Brooklyn Law School - Lorr Sarah Instead, the agency staff members told Ms. Anderson and her team that they would not allow Ms. Anderson to leave the hospital with her baby and to prepare to go to court the next day when they would be filing a petition alleging neglect based on the allegations in the case of Ms. Andersons previous child. 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. 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. Work Prac., The Bronx Defenders). After waiting two additional months, the team filed a motion for enhanced, unsupervised visits, arguing that the agencys refusal to grant unsupervised visits was arbitrary and damaging to the long-term purpose of child protection. When the conference took place one day after the babys birth, the defense teams social worker and parent advocate attended with Ms. Barrow. Our goal is to keep families safely together or reunify families as soon as possible when separation occurs. All of the family defender offices in New York City either have special units to represent parents in housing-related matters, in immigration proceedings, and/or in criminal proceedings, or have made alliances with legal offices that do that work. Ketteringham & Becker written testimony, supra note 26, at 89. Brooklyn Defender Services - Idealist There are still other differences between the offices, including the number of staff employed and the various positions each office created. Yet it was the out-of-court advocacy that made all the difference. As the qualitative study revealed, solo practitioners who were interviewed explained that they do not work with their clients out of court and, if matters involving their service plan ever arise, they will speak with the ACS attorney to look into the matter.86 When one solo practitioner was asked, is there any other type of out of court support you provide to your clients, like talking to their landlords or helping them maintain childcare, the simple answer was No, to be honest, no.87, Two people who were the subject of child welfare proceedings in the New York City courts and were represented by several different panel attorneys over the course of several years testified before the New York State Commission on Parental Representation in 2018. Moreover, in my experience, judges rarely overrule (or reconsider) the agencys assessment of what services are appropriate. Martin Guggenheim is the Fiorello LaGuardia Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law. Agencies too often offer parents little help or guidance in obtaining services, commonly doing little more than providing a parent an address and expecting the parent to find the service, make the appointment, and wind his or her way through a maze of confusing requirements. She asked her mother to take Sophia to see a doctor because Ms. Green had to be at work. These team members support the families they serve in everything from applying for public benefits to representing a client in criminal court to finding employment training, mental health counseling, and substance abuse treatment. Caseworkers visit parents in their homes and talk to them and their service providers on a regular basis. at 23 n.179. . The office created a community intake program, allowing residents in the community to secure legal representation before they have been charged in court with neglect and before they are legally entitled to court-assigned counsel. 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. 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. 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. Before she left, the defense teams social worker called the caseworkers supervisor requesting that she be permitted to remain in the conference because the x-ray results were due in another half hour. 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. Being involved at the earliest stages of a case in designing a case plan, or in accurately assessing the needs (if any) of a parent, is a critical step in minimizing the amount of time children need to spend in foster care because the most important factor courts consider when deciding whether to return children from foster care to their family is whether the circumstances that led to the placement have sufficiently changed. Understanding the Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 4, at 910. 18, 428.6 (2020). 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. 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. . 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. Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 1, at 4546. in Political Science. Dir., Brooklyn Defender Serv. Brooklyn Defender Services, Family Defense Practice - AFFCNY Judges, Improving Parents Representation in Dependency Cases: A Washington State Pilot Program Evaluation (2003), http://www.opd.wa.gov/documents/0047-2003_PRP_Evaluation.pdf (presenting results of an earlier study of pilot programs in two juvenile courts in different settings and locations). Under New York law, the definition of [n]eglected child includes a child less than eighteen years of age (i) whose physical, mental or emotional condition has been impaired or is in imminent danger of becoming impaired as a result of the failure of his parent or other person legally responsible for his care to exercise a minimum degree of care (A) in supplying the child with adequate . 88. Brooklyn Defender Services 4.2. Lauren Shapiro - Managing.. - Brooklyn Defender Services | ZoomInfo Three months later, the two children in foster care were reunited with their mother and the family has lived together without further intervention by the agency. Brooklyn Defender Services, Family Defense Practice Main Industry Manufacturing, Test & Measurement Equipment Website www.bfdp.org Contact Information Headquarters 195 Montague St Fl 5, Brooklyn, New York, 11201, United States (347) 592-2500 Brooklyn Defender Services, Family Defense Practice Profile and History 80. Serv. 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. 