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. 96%. BDS is a public defense office that represents low-income New Yorkers in criminal, family, immigration, and civil legal matters. From $74,000 a year. 42 (2019), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.04.022 [hereinafter Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach]. The parent advocate from the defense team working with Ms. Greens case provided an invaluable role in buffering the relationship with the caseworker, acting as a bridge and facilitating communication between the two. & Youth Servs. When the meeting ended, the surgeon continued to recommend surgery, but he now acknowledged that there are many children with this hip condition who can participate in sports, live happily, and never receive surgery. 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. The agency agreed to settle the case and allow Sophia to be returned to her care if Ms. Green accepted responsibility for the original injury sustained by her daughter (as an act of neglect instead of abuse) with a plan to end entirely supervision of the case in six months if nothing untoward happened during that time. $68,640 a year. The in-the-weeds work holistic practices undertake often leads to outcomes that are invisible when all that is described are data in categories of return to parent, dismiss, and the like. 4. We are the attorneys and advocates fighting injustice for individuals and families and protecting civil rights for all people. Caseworkers are a critical player in each case. 26 days ago. 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. 97. Martin Guggenheim is the Fiorello LaGuardia Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law. Then the team moved forward on expanding Ms. Barrows access to her older children. 67. Many of those changes need to happen upstream from the time and place children are reported to child welfare officials as being at risk of harm. Each of the cases described took place between 2015 and 2018. His son, Eduardo, suffers from a genetic hip disorder and, as a consequence, he is highly prone to injury. 86. 64. These case summaries were provided by the professionals employed by various family defender offices in New York City. 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. Of those children who could not be returned to their families, 40 percent more children ended up with a permanent disposition of guardianship when their parents had multidisciplinary representation than children whose parents were represented by panel lawyers.41, The study concluded that family defender office representation also saves an enormous amount of money that would otherwise have been spent on children remaining unnecessarily in foster care.42 The study found that full implementation of a multidisciplinary representation model in New York City would reduce the foster care population by 472,000 bed days per year and annually reduce foster care costs by $40 million as compared with exclusive reliance on panel lawyers.43, The qualitative findings in the study were equally impressive.44 Not only did former clients praise the kind of representation and support they received from the new offices, the professionals working in the court system also indicated significant satisfaction with the new kind of representation the offices provide.45 Of the three categories of professionals interviewed in the qualitative study, two were unequivocally positive in describing the important contributions the new offices had on practice in the courts.46 These groups were the judges and court attorneys who serve as the judges trial-level law clerks and childrens lawyers employed by The Legal Aid Society who appear in most child welfare cases as the attorney for the child.47 The third group, the lawyers prosecuting the cases, also expressed very positive things about the contributions made by the new offices but, perhaps expectedly, some attorneys in this group also complained that lawyers in these offices were too litigious and fought too hard on cases that did not deserve it.48, The study found that the professionals in the court system regarded the critical tools the family defender offices introduced into the practice as an insistence that the court conduct evidentiary hearings when the agency seeks a court order that children be placed into foster care, combined with filing motions to ensure that judges oversee case planning decisions promptly.49 Court stakeholders unanimously described a dramatic increase in motion practice, most commonly brought to challenge the agencys request to remove children from their families, to seek the return of children home, and to request other specific orders from judges.50 The study concluded that the increased use of these motions played a significant role in the offices success in securing court orders returning children to their families.51 Using each court appearance to advance the parents case, filing motions to seek better services or eliminate needless ones, and asking for more visits and for the return of children from foster care promptly are leading characteristics of the family defender office model.52, The qualitative study also found that the stakeholders identified out-of-court advocacy undertaken to be a significant, and distinctive, characteristic of the family defender offices.53 This includes accompanying clients to out-of-court case conferences held at the childcare agencies.54 Finally, the qualitative study found that the multidisciplinary offices achieve distinctive results in part because they attend much better to their clients well-being than the panel lawyers do throughout the time the case is active in court.55 