Brooklyn Defender Services serves communities in the State of New York. But it simply could not have happened without an interdisciplinary team assigned to the case. 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. If you are arrested, face deportation, or your children are threatened with the foster system, you can rely on us to fight for you. Get the inside scoop on jobs, salaries, top office locations, and CEO insights. 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. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of these agency meetings. Understanding the Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 4, at 7. FAMILY DEFENSE. The defender offices employ a wide range of professionals on each clients legal team, including social workers, parent advocates, interpreters, specialized attorneys, experts, and investigators. $65,000 - $87,880 a year. Lawyers Assn, 763 N.Y.S.2d at 40102, 407. Social holds may result when a safety planning conference does not happen until after birth. Id. in Political Science. 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. Apply to Social Worker, Social Work Supervisor, Staff Attorney and more! Our work with clients is focused on the intersection . 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. Commn on Hum. Ms. Green was a single parent of an eight-month-old daughter, Sophia. Serv. Lauren Shapiro has been working as a Managing Director, Family Defense Practice at Brooklyn Defender Services for 16 years. 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. 42 U.S.C. 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. 74. Rev. Sophia sustained a new facial injury after tripping on a door frame when attending a birthday party at Ms. Greens sisters home while under Ms. Greens supervision. The agency then filed a neglect petition in family court charging Mr. Sanchez with failing to provide his son with medically necessary treatment and seeking an order that the agency be granted permission to consent to the required surgery. Commn on Parental Legal Representation Pub. Whether it is the removal of children, incarceration, deportation, eviction or houselessness, the people we represent face long periods of forced family separation. 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. The family defender offices met regularly over the first decade of practice to strategize how to challenge unacceptable practices engaged in routinely by child welfare agencies. American law protects a parents constitutional rights to make critical decisions concerning a childs upbringing, including decisions involving medical care for their children.83 But in my experience, it frequently happens that poor parents are deprived of the same rights accorded to wealthy parents and are charged in court with failing to provide a specific kind of medical care for their child even when the parent is not entirely ignoring his or her childs health needs. Find A Defender; Get Help; Donate; en What do you need help with? Easily apply. 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). We were very lucky to have [our lawyer] on the day that [my son] got in trouble. Skip to main content. The third office, the Center for Family Representation (CFR), was a relatively new start-up 501(c)(3) office whose only purpose was to provide legal representation for parents in child welfare cases. Once the judge could be persuaded of this, the prospects of significantly increasing the amount of time Ms. Green could spend with her child were greatly advanced. 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. 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. It's time to renew your membership and keep access to free CLE, valuable publications and more. This kind of advocacy can only be implemented by multiperson offices. Id. Since it began, the Brooklyn Defender Services' Family Defense Practice has represented nearly 11,000 parents involving more than 20,000 children. It set up a meeting with the surgeon and invited the child protection agency to attend so that it could hear the more complete picture. The offices social work team, along with the Brooklyn Defender Services immigration practitioners, have developed close relationships with community-based programs serving New Yorks immigrant communities and [are] able to connect clients to culturally competent service providers and access to services in their native language. Schreibersdorf & Shapiro written testimony, supra note 24, at 9. 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. 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. 96%. There are too many heroes in those offices to name here; this Article is a celebration of the remarkable work they do every day supporting and fighting for justice for the many parents living in poverty who have to endure the coercive intervention of the child welfare system. As defenders, we represent people accused of a crime, parents threatened with child removal, immigrants facing deportation, and students, workers and tenants whose education, employment and housing are at risk due to legal cases. . 26. 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. In response to persistent advocacy, the agency agreed to permit the visits to take place in a more hospitable environment so long as the visits were supervised by Ms. Greens mother. The Family Defense Practice at Brooklyn Defenders has been representing parents and other caregivers in Family Court since 2007. In 2013, the Legal Services NYC contract ended, and the South Brooklyn Services Office that was handling the Brooklyn Family Court caseload merged with Brooklyn Defender Services, a preeminent public interest law office with contracts to represent indigent defendants in criminal cases as well as immigration and other matters. This problem, known as gap of payment for services, meant that parents were substantially delayed in beginning a service because of poverty, resulting in extending the time children remained in foster care. 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. 78. 67. Brooklyn Defender Services177 Livingston Street, 7th FlBrooklyn, NY 11201, Brooklyn Defender Services156 Pierrepont StreetBrooklyn, NY 11201, Brooklyn Defender Services566 Livonia Avenue Brooklyn, NY 11207. See Commn on Parental Legal Representation, Interim Report to Chief Judge DiFiore 1215 (2019), http://ww2.nycourts.gov/sites/default/files/document/files/2019-02/PLR_Commission-Report.pdf (discussing history of parental representation in New York State). 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. 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. The Family Defense Practice at Brooklyn Defenders has been representing parents and other caregivers in Family Court since 2007. 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. See Casey Family Programs, How Does High-Quality Legal Representation for Parents Support Better Outcomes? 