Parent Legal Representation: Expanding and Improving the Quality of Legal Defense for Parents Involved in Child Welfare Proceedings
“I walked up to my court-appointed attorney, introduced myself and asked, ‘How can you help me?’ He just stared me up and down. In court, he said nothing on my behalf. I was furious,” Ebonie King, Rise magazine, Issue 24, Summer 2013.
Many parents involved in child welfare systems throughout the world walk into court with an assigned lawyer who barely knows them, may have no special training in child welfare law and who may be too overburdened with cases to properly represent them. In many other cases, parents do not have the right to legal counsel and are left to fight for their families alone.
Providing parents with high-quality legal representation can ensure that the rights’ of families are safeguarded, parents understand their rights and the legal processes and their voices are heard. One model of high-quality legal representation is provided to parents through an interdisciplinary legal team consisting of a lawyer, a social worker and/or a parent advocate working in or together within a legal agency that specializes in defending parents in child welfare proceedings. In these parent defender agencies, attorneys are paid a salary with benefits and receive supervision and training by more experienced lawyers who specialize in defending parents in child welfare proceedings. These agencies also employ social workers and parent advocates who work alongside lawyers to provide emotional support, help parents connect to services, and meet their families’ needs. Several studies have shown that implementation of interdisciplinary parent defender agencies and other similar models in the United States have decreased children’s lengths of stay in foster care, hastened reunification of children with their parents, increased placement of children with extended family rather than strangers, and saved government money.[1]
This interdisciplinary parent defender agency approach was pioneered in New York City in 2007 and has since spread to at least 11 other jurisdictions across the United States. Advocacy for the creation of parent defender agencies is also beginning outside of the United States.
In this package, you can find:
- An interview that recounts how parent defender agencies were first created in New York City;
- The most recent New York State Request for Proposals, which provides funding to create parent defender agencies;
- Research on the efficacy and key characteristics of the interdisciplinary parent defender agency model that can be used to advocate for the creation of such models;
- An overview of efforts to improve legal representation in other states in the United States;
- An interview with an ally currently working to create parent defender agencies in Western Australia;
- An overview of some of the bills and other actions that parent defender agencies in New York City have been at the forefront of passing to further protect the rights of parents and families.
The Creation of Parent Defender Agencies in New York City: An Interview with Sue Jacobs, Founding Executive Director of the Center for Family Representation
In New York City, parents charged with neglect or abuse in Family Court had had the right to free, court-assigned counsel since 1972, but the quality of the legal representation was hit or miss, because lawyers representing parents had no support or supervision, many did not specialize in child welfare law, and were paid a relatively low rate. In 2001, a group of lawyers who believed this setup violated parents’ and children’s rights and led to unnecessary suffering began to mobilize to create parent defender agencies, a new model of what parent representation could be.
In 2007, more than five years after legal advocates first started mobilizing to create parent defender agencies, NYC’s Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice Services entered into contracts with three nonprofit organizations to establish these agencies in New York City: the Center for Family Representation, the Family Defense Practice of Brooklyn Defender Services, and the Family Defense Practice of The Bronx Defenders.
Below is an interview that the International Parent Advocacy Network (IPAN) did with Sue Jacobs, founding Executive Director of the Center for Family Representation (CFR) and IPAN board member, regarding her experience starting parent defender agencies in NYC.
Q: How and when did this model of parent defender agencies first emerge?
Jacobs: In the early 2000s, there were several reports of how badly parents were being represented in child welfare proceedings in New York City and how the practice might be improved. In a 2000 report, “Justice Denied: The Crisis in Legal Representation of Birth Parents in Child Protective Proceedings,” for instance, the New York City Public Advocate’s office supported the creation of programs using interdisciplinary representation. The First Judicial Department’s Committee on Representation of the Poor made similar recommendations in 2001. There was also a report that came out of the settlement of a lawsuit that challenged the way children were brought into foster care in New York City. The panel that oversaw that settlement, called the Marisol panel, was staffed by people from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, one of the biggest funders of child welfare reform activities in the United States. They wrote a scathing report about the representation of parents in New York City family courts.
Those reports gave people like me, who had represented parents and children in family court, ammunition to think about doing the practice differently. In 2000-2001, I brought together a group of about 15 to 18 people to reimagine the practice and how to get better parent representation. A key focus point was to create a practice with social workers and parent advocates in teams with attorneys. We called ourselves a consortium and in 2001, we incorporated as a nonprofit called the Center for Family Representation (CFR). Many of the members of the consortium became CFR’s board of directors and I became executive director.