31. Founded in 1996, Brooklyn Defender Services operates as a nonprofit organization that provides legal services in the areas of family, civil, criminal, and immigration. Rev. 24 Public Defender jobs available in Bay Terrace, NY on Indeed.com. When the new tests were made available to the surgeon later that day, he continued to support Mr. Sanchezs plan for treating his son. 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. Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 1, at 5253. 42 U.S.C. 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. N.Y. Comp. Brooklyn Defender Services. The teams strategy was to have two opportunities to present the judge with positive impressions of the mother even before conducting the formal hearing seeking the babys return to her custody. With the housing crisis abated, the rest of the family defense team could keep its focus on the family court case. . 83. 84. Brooklyn Defender Services | LawHelpNY See N.Y. Cty. When the surgeon understood that Mr. Sanchez was willing to consent to the surgery if the next round of nonsurgical treatment in Mexico did not prove helpful, the surgeon concluded that Mr. Sanchezs choice was perfectly reasonable. But it simply could not have happened without an interdisciplinary team assigned to the case. 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. By now, two additional months had passed, and the surgeon thought it wisest to order a new series of x-rays before making any decision that day. 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. Your membership has expired - last chance for uninterrupted access to free CLE and other benefits. One such case involved the representation by one of the family defender offices. (June 5, 2008), https://perma.cc/L2CZ-Z64X. See generally Subha Lembach, The Right to Legal Representation at Service Plan Reviews in New York State, 6 U.C. When the doctor requested more x-rays, the caseworker explained that she could not remain for the conference after the tests came back. 1337, 133839 (2012). 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. The goal of our early intervention is to avoid court filings that have a harsh impact on families. When Ms. Barrow went to housing court, her housing attorney presented a letter showing the Citys commitment to pay the arrears, and the case was settled in Ms. Barrows favor. What follows are case examples of how the offices achieved great success for their clients.67 They are offered both to bring to life how the offices do their work and why everyone committed to a better-functioning child welfare system should want offices like this practicing throughout the country. 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. 65. Gottlieb et al., supra note 60, at 559. 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. Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) is seeking an experienced Attorney for the Custody Practice of the Family Defense Team. 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. 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. Schreibersdorf & Shapiro written testimony, supra note 24, at 5. Brooklyn Defender Services is part of the Law Firms & Legal Services industry, and located in New York, United States. No case is filed; no court time is taken up; no court personnel are assigned to the matter. The strategy worked. Brooklyn, NY, US. This sometimes happens when the mother has no prior involvement with the child welfare system but behaves at the hospital in a manner that leads hospital personnel to call in a report of suspected child abuse. Brooklyn Defender Services, Family Defense Practice 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. Brooklyn, NY, US. For an excellent recent article describing the sophisticated family defense practice The Bronx Defenders has established when representing parents charged with child abuse based on unexplained serious injuries sustained by children, see Jessica Horan-Block & Elizabeth Tuttle Newman, Accidents Happen: Exposing Fallacies in Child Protection Abuse Cases and Reuniting Families Through Aggressive Litigation, 22 CUNY L. Rev. Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 1, at 53. Because of Ms. Barrows concern that continuing her medication during her pregnancy was dangerous for the fetus, she stopped taking the medication that was court-ordered. & Youth Servs. 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. Within nine months, Ms. Green had completed both the anger management and parenting class, all while working full time and finishing her GED. 86. The Article proceeds in five parts. Even these remarkable efforts would have been insufficient. 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. 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. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of these agency meetings. The company is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. BDS | Family Defense 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. You will receive assistance in areas impacting your life, such as immigration, housing, benefits, education and employment. The Center for Family Representation was awarded the contract in New York. Undeterred by failing to achieve success at the conference, the defense team looked toward the first court appearance as a new opportunity to argue for the newborn to remain in Ms. Andersons custody as well as the first opportunity to leave the judge with a positive impression of the mother. Only six babies (8 percent) were placed in foster care with strangers. Hearing (Aug. 16, 2018) (written testimony of Emma S. Ketteringham & Caitlin Becker, at 2) [hereinafter Ketteringham & Becker written testimony]. 6 days ago. 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. 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. 