Dir., Brooklyn Defender Serv. 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. 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. The Family Defense Practice at Brooklyn Defenders has been representing parents and other caregivers in Family Court since 2007. The medications began working after only a few weeks and Ms. Barrow quickly regained her focus. This is among the distinguishing characteristics of this kind of daily defense advocacy these offices employ. 74. BDS is a public defense office that represents low-income New Yorkers in criminal, family, immigration, and civil legal matters. Along the path of the case, courts typically order that parents perform various services63 and ultimately order that children be allowed to remain with their families or be placed in another arrangement. Because Ms. Green could not say with certainty what caused the skull fracture, the defense team relied on an expert who analyzed the X-rays and determined that they were fully consistent with an accidental fall, thus providing the needed evidence that Sophias injury was not necessarily the result of abuse. For new lawyers, the existence of these organizations means not only jobs, but jobs one can get straight out of law school that come with the kind of training and supervision only larger offices can provide. 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. Part I provides a brief history of parental representation in New York. 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. See Casey Family Programs, How Does High-Quality Legal Representation for Parents Support Better Outcomes? The clogged courts calendar, however, meant that the court could not conduct the evidentiary hearing immediately. Because the qualitative study focused so much on what the new family defender offices did in court, the case descriptions that follow focus on the out-of-court work that is crucial to the holistic model employed by the offices. These reviews are essential to the success of reunification efforts. 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. Simultaneously, Ms. Greens attorneys and the social work staff worked closely together to help Ms. Green navigate the agencys service and visitation policies. Hearing (Aug. 16, 2018) (written testimony of Michelle Burrell, at 2). Each of the three offices had a distinct corporate structure. See Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 1; see also Understanding the Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 4. for Child.s Servs., https://www1.nyc.gov/site/acs/child-welfare/will-acs-take-my-child.page (last visited Oct. 6, 2020). General Inquiries. Funding for the study was secured from Casey Family Programs,28 one of the leading child welfare foundations in the country committed to supporting practices designed to ensure that children are able to be raised safely in their families of origin.29 An important question the study hoped to learn was whether the kind of legal representation made available to parents would have any impact on reducing the time children spend in foster care.30, The quantitative study was a multiyear study of child welfare cases brought in the New York City courts to determine whether the kind of legal representation provided to parents can make a difference in the outcome of cases.31 The researchers examined child welfare cases filed in New York City Family Court between 2007 and 2014; the final sample involved 9,582 families with 18,288 children.32 They used Propensity Score Matching as the statistical design, which equalized the groups of families compared on nearly twenty factors or covariates split into variables.33 This methodology allowed the researchers to attribute differences in outcomes between the two groups to the type of representation the parents received.34, The study compared the outcome of cases based on whether parents were represented by panel lawyers and parents who were represented by one of the family defender offices.35 Ultimately, the researchers traced the outcomes of nearly 10,000 families and their more than 18,000 children through a four-year follow-up period.36, The study found that the kind of representation afforded to parents makes a dramatic difference in the length of time children spend in foster care.37 Giving parents the right kind of legal team results in families being reunited far sooner than would otherwise happen.38 The family defense offices were able to secure the safe return of children to their families 43 percent more often in their first year than panel attorneys, and 25 percent more often in the second year.39 Giving parents lawyers from family defense offices allowed children to be permanently released to relatives more than twice as often in the first year of a case and 67 percent more often in the second year.40 These families may otherwise have been permanently dissolved or the children may have spent their childhood separated from their family. The Family Defense Practice at Brooklyn Defenders has been representing parents and other caregivers in Family Court since 2007. Res. 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. Criminal, Family, Immigration and Civil Defense. Ms. Green was a single parent of an eight-month-old daughter, Sophia. The problem, of course, is that the surgeon would not have written that letter without the very effective advocacy Mr. Sanchezs team brought to the meeting with him. The previous studies limited their focus to quantitative outcomes achieved at court or to reporting the views of stakeholders focused on the differences between the two kinds of representation made available to parents in New York City.58 This Article starts where the prior two articles left off. Such services might include attending parenting skills or anger management classes, or participating in therapy, counseling, or drug treatment programs. Because she was unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for the injury, the agency removed Sophia from Ms. Greens custody at the hospital, placed her in foster care, and filed an abuse petition in family court the following day. 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. 33. 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. These case summaries were provided by the professionals employed by various family defender offices in New York City. Bar Assn, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/child_law/project-areas/parentrepresentation/ (last visited Oct. 19, 2020). 42. 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. 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. 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. In this sense, family defenders make child welfare work better. Browse 12 jobs at brooklyn defender services near Brooklyn, NY. 67. 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. If you are arrested, face deportation, or your children are threatened with the foster system, you can rely on us to fight for you. Id. Lawyers Assn, 763 N.Y.S.2d at 407 (finding that because of the rate levels assigned counsel do not . 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. for Family Representation, https://www.cfrny.org/our-work/team-model/ (last visited Oct. 18, 2020). Then she engaged a cleaning service to address the roaches and the condition of Ms. Barrows home. See supra note 18. When these errors are not revealed, the official record supports the erroneous conclusion that a child was removed from a parents home for a substantial reason. Find employees, official website, emails, phone numbers, revenue, employee headcount, social accounts, and anything related to Brooklyn Defender Services. Mr. Sanchez needed a champion for his cause, one who would persuade the surgeon that he was making a reasonable choice that parents have the lawful authority to make. Compare Child Welfare Watch, Tough Decisions: Dealing with Domestic Violence 15 (2003), https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53ee4f0be4b015b9c3690d84/t/54138debe4b037d2d5803f6b/1410567659179/CWW-vol9.pdf [https://perma.cc/P79M-8T6A], with N.Y.C. 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. 9. for Child. 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. Brooklyn, NY. 42 (2019), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.04.022 [hereinafter Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach]. Commn on Parental Legal Representation Pub. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of these agency meetings. Then the team moved forward on expanding Ms. Barrows access to her older children. Brooklyn Defender Services Aug 2017 - Aug 2019 2 years 1 month. Martin Guggenheim, New Study Shows Providing Parents with Multidisciplinary Legal Representation in Child Welfare Cases Furthers Everyones Interests, 20 Child.s Bureau Express no. 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. 73. 41. Homicide Unit Mitigation Social . 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. Add to those situations the countless cases where, even though the out-of-court advocacy failed to dissuade the agency from filing a petition, the agency was persuaded not to seek a removal of the child. Brooklyn, NY, US. & Youth Servs. 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. With the housing crisis abated, the rest of the family defense team could keep its focus on the family court case. This program, known as City FHEPS, is administered by New York Citys Human Resources Administration. Founded in 1996, Brooklyn Defender Services operates as a nonprofit organization that provides legal services in the areas of family, civil, criminal, and immigration. Recognizing that as soon as the baby was born, the agency would conduct a child safety conference at which it would make fateful decisions involving the family, the new team immediately started planning with Ms. Anderson. 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 . Had Ms. Barrow been evicted from her apartment, she would have had to enter New York Citys public shelter system. Family defense has been transformed in New York City. View job. At this point, the court appointed one of the family defender offices to represent Mr. Sanchez. for Child.s Servs.