Q: How did you build political support to spread the model and what role, if any, did impacted parents play?
Jacobs: The first place we went was to the community of people who understood the work and had established networks, including law and social work professors like Martin Guggenheim, Jane Spinak and Dorothy Roberts, who had already been writing about what was wrong with the way families are broken up by the government, including the racism and class issues underlying the child welfare system. Initially, the voices of parents were not present. That was our bad. At the beginning the only real way we had parents’ perspectives represented was through professionals speaking for parents. That changed within a few years of our starting our work.
We also went to the big legal service providers who arguably could have done this practice if they had cared enough about it. The Legal Aid Society of New York never represented parents in family court. They represented children. The Legal Services Corp. office in NYC had a very small parent representation practice. I brought the heads of those agencies into conversation with us because I did not want them to undercut our new approach to the work. In their view we were coming onto their turf. Both agency directors thought we should become a division of their organizations. We said no, you’ve had 20 years to do this work in a holistic way and have not done so. We basically said, get out of our way, but support us. Over time, we solidified their support of us.
Early on, we also looked for funding to try to set up a pilot project. I was fortunate to already have worked on a grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF). The fact that AECF had written a scathing report about parent representation in New York meant I could have a conversation with them. In 2001, I asked them for a lot of money. They said no. But they did give us a grant to get started with a small model project. That was really critical, because it allowed us to start representing parents, to collect data that showed that our model could have an impact, and to tell other potential funders that we had the backing of an important foundation. AECF became our largest funder and we had a wonderful partnership with them for several years.
When we first opened our doors, it was just me and an administrative assistant. Michele Cortese, who is now the executive director of the Center for Family Representation, came on as deputy director very quickly and together we launched CFR’s program. In the beginning, we only had the capacity to do about 10 cases at a time. We put out word to community-based organizations that we were accepting clients. We also started working with the Child Welfare Organizing Project (CWOP), which was one of the first parent advocacy organizations in child welfare in the world. Parallel to what we were doing, parents were becoming increasingly concerned about the quality of legal representation. If you look at the history of CWOP, they became our thought partners at this time and our work with them became very important.
We were small but we acted like we were big. We developed a curriculum for people representing parents and provided training sessions around the city for free to anyone representing parents. We made it look like we had all these resources and capacity when it was just two of us. We also went to many foundations and other government sources to build more funding in the first year and a half.
Soon we also hired an experienced attorney and a young but fiery social worker. Around that time, Mike Arsham, who was the executive director of CWOP, met with Michelle and me, and he said, ‘This is great what you’re doing but you have to hire parents. You need a parent on your team’. It was probably in 2002 or 2003 that we hired our first parent advocate.
We got buy-in from city officials little by little. We thought about going through the City Council to try to pass legislation to create these agencies but we got nowhere. After that, we tried to think about what the city had done before in criminal justice areas. When you’re dealing with the government, you want to give them something they’re familiar with. What the city was familiar with was issuing Request for Proposals directed at public interest law offices asking that they design and propose, for instance, a criminal defense practice. We thought that would be the most efficacious way to obtain government funding.
In New York, the funder for this type of work is the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ). After we’d been representing parents for a while and had data to prove our effectiveness, we talked to the director of the office about what we wanted to do and we gave him data from our pilot project. He was very interested in our work. Finally in 2006, a good five years after we started, the city issued a request for a proposal, which was largely designed using our work and allowed us to make a bid in the city to change the practice. We bid for Manhattan because we had good relationships there. We later also became a provider in Queens.
Q: Who opposed your efforts?
Jacobs: The attorneys, who were the solo-practitioner lawyers (called 18-B attorneys)[2], were concerned that we would come in and take work away from them. They were very opposed to CFR. They did everything they could to prevent the city from funding us including planning a lawsuit (which was never filed).
Surprisingly to me, the judges in court also did not want to have better practice representing parents because it meant they were going to be scrutinized more and would have to deal with more appeals. In New York Family Court practice, any order made by a judge during the proceeding can be appealed by filing what’s called an interim appeal. We filed a slew of interim appeals immediately challenging court orders on for instance, visiting between parents and their children in foster care. Most lawyers representing parents had never done that before and the judges were not happy about being challenged in this way.
In large part, judges around the country and globe are very conservative—they don’t like change and they don’t like more people in their courts or people they are not familiar with. Before us, they were very familiar with the lawyers that represented parents. Those lawyers would hang out in the hallway, and when a judge needed them, they’d trot in. We didn’t want to work like that. We intended to professionalize the practice, have attorneys assigned to court on set schedules, train and supervise those attorneys, provide parents support of social workers and parent advocates and aggressively litigate cases to put forward the parents’ strengths and rights.
