Bronx Defenders began as an organization that only did criminal defense. There are still other differences between the offices, including the number of staff employed and the various positions each office created. This catch-22 problem made preventing Ms. Barrows eviction vital on multiple fronts. Where reunification is not possible, we work to achieve the most favorable resolution possible to preserve the familys bond whenever possible for the benefit of the parent and the child. is a public defense office that provides outstanding representation and advocacy to people facing loss of freedom, family separation and other serious legal harms. Part IV, the heart of the Article, describes accounts of actual cases undertaken by this new breed of family defenders, to help explain their superior ability to achieve the objectives of keeping children safely with their families. Ct. Act 1046(a)(ii) (McKinney 2020) ([P]roof of injuries sustained by a child or of the condition of a child of such a nature as would ordinarily not be sustained or exist except by reason of the acts or omissions of the parent or other person responsible for the care of such child shall be prima facie evidence of child abuse or neglect, as the case may be, of the parent or other person legally responsible.). 14. These reviews are essential to the success of reunification efforts. 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. Article 10 Attorney for the Family Defense Practice Team. Admin. 85. In only 16 of the 381 casesfour percentwere children placed in foster care with strangers. Today (A.B.A., June 4, 2019), https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/child_law/resources/child_law_practiceonline/january---december-2019/providing-parents-multidisciplinary-legal-representation-signifi/. Each of the four family defender offices in New York City has created specialized projects of one sort or another. In testimony presented to the New York State Commission on Parental Representation, Bronx Defenders presented fiscal year 2018 data concerning the outcomes for 381 parents the office advised during their ACS investigations: Of those parents, 164 (43%) were never charged with abuse or neglect in the Family Court. Are you or someone you know being investigated by the police or ACS? 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. Even when these lawyers are skilled courtroom advocates, their advocacy is too frequently hamstrung by antecedent deficits engaged in by the agency when, for example, it proposed and implemented an inadequate case plan. 384-b(7)(f)(1). . & Fam. Our team of attorneys, paralegals, advocates, social workers and administrative staff provide a broad range of family defense representation, advocacy and support. for Child. Commn on Hum. Admin. 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. The goal of our early intervention is to avoid court filings that have a harsh impact on families. The strategy worked even better than expected. From $74,000 a year. Ms. Barrow disclosed to her defense team that she was pregnant. Need assistance with an ACS investigation or court case. See also Jason A. Oetjen, Natl Council of Juv. When that happens, the impact of the defender offices is invisible. 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. 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. 18, 428.6 (2020). As soon as this case was assigned to Ms. Greens counsel, her team of attorneys and social work professionals began to put in place a strategy to try to have Sophia returned to her care as soon as possible. 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. Homicide Unit Mitigation Social . 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. 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. $68,640 a year. 65. 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. Ct. 2003). With the housing crisis abated, the rest of the family defense team could keep its focus on the family court case. The leading characteristic of the offices method of representing parents is to participate actively in the case conferences held at the agency where the case plan for each case is established.65 These plans set the stage for all that follows and are often the single most important factor in a cases outcome. This Article serves to provide the reader with a deeper understanding of how the family defender offices actually do their work, in order to better explain how they achieve the results found by the quantitative study. 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. An ill-advised case plan not only wastes money; it wastes the most precious commodity in the field: time. P (718) 254-0700; F (718) 254-0897; E info@bds.org; Facebook; Twitter; 30+ days ago Full Time. . Admin. Unfortunately, a complication temporarily derailed the effort just when the team was hopeful for a satisfactory resolution of the visitation motion and the underlying petition itself. The team met with Ms. Barrow and began the task of coordinating the substantial support needed in managing Ms. Barrows mental illness and disability. Even when the defenders were unsuccessful in preventing a case from being filed in court, the defender office was already familiar with the facts of the case and had a relationship with the parent. 29. The examining doctors asked Ms. Greens mother what may have happened to Sophia and her mother was unable to provide them with a satisfactory answer. . 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. Even though Sophias injury was an accident, court calendars are so backed up that it takes many months from the date of a filing to get to a trial on the facts. 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. In contrast, the family defender office attorney who worked with the parent during the late stages of her pregnancy is well prepared to advocate on the parents behalf from day one. 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. Res. Our Early Defense team provides advocacy to parents during the initial stages of an ACS investigation. 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). Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) represents over 35,000 clients in criminal, family, immigration and civil cases annually. We work alongside people harmed by unfair systems to fight injustice and change things for the better. Alice received her J.D. They also reveal the critical importance of addressing the needs of clients concerning matters beyond the child welfare system itself. 17. . But, arguably even more importantly, there is an administrative process that, in many cases, begins before the court proceedings and, in all cases, continues on a separate path during the court process. 1. 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. Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) is seeking Experienced Attorney's for the Criminal Practice's legal team. Easily apply. The court ordered the children to be placed in foster care at the first court appearance and limited the mothers access to them to twice-weekly visits supervised at the agency. Commn on Parental Legal Representation Pub. 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. The Family Defense Practice at Brooklyn Defenders has been representing parents and other caregivers in Family Court since 2007. Work Prac., The Bronx Defenders). 2 (. info@bds.org. This is the third in a series of articles discussing the results of child welfare cases in which parents in New York City were represented by a new form of legal services provision: family defender offices whose staff include social workers, parent advocates, and lawyers. How U.S. Policy Has Failed Immigrant Children: Family Separation in the Obama and Trump Eras, Wolves in Sheeps Clothing: How Religious Exemption Laws for Discriminatory Private Agencies Violate the Constitution and Harm LGBTQ+ Families, American Bar Association At the end of the nine-month period, the case was dismissed. The prior quantitative and qualitative studies focused exclusively on outcomes of cases and on the views of professionals who see the work of the family defenders in family court. Visit Us . Mr. Sanchez took his son to Mexico and completed the treatment. They then returned to their permanent residence in New York. Instead, her lawyers requested that the court order an Imminent Risk Assessment with the courts mental health clinic once the defense team was convinced that Ms. Barrow would be evaluated to present no risk to her newborn. For most panel lawyers, if a matter is continued on the court calendar for six weeks, the lawyer is able to put the case in a folder and reopen it one or two days before the next court date. Each office was expected to accept approximately half of the new case assignments to represent parents charged with abuse or neglect of their children (what this Article calls child welfare cases).18 The remainder of the filings were to be assigned, as before, to panel attorneys. 9. 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). The team successfully persuaded the agency to agree to release the newborn to Ms. Barrows care with court-ordered supervision. This figure, eight percent placed in foster care, compares with the most recent data maintained by New York State, indicating that 64 percent of newborns born to women with children already in foster care in 2015 were placed in foster care. You will receive assistance in areas impacting your life, such as immigration, housing, benefits, education and employment. 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. They also develop training materials to enrich and support the Family Defense Practice. BDS is a public defense office that represents low-income New Yorkers in criminal, family, immigration, and civil legal matters. Our Approach. 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. 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. 33. 8. The defense team not only was able to achieve the return of Ms. Andersons daughter to her custody, it resolved the entire case, eliminating further need for court appearances. . Succinctly summarizing the advantages of the multidisciplinary offices to clients, Chris Gottlieb wrote: For clients, being represented by organizations rather than solo practitioners means having a team on your side: an advocate you can reach on the phone when your lawyer is in court; another lawyer from the office available to step in when yours is on leave or stuck in a different courtroom; the benefit of a brief bank so your lawyer doesnt have to draft every motion from scratch; and office space where your kids can play while you meet with your lawyer. Chris Gottlieb et al., Discovering Family Defense: A History of the Family Defense Clinic at NYU School of Law, 41 N.Y.U. The defense team then went into action. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of these agency meetings. Among jurisdictions other than New York City that have been national leaders and innovators in parent representation is Washington State under the leadership of Joanne Moore. The final order terminating her parental rights was entered a mere six weeks before Ms. Anderson, now in the late stages of her pregnancy, met with social workers at the unit. The parent organization employs a large number of poverty lawyers who represent clients in a broad swath of legal matters, including housing, immigration, social security benefits, and custody and divorce, among others. Id. 44. Similarly, preventing a parent from being removed from the country for an immigration-related reason is also beyond what agency caseworkers do.92 But real-life events such as these must be given the highest possible priority if parents are to achieve their objective of regaining the custody of their children from foster care. At her conference, Ms. Anderson was accompanied by a parent advocate who had lived the child welfare experience and a social worker from the defender office who carefully laid out the details of the efforts Ms. Anderson had undertaken in recent weeks. Her mother took Sophia to the emergency room. & Fam. BDS provides innovative, multi-disciplinary, and client-centered criminal, family, and immigration defense, as well as civil legal services, social work support and advocacy, for tens of thousands of clients in Brooklyn every year. 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. It also is important to appreciate how the offices support the professionals emotionally. Brooklyn Defenders provides a wide range of services, including assisting people who are facing an investigation, providing legal representation to people who are brought to court and helping to clear the records of people from databases that impact employment. 