The study found that the family defender offices place a premium on attending to the emotional well-being of their clients.56 Emotional supports that help parents believe in their abilities are crucial, since the outcomes of many cases depend on the parents bearing up well during the process, engaging in required services, maintaining a regular visitation schedule with their children when they are in foster care, and otherwise satisfying the requirements of service plans.57. View job. at 17, 3839 (oral testimony of Angeline Montauban, parent). And once the amount of visits was increased, the next step eventually would be returning Sophia to Ms. Greens custody. In every example, the key to this success is the extraordinary amount of out-of-court time spent on each case and the proactivity engaged in by the defense team.85, The critical characteristics of each of the cases described in the previous section concern the defender teams proactive planning, anticipating next steps, and developing a plan for success calculated to persuade either the agency caseworkers investigating the case or the court. Practice, Brooklyn Defender Serv., at 2), http://bds.org/wp-content/uploads/2018.08.16-BDS-testimony-to-the-Commission-on-Parental-Representation-FINAL.pdf [hereinafter Schreibersdorf & Shapiro written testimony]. 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. Brooklyn Defender Services is a public defense office that provides outstanding representation and advocacy to people facing loss of freedom, family separation and other serious legal harms. 6 days ago. 14. This case reveals the amount of time and attention the holistic offices give to their clients and reveals what is needed to serve parents well when they become enmeshed in the child welfare system. 205 were here. See id. At this point, the court appointed one of the family defender offices to represent Mr. Sanchez. The teams social workers worked with Ms. Anderson to identify what she needed to support her child and advised her on what the agency and family court judge would want to see. It also is important to appreciate how the offices support the professionals emotionally. The practice was recently the focus of a critical report issued by the New York City Commission on Human Rights. 41. Serv. 1012(f). Brooklyn Defender Services serves communities in the State of New York. Lawyers Assn, 763 N.Y.S.2d at 407 (finding that because of the rate levels assigned counsel do not . When that happens, the impact of the defender offices is invisible. These criminal justiceoriented officials gave the role of representing parents in child welfare cases to solo practitioners from an assigned panel of available lawyers.10 These lawyers, known colloquially as panel lawyers, were already being used to represent parties eligible for court-assigned counsel in juvenile delinquency proceedings, among a number of other specialized areas of the law.11 These lawyers generally did not work in an interdisciplinary way. In those cases, the parent would not have had anyone to attend the child safety conference with her at the hospital. 7. 80. 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. It requires more professionals and more room than solo law practices. As Ms. Barrow and her defense team were making these strides, two intervening actions were taking place, either of which had the potential to negatively impact the prospects of a successful outcome. 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. Only six babies (8 percent) were placed in foster care with strangers. 30. Rev. About BDS Our Commitment Defend People and Society Between 1975 and 2007, this was the kind of representation most parents were able to receive when they were eligible for court-assigned counsel.17 In 2007, the then-named Mayors Office of Criminal Justice agreed to engage in an experiment that had a dramatic impact on child welfare practice in New York City: it offered contracts to three offices to become the primary lawyer assigned to represent parents in child welfare cases. Lawyers Assn, 763 N.Y.S.2d at 40102, 407. They also prepared for the birth of the baby, finding a trauma-trained doula and helping Ms. Anderson to set up her home with all the essentials for a baby. Our Ler mais sobre Emprego Resumo dos Detalhes Comprometimento de Tempo Carga Horria Integral Salrio Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 1, at 45. 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. Although impressed by all the work Ms. Anderson and her team had begun, the agency nonetheless was unwilling to allow Ms. Anderson to go home with her baby. Family Defense Practice. 40592/88, 1989 WL 1715714 (N.Y. Sup. In exchange for Ms. Anderson consenting to a finding that she neglected her child, the parties agreed to what is known in New York as an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal.81 The parties agreed to a settlement order that ensured that Ms. Anderson would have custody of her daughter and be subject to supervision for nine months on the understanding that the finding of neglect would be vacated and the petition dismissed in nine months unless the agency could show that Ms. Anderson placed her daughter at risk in the interim. 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. 42 U.S.C. Ct. 31. Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 1, at 43. My professional experiences in New York City include founding and co-directing the Family Defense Clinic at New York University School of Law; serving as a Founding Board Member for the Center for Family Representation; being a member of the Board of Advisors for the New York City Administration for Childrens Services from 1996 to 2013; and, most recently, since 2017, serving as a member of the New York State Commission on Parental Legal Representation. It turned out the agencys support for releasing Ms. Barrows newborn did not last one week. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of these agency meetings. The offices also are likely to have expertise in immigration, housing, and criminal court practice, areas of the law in which their clients are likely to become involved. Of the 135 (35%) cases filed in Family Court, 61 families remained together throughout the investigation and subsequent court filing, the children never removed from their homes. See N.Y. Fam. for Child.s Servs., All Staff Bulletin (July 16, 2019) (on file with the author). Lucas A. Gerber et al., Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach to Parental Representation in Child Welfare, 102 Child. In this sense, family defenders make child welfare work better. 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. One such case involved the representation by one of the family defender offices. Accepting these conditions, Ms. Andersons lawyer requested that the court hold a status conference for the case within the following month to be convened by the judge. 71. 63. This dedicated team works closely with parents to achieve family reunification even when their children have been in the foster system for a long time. When Mr. Sanchez met with his lawyers and social worker, he provided the fuller picture. 59. Richard LaFontaine. Brooklyn, NY, US. Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) is seeking an experienced Attorney for the Custody Practice of the Family Defense Team. After three years, the agency successfully prosecuted a termination of parental rights case against her. In many cases when parents are well-represented at the administrative level, what happens in court is anti-climacticthe outcome of all that went before at the agency meetings. John B. Mattingly, Safety Planning for Newborns or Newly Discovered Children Whose Siblings Are in Foster Care: Child Safety Alert #14 (Revision), N.Y.C. Ct. Act 1039 (McKinney 2020). 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. For better or for worse, preventing a parent from becoming homeless is not within the portfolio of the agency caseworker (even if it should be). The plan was to update the judge on Ms. Andersons progress and to request that the court schedule a formal hearing to determine if it still was necessary to keep the baby in foster care. Additional data from The Bronx Defenders presented in testimony to the New York State Commission on Parental Representation indicated that of the 81 children born to clients who already had children in foster at the time they gave birth to the newborn, the office was successful in ensuring that 58 (72 percent) remained at home with their mothers and 17 (20 percent) were placed with caretakers of their mothers choosing. A detailed description of strategic uses of court appearances, including the opposition of out-of-court removals; the filing of motions for discovery, for visitation, and for early release from foster care; and the conducting of contested evidentiary hearings, is provided in Accidents Happen, supra note 73, at 40624. Press Inquiries. info@bds.org. 73. That knowledge commonly results in the offices achieving better, faster results for their clients than the child welfare agency is capable of, with considerably less disruption of the family, eliminating or significantly shortening the time children are forced to live apart from their families. Commn on Parental Legal Representation Pub. 2019, https://cbexpress.acf.hhs.gov/index.cfm?event=website.viewArticles&issueid=208ionid=2&articleid=5378. Fighting for you, your family & our community. Popular Searches Brooklyn Defender Services Bds See, e.g., N.Y. Soc. Whether it is the removal of children, incarceration, deportation, eviction or houselessness, the people we represent face long periods of forced family separation. 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. 91. But no one in the court administration or local government positions in New York had any experience designing or maintaining a legal services delivery system for parents in the child welfare field. Livingston St / Smith St. See N.Y.C. Serv. Our team is able to navigate the science, medical diagnosis and documentation, retain appropriate medical experts, and contest the validity of some of the questionable science that leads to diagnoses that in turn lead to family separation. Even worse, when parents are unrepresented, the plans may fail to identify services the agency should be providing for the particular needs and circumstances of the family. Skip to main content. In child welfare cases, victories often prove to be short-lived. Hearing (Aug. 16, 2018) (written testimony of Emma S. Ketteringham & Caitlin Becker, at 2) [hereinafter Ketteringham & Becker written testimony]. This is among the distinguishing characteristics of this kind of daily defense advocacy these offices employ. Social Worker - Mental Health Practice. 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. Brooklyn, NY, US. 