32. The team successfully persuaded the agency to agree to release the newborn to Ms. Barrows care with court-ordered supervision. Ms. Green did not provide a clear answer, and she said she wondered whether it happened when Sophia fell off a bed. See N.Y. County Law 722-c (allowing judges to authorize counsel assigned through the 18-b panel to engage social workers to assist in the representation of indigent clients); N.Y. Cty. 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. Office of Research & Analysis, How Does High-Quality Legal Representation for Parents Support Better Outcomes? Understanding the Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 4, at 910. When that happens, the impact of the defender offices is invisible. Easily apply. Gottlieb et al., supra note 60, at 559. Wholly apart from holding conferences during the time a case is being prosecuted in court, an even more critical component of the administrative process is ongoing. Because Ms. Green was unable to provide a clear explanation for the injury, the hospital called the child protection agency, which immediately began an investigation. Commn on Parental Legal Representation Pub. Hearing (Sept. 27, 2018) (written testimony of Ctr. They also develop training materials to enrich and support the Family Defense Practice. See Will ACS Take My Child?, N.Y.C. It also is important to appreciate how the offices support the professionals emotionally. Every administrator of New York Citys child welfare system in this century has been committed to the principle of eliminating the unnecessary placement or retention of children in foster care. Are you or someone you know being investigated by the police or ACS? The Bronx Office was part of a larger organization whose principal work was indigent criminal defense. L TO LIVONIA AVENUE. Schreibersdorf & Shapiro written testimony, supra note 24, at 5. 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. Ct. Act 262. Although the agency does not permit lawyers to attend these conferences, it does allow parents to bring anyone else to be present. 4. 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 . is a public defense office that provides outstanding representation and advocacy to people facing loss of freedom, family separation and other serious legal harms. The parties agreed to a settlement, where Ms. Andersons daughter would be returned to her care immediately. Rev. 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. Press Inquiries. The strategy worked. Our attorneys, social workers and other staff work together to advise, assist and represent parents every step of the way. 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. Because the bump did not immediately appear on Sophias head, Ms. Green could not be certain how the injury was sustained. In the year before the petition was filed, Eduardo sustained an injury that required medical attention. 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. Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 1, at 5253. 86. Ct. 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. The defense team then went into action. With the housing crisis abated, the rest of the family defense team could keep its focus on the family court case. 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. 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. Rev. View info about Brooklyn Defender Services (bds.org). 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. In those cases, the parent would not have had anyone to attend the child safety conference with her at the hospital. Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) is seeking an experienced Attorney for the Custody Practice of the Family Defense Team. See generally Subha Lembach, The Right to Legal Representation at Service Plan Reviews in New York State, 6 U.C. Noran attended and graduated from CUNY School of Law where she worked with CLEAR to counter post-9/11 policies . She asked her mother to take Sophia to see a doctor because Ms. Green had to be at work. This Article is dedicated to the outstanding professionals who work in the family defense practices at the Bronx Defenders, the Brooklyn Defender Services, the Center for Family Representation, and the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem. 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. On the morning the hearing was to be held, the agency attorney agreed that there no longer was a risk to returning the baby to her mother. At the current time, BDS physical offices are open by appointment only. In re Ella B., 285 N.E.2d 288, 290 (N.Y. 1972). Ms. Anderson began therapy that was designed to address her history of physical and sexual abuse in foster care and her previous relationship, helping her to understand how those experiences had shaped her adult life and her approach to parenting. .). The investigator also met with Eduardos primary care physician, but not with the orthopedic surgeon. . But the team was unable to secure the agencys support for unsupervised visits. 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. The case examples described in the previous section were provided to give the reader some sense of how the defender offices are able to achieve dramatically better results for their clients as compared with the panel members assigned to represent parents. 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. 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. Missing from the quantitative study are the number of times out-of-court advocacy persuades the local child welfare agency not to file a court case in the first place. Had Ms. Barrow been evicted from her apartment, she would have had to enter New York Citys public shelter system. Bar Assn, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/child_law/project-areas/parentrepresentation/ (last visited Oct. 19, 2020). An ill-advised case plan not only wastes money; it wastes the most precious commodity in the field: time. No case is filed; no court time is taken up; no court personnel are assigned to the matter. All of this was reported to the judge at the status conference. 40592/88, 1989 WL 1715714 (N.Y. Sup. 92. 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. Article 10 Attorney for the Family Defense Practice Team. . Id. About BDS Our Commitment Defend People and Society Finally, in Part V, the Article clarifies the leading characteristics of successful parent representation in child welfare cases with a particular emphasis on proactive representation out of court. Our Approach. Brooklyn Defender Services is part of the Law Firms & Legal Services industry, and located in New York, United States. Browse 12 jobs at brooklyn defender services near Brooklyn, NY. 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. 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.
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