To develop more support amongst the judges, we began to meet with the court administrators, to explain to them why what we were doing was going to help them. We let them know that our social workers and parent advocates would better understand what was going on in families and would help those families engage in services and in the court process. We explained that we would help parents understand what was happening in court and would offer appropriate language translation for parents. We also explained that there’d be greater accountability than judges had with solo practitioners. For instance, if a lawyer did something outrageous there would be supervisors for judges to speak with, if lawyers were sick, someone could substitute. We really tried to tell judges why this would be a good thing. We asked for monthly meetings with the courts so all parties involved with cases at high level could meet to iron out problems. Even so, the chief judges of the borough courts didn’t want to be public about supporting us or even tolerating us.
Another challenge was with the child welfare agency, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). In the beginning, we went to the commissioner to explain our approach to the practice. He was mildly receptive because he understood that this helped ACS accomplish their work, but he was also very cautious. We asked him to set up meetings with the chief of his legal division so we could have some agreements about how to communicate about new cases. We wanted to let them know what this new game in town was going to be. People don’t like surprises.
Over time, our experience with the child welfare system was really schizophrenic. Commissioners and high-level managers generally thought our work was great. It helped them do their work better. It helped them distinguish kids who needed to be in foster care and those who didn’t. As we went down the chain of command, however, the middle and lower-level staff were more oppositional and threatened by our work because we challenged the child welfare agency in ways that had never been challenged before. We were standing up for and with Black and Brown parents who were poor and generally perceived as powerless. Many ACS caseworkers felt threatened just like the judges.
Q: What does the research say about the impact on families when they are represented by a defender agency?
Jacobs: The research says that when parents are represented by high quality attorneys, who are well trained and well supervised and working with parent advocates and social workers, a few things happen. If children are removed, they are returned faster to their parents. If they don’t come back to their parents, they’re more likely to be living with a relative or some community person who is or has been in their lives. Also their community ties, i.e. to school, sports, religious institutions, are more likely to be maintained. When there are parent advocates present – you can see this in survey research – families and parents feel heard.
Q: Do you have any advice to parent advocates and allies who want to push for something similar in their own jurisdictions?
Jacobs: Some of the important steps we took included building a coalition; working to show stakeholders who might oppose us why our practice served their interests; securing funding for a pilot project and collecting data to demonstrate the impact of our model; and pursuing public funding in a way that was already familiar to the city.
What I would do differently would be to incorporate the voices of parents with lived experience sooner as well as the perspective of community organizations to think about how to structure services from the planning stage. I would also hear what youth have to say. We are used to keeping kids out of the courtroom. But when you talk to youth they say, ‘We lived in the household. You think we didn’t know or see or experience what was going on? Why are you being so paternalistic and keeping us out of the courtroom?’ Youths’ stories are becoming increasingly important and profound in the court process.
Lastly, I would say that one of the impacts of creating defender organizations, which is very evident over the last two years, is that these offices together have made a point of being very present in social justice issues such as racial justice equity both in New York City and nationally, and that is another benefit of the creation of these agencies.
New York State Request for Proposals, which provides funding to create parent defender agencies.
Read the most recent New York State Request for Proposals, which provides funding to create parent defender agencies here.
Specifically, pages 3-7 provide a comprehensive summary of the history leading to the creation of the original defender agencies in NYC.
The request for proposal can also provide you with language to use in your own efforts to create parent defender agencies.
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Research That Supports the Spread of Parent Defender Agencies and High-Quality Legal Representation
Findings on the efficacy of parent defender agency models and high-quality legal representation in improving outcomes for children and parents can help parent advocates and allies in their efforts to secure funding to implement parent defense agency pilot programs, expand the scope of such programs, and pass legislation or guidance that makes such models accessible to many or all parents. Other resources in this section explain key characteristics and offer case examples to help advocates and allies replicate the model.
Below are some resources to help you get started.
The latest research study from 2019 looking at the effects of interdisciplinary approach to parent legal representation in multiple states found that such an approach:
- Hastens permanency for children in foster care
- Does not impact child maltreatment rates
- May save millions of government dollars
- Reduces the time children spend in foster care by 118 days
- Achieves reunification and guardianship for children more quickly
A 2020 article by Professor Martin Guggeinheim, NYU School of Law, describes in detail how parent defenders agencies do their work. The article also summarizes both quantitative and qualitative findings about the interdisciplinary representation model and provides accounts of cases undertaken using this model to illustrate its effectiveness in keeping families together.
