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205 were here. 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. 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. 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. Ms. Greens attorneys used this knowledge to start planning their settlement and trial strategy.73. 86. Codes R. & Regs. 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. General Inquiries. 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. In addition, major improvements have been made to parental representation systems in a number of other states, including Colorado, New Mexico, New Jersey, and North Carolina. Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 1, at 45. The team successfully persuaded the agency to agree to release the newborn to Ms. Barrows care with court-ordered supervision. The strategy worked. Ct. Apr. BDS | Contact 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. And once the amount of visits was increased, the next step eventually would be returning Sophia to Ms. Greens custody. None of this work is possible when parents are assigned panel attorneys who work as solo practitioners on their cases. 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. 20. 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. An ill-advised case plan not only wastes money; it wastes the most precious commodity in the field: time. In addition, they must be reviewed periodically and formally retained to remain active members of the panel. 70. From $74,000 a year. 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. Brooklyn, NY 11201. 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. Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) is seeking Entry Level Attorney Candidates for the Family Defense team. Experienced Attorney, Criminal Defense Practice - Idealist BDS is a public defense office that represents low-income New Yorkers in criminal, family, immigration, and civil legal matters. Very commonly, abuse petitions involving physical injuries to children are filed in the absence of direct evidence concerning how the injury was sustained. Ct. Despite agreeing to attend the meeting, however, the agency caseworker never came to the meeting. In those cases, the parent would not have had anyone to attend the child safety conference with her at the hospital. Unfortunately, the foster care worker assigned to Ms. Greens case proved to be very difficult for Ms. Green to work with. Homicide Unit Mitigation Social Worker . Rts., Your Rights While Pregnant, Breastfeeding, or Caregiving: A Report on the 2019 Commission Public Hearing on Pregnancy and Caregiver Discrimination, N.Y. State Admin. 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. Id. As her due date neared, the defense team turned its focus to planning with Ms. Barrow for the babys arrival. 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. 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. Id. The Family Defense Practice at Brooklyn Defenders has been representing parents and other caregivers in Family Court since 2007. 19, 1989). Lucas A. Gerber et al., Understanding the Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach to Parental Representation in Child Welfare, 116 Child. When Mr. Sanchez met with his lawyers and social worker, he provided the fuller picture. Brooklyn Defenders | LinkedIn 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 id. 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. They also reveal the critical importance of addressing the needs of clients concerning matters beyond the child welfare system itself. 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. In fiscal year 2018, the office was assigned to represent more than 1,500 parents with approximately 3,500 children.26 The Neighborhood Defender Service has represented over 1,600 parents between 2014 and 2017.27, This arrangement, assigning a portion of new filings to a family defender law office and the remainder to panel lawyers, created an opportunity to study which kind of representation works best. He explained that even though the surgeon recommended that Eduardo undergo surgery to repair the hip, the surgeon also acknowledged the risks associated with the surgery. As this case discussion reveals, the amount of out-of-court advocacy involved is well beyond what panel lawyers generally are able to provide or have ever been able to provide in New York Citys history of parental representation. 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. 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. In an effort to settle the case promptly, the defense team requested a court conference where they explained to the agency attorney and caseworker, as well as Eduardos court-appointed lawyer, what transpired since the petition was filed. 12. Even when the outcome of cases like this do not involve termination of parental rights or placement for an extended period in foster care, these cases should be viewed as an extremely important example of a clash between the right of parents to make the important decisions regarding their childrens upbringing and the states independent power to make decisions for children over a parents objection. 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. About BDS Our Commitment Defend People and Society Your membership has expired - last chance for uninterrupted access to free CLE and other benefits. BDS | Family Defense It is impossible to wholly disentangle the many interrelated factors that affect how many children are in foster care at any given time, but there is little doubt the outstanding work of the family defenders, both in the courtroom and at high-level policy meetings, has contributed to the continued shrinking of New York Citys foster care population. Other times, the agency has been involved with the person in other ways, for example, when a young woman in foster care becomes pregnant. 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. 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. Once parents had the right to counsel in child welfare proceedings, it fell to the local New York City court administrators to design the legal services delivery system to meet this new constitutional and statutory right. At this point, the court appointed one of the family defender offices to represent Mr. Sanchez. One might reasonably suggest they are much more important than what happens in the courtroom itself. Thousands of families face the possibility of separation due to a wide range of circumstances, mostly stemming from poverty, lack of stable housing or child care, mental health or health diagnoses or intellectual disabilities. The agency was unwilling to accept the defense teams claims without doing its own investigation. Admin. Lawyers Assn v. State, 763 N.Y.S.2d 397 (Sup. 347-592-2500. Hum. When the case was first filed in court, the judge only permitted Ms. Green twice-weekly supervised visits at the foster care agencya sterile environment unconducive to an engaging opportunity for parents and children to maintain ties. Hybrid remote in Brooklyn, NY 11201. 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. from Columbia Law School and graduated from Amherst College summa cum laude with a B.A. 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. Visit Us . This kind of advocacy can only be implemented by multiperson offices. The teams lawyer then filed a motion for an immediate court hearing to determine whether removal was necessary to protect the childs safety. Our Approach. 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. Rev. 93. See N.Y. Fam. The company is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. Serv. for Child.s Servs., All Staff Bulletin (July 16, 2019) (on file with the author). See Family Defense, NDS: The Power of Pub. 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. 7. The defense team then went into action. In most of these cases, the mother is already represented by a lawyer. Such services might include attending parenting skills or anger management classes, or participating in therapy, counseling, or drug treatment programs. His son, Eduardo, suffers from a genetic hip disorder and, as a consequence, he is highly prone to injury. See also N.Y. Fam. Are you concerned that you or someone you know may be arrested by ICE? 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. (June 5, 2008), https://perma.cc/L2CZ-Z64X. Her child was placed in foster care. With the positive evaluation from the court mental health clinic and letters the team gathered from Ms. Barrows service providers, the judge agreed to allow the children to return home for overnight visits, commonly a crucial step that leads to the eventual return of children to their parents custody. 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. Full-time. 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. 33. Easily apply. Caseworkers are a critical player in each case. 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. Programs, https://www.casey.org/who-we-are/about/ (last visited Oct. 18, 2020). See generally Subha Lembach, The Right to Legal Representation at Service Plan Reviews in New York State, 6 U.C. Admin. N.Y.C. See About Us, Casey Fam. The teams successful representation of Mr. Sanchez began with a careful, nuanced interview with him allowing the social worker, who was fluent in Mr. Sanchezs native language, to grasp that he never was unalterably opposed to the surgery but merely wanted one more opportunity to see if it were preventable. Once the report was provided to the court, the judge ordered that the newborn be returned to Ms. Barrows custody in light of the risk assessment and proof that the conditions in her apartment were vastly improved. They communicate frequently with caseworkers to rearrange meetings and services, to plan for the next steps, and for many other reasons. FAMILY DEFENSE. Less than a year later, Eduardo sustained another injury in his hip. In the year before the petition was filed, Eduardo sustained an injury that required medical attention. . (citing N.Y. State Admin. 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. 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