2022 American Bar Association, all rights reserved. See also In re Hofbauer, 393 N.E.2d 1009 (N.Y.1979). In Queens and Richmond County (Staten Island), no change to the legal representation landscape occurred at that time. 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. Instead, in New York City, the task was given to the Mayors Office of the Criminal Justice Coordinator, which had deep knowledge of the criminal justice system but no experience with the child welfare system. 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. But those studies included comparisons between counties (some of which had the program and some of which did not) in addition to comparisons within counties (pre- and post-implementation of the new model). There is no question that the in-court advocacy engaged in by the family defender offices is of a much higher order than that practiced by the panel lawyers, as the qualitative study attests. The units signal distinction is making sure that someone from the defense team is present at the hospital when the baby is born and is available to participate in all meetings the agency will arrange to discuss the plan. . What services have they completed? First, the social worker went to the home to assess for herself the conditions in the apartment. 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. When the agency interviewed her, Ms. Green told the investigators the same thing she told the doctors at the hospital. at 23 n.179. 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. She asked her mother to take Sophia to see a doctor because Ms. Green had to be at work. Full-time. 89. 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. 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. 1337, 133839 (2012). Gottlieb et al., supra note 60, at 559. 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 staff of 300 includes 180 attorneys as well as social workers, investigators, paralegals, re-entry specialists, jail liaisons, education, community organizers and policy specialists. Emily (she/her/hers) received her J.D. We fight to protect New Yorkers from the trauma of separation from their loved ones and to reunite families as soon as possible. Admin., The CITYFEPS Rent Supplement Program Fact Sheet, https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dhs/downloads/pdf/CITYFEPS/CITYFEPS-fact-sheet.pdf. The last 15 months have taken a toll on all of us. 2019, https://cbexpress.acf.hhs.gov/index.cfm?event=website.viewArticles&issueid=208ionid=2&articleid=5378. 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). Brooklyn Defender Services had to scramble to find a new, stronger cloud system something many smaller public defense offices and private attorneys contracted for public defense work lack the capacity to do. See National Alliance for Parent Representation, Am. Moreover, in my experience, judges rarely overrule (or reconsider) the agencys assessment of what services are appropriate. The active family defender community cannot take full credit for this this dramatic shrinking of the foster care population. . L. & Poly 141 (2002). And once the amount of visits was increased, the next step eventually would be returning Sophia to Ms. Greens custody. See N.Y. Fam. & Lauren Shapiro, Dir., Family Def. Hum. Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 1, at 4546. Understanding the Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 4, at 910. 72. Id. See N.Y. Fam. The company is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. See also N.Y. Fam. N.Y. Soc. Social holds may result when a safety planning conference does not happen until after birth. Id. make applications for investigators or other experts where appropriate . 13. Ms. Green did not provide a clear answer, and she said she wondered whether it happened when Sophia fell off a bed. With this in mind, as the following case examples will reveal, the family defenders in the interdisciplinary offices devote considerable attention to all that is happening outside of court. Brooklyn, NY. Our Law & Appeals attorneys work on special legal proceedings, including appeals and special motions in family court. A goal of this Article is to lay the groundwork for leaders in child welfare throughout the United States to embrace the work new family defenders do.59 There are many ways to reform child welfare practice and policy in this country. If you are a current client of BDS, contact your lawyer, social worker, or other staff for an appointment. Instead, she would have met her lawyer for the first time minutes before her first hearing, and that lawyer would have to make the argument for the return of her baby knowing only what could be learned in that short time. Ketteringham & Becker written testimony, supra note 26, at 8 (emphasis in original). 86. 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. 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. 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. 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. Contacting a BDS Staff Member . See N.Y. County Law 722(3) (McKinney 2020). N.Y. Unified Ct. Sys. But, as the examples in this Article show, the offices undertake significant out-of-court work that dramatically impacts the child welfare practice in New York City. 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. Commn on Hum. 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. But the defender community maintains meaningful pressure on the system to live up to this rhetoric. 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). Fighting for you, your family & our community. Homicide Unit Mitigation Social Worker . See Paredes v. City of New York, No. 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. Social Worker - Mental Health Practice. Def., https://neighborhooddefender.org/services/family-defense/ (last visited Sept. 19, 2020). 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. Codes R. & Regs. The first was that Ms. Barrow was in jeopardy of being evicted from her apartment.

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