The Justice in Government Project’s guide highlights key studies and data about how legal aid helps keep families together and out of the child welfare system. The guide provides key findings from research, federal resources that are available in the United States, and other helpful resources advocates can leverage.
The Family Justice Initiative created implementation guides for high-quality legal representation in child welfare proceedings. Specifically, this guide on interdisciplinary practice models provides an overview of case studies/examples including all of NYC’s parent defender agencies, Washington State’s Parent Representation Program, and New Mexico’s Family Advocacy Program.
This American Bar Association’s article details the importance of centralized legal offices for representation in child welfare cases. The article summarizes key arguments for why centralized legal offices can promote high-quality legal representation. The article also lists and gives links to legal offices and other similar models in various states in the United States that are providing high-quality legal representation for parents.
The American Bar Association hosted a webinar in May 2020 on interdisciplinary parent representation. Speakers at the event discussed the effectiveness of interdisciplinary parent defense teams and how defense teams advocated for individual families and collaborated to impact child welfare policy to better support families during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Spread of Quality Legal Representation for Parents in the United States
When it comes to legal representation, each jurisdiction in the United States has its own policies. The National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel (NCCRC) has created an interactive active legislation map that tracks each state’s legal representation bills. The map also exists as a list form. See the interactive map here. Or, read the list here.
While some states in the United States still do not guarantee the right to counsel to parents in child welfare proceedings, high quality legal representation for parents in the United States is spreading.
Washington State was one of the first states to provide access to multidisciplinary representation for poor parents in child welfare cases. In 2000, following a report that parent representation was inconsistent and quality was poor, the Office of Public Defense piloted the Parents Representation Program (PRP) in two counties. Subsequent evaluation found that PRP increased quality of representation and led to significant financial savings. The state legislature then expanded authorization of PRP to additional counties and in July 2018, PRP went statewide. Under PRP, individual contract attorneys are carefully selected, trained, paid a good monthly rate, and capped at 80 active dependency and termination cases per full-time caseload. Results found that PRP counties experience higher permanent rates and shorter times to permanency whether through reunification, guardianship or adoption. Additionally, the Office of Public Defense funds outside agencies to manage, train, and coordinate county-level Parents for Parents Programs (P4P). Much like the parent advocates that work in New York City’s parent defender agencies, P4P connects parents who have successfully navigated the child welfare system (‘parent allies’) to parents who have recently become involved in children welfare cases.
The creation of the New Mexico Family Advocacy Program (NMFAP), which provides representation to parents in child welfare cases using an interdisciplinary team of lawyers, social workers, and parent mentors, inspired by NYC’s parent defender agencies began as a pilot project in Sandoval County in 2013 after a visit to observe CFR’s interdisciplinary model. Sandoval County employed its own multidisciplinary parent representation model and saw improved reunification outcomes, which prompted the state to explore expansion of the model. In 2018, NMFAP applied and was awarded a $7.7 million federal grant to fully staff the existing program and expand into two more judicial districts.
Support for Quality Legal Representation for Parents Nationally
Since the creation of parent defender agencies in New York City in 2007, there have been several national policies that encourage the growth of high quality legal representation.
Below are some major developments.
A Call to Provide High Quality Legal Representation at All Stages of Child Welfare Proceedings
In 2017, the Children’s Bureau within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), which is the national body that oversees all local child welfare systems, released a memo encouraging all child welfare agencies and family courts to ensure that parents in child welfare proceedings receive high quality legal representation. In this memo, the Child’s Bureau formally acknowledges the importance of providing high quality legal representation in child welfare proceedings and points to several research studies to back its statement. Not only did the Children’s Bureau promote parent representation, but it also endorsed the American Bar Association’s national standards of practice for parent attorneys, which is a move to standardize lawyer conduct in child welfare proceedings since there are no national guidelines. Lastly, the memo is significant in that it lists out strategies that jurisdictions can employ to promote and sustain high quality legal representation.
Read the memo from the Children’s Bureau here.
Reimbursing Costs of Legal Representation
In 2018, The Department of Health and Human Services amended its Child Welfare Policy Manual, a document containing policy questions and answers applicable to child welfare programs operated by the Children’s Bureau. The amendment alters the way that child welfare agencies will be reimbursed. Under new policies, the federal government will reimburse 50% of states’ costs for providing parent legal representation. This is a major development.
The money from reimbursement comes from U.S.’s Title IV-E entitlement. Title IV-E is a federal program that provides direct financial assistance for children who are placed in foster care for their safety. Under the program, the federal government partially reimburses states, territories, and tribes for the cost of providing foster care, adoption assistance, and kinship guardianship assistance to children.