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. Hum. General Inquiries. Brooklyn Defender Services is a company located in Brooklyn, NY, United States. The parties agreed to a settlement, where Ms. Andersons daughter would be returned to her care immediately. She was facing eviction after she had fallen into rental arrears for six months because she was under the mistaken understanding that the rental subsidy she recently secured from New York City covered her entire rent.69 In fact, she was responsible for the portion not covered by the subsidy. Our Work. As we will see, the lack of anyone in that office with substantive knowledge of family court or child welfare deeply disadvantaged parents and families for the next forty years. Emma S. Ketteringham et al., Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies: A Reproductive Justice Response to the Womb-to-Foster-Care Pipeline, 20 CUNY L. Rev. Res. See Mark E. Courtney & Jennifer L. Hook, Evaluation of the Impact of Enhanced Parental Legal Representation on the Timing of Permanency Outcomes for Children in Foster Care, 34 Child. I had never been so scared in my life. 68. Clients benefit enormously from having a team represent them.60 Not only does it mean they will not be obliged to attend important meetings alone, but it also means that it is considerably more likely that there will be someone available to speak with them between court appearances and to return their phone calls timely. 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. 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. Apply to Staff Attorney, Family Medicine Physician, Project Supervisor and more! 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. Once again, Ms. Barrows defense team went into action. In Queens and Richmond County (Staten Island), no change to the legal representation landscape occurred at that time. 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. 58. The petition alleged that the skull fracture could only have been the result of child abuse and Ms. Greens failure to provide a sufficient explanation for the injury justified placing Sophia in foster care. This case, however, reveals how meaningful efforts by the parents defender team to understand the family and the childs medical condition changed the cases course, without the need to litigate, to call witnesses, or to rely on the court to do anything more than enter an order that all parties ultimately preferred, once the full details of the case were exposed. In those counties, the only legal representation afforded to parents in these proceedings was the assignment of solo practitioners who were members of the assigned counsel panel of attorneys eligible for court assignment. 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. Social holds may result when a safety planning conference does not happen until after birth. Id. A case like this would not even show up in the results found in the quantitative study, which focused on the length of time children remain in foster care and other outcomes of cases. 32. 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. In the year before the petition was filed, Eduardo sustained an injury that required medical attention. Beginning cautiously, New York City first awarded separate contracts for three of its five counties to three different not-for-profit organizations, each one authorized to accept court assignments in one county. It requested that Ms. Green participate in dyadic therapy with Sophia, in which a licensed therapist participates in visits between parents and children to develop a healthy attached relationship. 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. Brooklyn, NY, US. Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 1, at 4546. 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. The true meaning of the findings in the quantitative study that these offices secure the return of children to their families significantly sooner than would happen without them is that child welfare practice without the kind of oversight accomplished by the offices wrongfully separates children from families in a significant percentage of cases. None of this work is possible when parents are assigned panel attorneys who work as solo practitioners on their cases. Very commonly, abuse petitions involving physical injuries to children are filed in the absence of direct evidence concerning how the injury was sustained. 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. Despite agreeing to attend the meeting, however, the agency caseworker never came to the meeting. The social worker, fluent in English and Spanish, also served as a translator for Mr. Sanchez whose primary language is Spanish and whose command of English is limited. . . 95. These plans are routinely included in the reports agencies are required to submit every six months whenever children remain in foster care. After hearing these positive developments, the judge set a hearing to be held in one month, signaling that if things continued to go well, the judge would likely return the child then. See N.Y. Fam. See N.Y. Fam. 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. Our Preserving Family Bonds team enhances the representation we provide to clients at the later stages of a case, including termination of parental rights, should a parent be faced with this possibility. Brooklyn, NY. For MAil . 17. This program, known as City FHEPS, is administered by New York Citys Human Resources Administration. (June 5, 2008), https://perma.cc/L2CZ-Z64X. brooklyn defender services bds brooklyn defender service brooklyn defenders family defense practice bds associates inc Brooklyn Defender Services Global Presence Search All Employees Get the inside scoop on jobs, salaries, top office locations, and CEO insights. In 1972, New Yorks highest court ruled that parents have a constitutional right to counsel in child welfare proceedings.7 In 1975, the legislature codified the ruling and created a statutory right to counsel for indigent parents in child welfare proceedings.8 The legislation delegated authority for funding and managing parental representation to the counties.9.
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