61. Part I provides a brief history of parental representation in New York. The Bronx Defenders was awarded the contract in The Bronx. Contacting a BDS Staff Member . The practice was recently the focus of a critical report issued by the New York City Commission on Human Rights. FAMILY DEFENSE. If Mr. Sanchezs lawyer had been a very good solo practitioner from the court-assigned panel, he would have advised Mr. Sanchez to get the surgeon to write a letter saying that Mr. Sanchezs preference to take his son to Mexico for another try at nonsurgical treatment was reasonable. Fighting for you, your family & our community. 24. Brooklyn Defender Services is a public defense office whose mission is to provide outstanding representation and advocacy free of cost to people facing loss of freedom, family separation. Admin. Admin. 384-b(7)(f)(1). Id. See National Alliance for Parent Representation, Am. What insights have they gained? 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. 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. Noran attended and graduated from CUNY School of Law where she worked with CLEAR to counter post-9/11 policies . Change 539, 559 (2017). All of this was reported to the judge at the status conference. at 4648. Codes R. & Regs. 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. 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. 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. Keeping families together requires striving to establish understanding and ensuring that the parents voice is heard through support and advocacy. Ct. Act 1039 (McKinney 2020). This program, known as City FHEPS, is administered by New York Citys Human Resources Administration. 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. But because she would be applying for shelter housing at a time when her children were not in her custody, she would be counted as a single person living alone and would be eligible only for a studio-sized apartment, unsuitable for children. See N.Y. County Law 722(3) (McKinney 2020). 2 (. 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 office added one of its attorneys with expertise in housing court to the case. In addition, they must be reviewed periodically and formally retained to remain active members of the panel. Senior . 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. The ongoing relationship may mean the mother became pregnant during the pendency of an ongoing court case (a frequent occurrence). His son, Eduardo, suffers from a genetic hip disorder and, as a consequence, he is highly prone to injury. For another 82 (22%) parents, the investigations are ongoing but to date ACS has not filed a case alleging neglect or abuse. The national family defender movement is based at the American Bar Associations Center on Children and the Law under the leadership of Mimi Laver. They communicate frequently with caseworkers to rearrange meetings and services, to plan for the next steps, and for many other reasons. See also id. The team successfully persuaded the agency to agree to release the newborn to Ms. Barrows care with court-ordered supervision. BDS is a public defense office representing low-income New Yorkers in criminal, family, immigration, and civil legal matters. When that happens, the impact of the defender offices is invisible. 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. 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. . 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. Find A Defender; Get Help; Donate; en What do you need help with? Nonetheless, Ms. Barrows defense team ensured that it was fully prepared for the conference, having secured letters from Ms. Barrows mental health providers laying out her treatment plan and documenting her increased engagement in services and subsequent progress in her mental health. Homicide Unit Mitigation Social Worker . The medications began working after only a few weeks and Ms. Barrow quickly regained her focus. 96%. 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. At the current time, BDS physical offices are open by appointment only. Understanding the Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 4, at 7. One might reasonably suggest they are much more important than what happens in the courtroom itself. . Criminal Defense Practice Social Worker. View job. 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. Brooklyn Defender Services: Employee Directory | ZoomInfo.com 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. Ct. 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. In child welfare cases, victories often prove to be short-lived. Experienced Attorney, Criminal Defense Practice - Idealist Had Ms. Barrow not had a team committed to being with her when she gave birth, to preparing assiduously for the conference held when the baby was born, and to being ready to fight for her when the baby was removed less than a week later, her case would surely have come out differently. BDS | Get Help 81. 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. Our Law & Appeals attorneys work on special legal proceedings, including appeals and special motions in family court. 42. 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 6. 68. Because the agency caseworker failed to attend this medical conference, however, the agency continued to insist in court that the surgery was required and assert that the surgeon considered Mr. Sanchezs refusal to consent to the surgery as placing Eduardo at serious risk of harm. Experienced Attorney, Criminal Defense Practice - ZipRecruiter Admin. Brooklyn Defender Services - Employees, Contact info, Overview - Wiza info@bds.org. 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. 29. For current information on these offices, see Family Defense Practice, Bronx Defenders, https://www.bronxdefenders.org/our-work/family-defense-practice/ (last visited Oct. 18, 2020); Family Defense, Brooklyn Defender Serv., http://bds.org/practice/family-defense/ (last visited Oct. 18, 2020); Family Defense Teams, Ctr. Federal law requires states to have written case plans for every child in care in order to ensure that an appropriate long-term plan is identified for each foster child. When Mr. Sanchez met with his lawyers and social worker, he provided the fuller picture.
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