice as well. Panel lawyers may be assigned to represent adult parties in a large range of other types of family court cases, including custody and visitation disputes, paternity proceedings, child support contempt proceedings, and cases involving domestic violence, in which the represented party might be the accused batterer or the alleged victim. But the team was unable to secure the agencys support for unsupervised visits. 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. The active family defender community cannot take full credit for this this dramatic shrinking of the foster care population. for Child. The study was the first of its kind ever conducted, although two previous studies were undertaken in Washington State that compared cases in which parents were represented by a new Parent Representation Program with the outcomes of cases in which parents were represented by traditional parent lawyers. The family defender office assigned to represent Ms. Green handles many of these cases each year and has become expert both in cross-examining medical experts called by the agency and at engaging and communicating with knowledgeable physicians able to provide their expert medical opinion on whether an injury is more likely to be the consequence of abuse or an accident. Child welfare has long been in search of evidence-based programs designed to keep children safely in their own homes. . For current information on these offices, see Family Defense Practice, Bronx Defenders, https://www.bronxdefenders.org/our-work/family-defense-practice/ (last visited Oct. 18, 2020); Family Defense, Brooklyn Defender Serv., http://bds.org/practice/family-defense/ (last visited Oct. 18, 2020); Family Defense Teams, Ctr. FDP represents over 4,000 parents and caretakers each year in Abuse and Neglect and related cases in Brooklyn Family Court. As Chris Gottlieb explained: Perhaps most important for staff, these organizations offer the emotional support and grounding needed to do extremely hard work in the trenches: a professional home to go back to after a difficult day in court; knowing your colleagues will listen and understand; being part of a team. 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. It's time to renew your membership and keep access to free CLE, valuable publications and more. For an excellent recent article describing the sophisticated family defense practice The Bronx Defenders has established when representing parents charged with child abuse based on unexplained serious injuries sustained by children, see Jessica Horan-Block & Elizabeth Tuttle Newman, Accidents Happen: Exposing Fallacies in Child Protection Abuse Cases and Reuniting Families Through Aggressive Litigation, 22 CUNY L. Rev. 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. Social hold is a colloquial term used to describe the practice of a hospital separating new parents from their child immediately following birth while a report to the State Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment or an ACS investigation is pending.