Previously, legal services provided by an attorney representing a child or parent were not reimbursable. Significantly, this ensures that more jurisdictions will provide quality parent legal representation.
Read the Child Welfare Policy Manual here. The section mentioned above can be found under section 8.1B, specifically under questions 30-32 on pages 296-297.
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The Fight for Better Legal Representation in Western Australia
Around the world, parents receive inadequate legal representation in family court. In fact, in many places in the world, people who have committed petty crimes, like shoplifting, have better legal representation than parents fighting for their families.
In Australia, the right of parents to legal representation in child welfare proceedings varies depending on jurisdiction. All states and territories have government funded Legal Aid services and in most states and territories, parents are able to seek free legal information over the phone. Low-income parents who qualify based on means may also be assigned a lawyer. However free legal representation for low-income parents is also subject to a merit test, and if a parent’s case is deemed unlikely to succeed, representation through Legal Aid may be denied.
In Western Australia, only approximately 40-60% of parents in child welfare proceedings who need free government-funded representation receive it. Those who are assigned a lawyer are only entitled to a total of five hours of legal support from the government yet they often go through a one to two year court process.
In recent years, the Family Inclusion Network of Western Australia (FinWA) has been at the forefront of advocacy efforts to improve legal representation for parents in child welfare proceedings. In 2019 and 2020, FinWA hosted symposiums to elevate the issue and discuss the lack of parent legal representation in court proceedings. In 2020, FinWA employed its first peer worker, and they were assigned to work alongside parents at the Children’s Courts, where protection and care matters are determined. Below is an interview with Debbie Henderson, social worker and until recently the Chief Executive Officer of FinWA, regarding the latest advocacy efforts in Western Australia.
Q: Who is leading the effort to increase and improve parent representation and how did you decide this is where you should focus your efforts?
Henderson: FinWA has been operating for 13 years. Up until two years ago we were the only organization throughout Australia that was providing professional social workers trained as advocates to work alongside parents involved in the child protection system. Our advocates are not parents. However parents are at the center of all we do, including the decision-making, design, and implementation of our service.
When I first became involved in this work, it was evident that parents didn’t have full legal representation. It’s hard to understand how parents are not provided access to fully participate in the legal process when their children are removed –given that they are at risk of losing the rights to their children either temporarily or permanently. Compare this to the provision of legal representation given to offenders of crime. It often seems that decisions are made to the detriment of children and families that may not have been made with proper legal representation.
Practitioners across the child welfare sector—legal, health, disability and all support services—
see that families are often decimated in the system. It is overwhelming and disempowering, often leaving families traumatized and struggling to manage in all aspects of life. This is especially evident with Aboriginal families and communities when children are removed: the impact on connection, identity, culture and belonging is significant. In addition, many of our Indigenous community are in remote regions where there are limited services, making it more likely that they will lose their rights to their children.
Three years ago, a retired social worker started some volunteer work with us. We both began asking questions of parents, stakeholders and legal practitioners to see how they viewed the situation. It was obvious that everybody held the same opinion: that it was completely unjust that legal representation wasn’t afforded to families.
As the lead of Fin WA, I facilitated a community meeting of mostly legal practitioners who were already actively engaged in this space; academics, health and community service workers were also included. In the meeting, the collective outrage was evident, and we agreed that we needed a collaborative effort to advocate for change. The goal of the first symposium was to elevate the issue. The goal of the second symposium was to bring in more people who could help us agitate for change.
At the first symposium, the keynote speaker was the President of the Children’s Court who oversees all child protection applications. She spoke about being shocked when she realized that legal representation was inconsistent for parents. The Minister for Child Protection also attended. A lawyer presented a case study and that presentation generated deeper interest from the Minister and she was happy to remain connected to the issues.
Since the symposiums, we have gained traction in terms of people who want to support ‘the cause’, who want to attend the symposiums, and who want to help in some way. We have a growing group of stakeholders. One of our academic supporters has written a few articles, one of which has been published.
Q: What role have parents played in these efforts:
Henderson: With each symposium, parents have attended and participated in various ways. At the first symposium, we had parents who contributed in different discussion groups. In the second symposium, we had a parent co-emcee the event and another parent participate on one of the speaking panels. This is within a context where parents speaking up publicly is uncommon. Some professionals (particularly statutory workers) get anxious when parents speak publicly or take on some kind of leadership role.
Despite that parent participation, overall, we’ve had very little parent inclusion at this point. We are about to hold a third symposium but currently the working group does not involve parents. Fortunately many of our parents have had their children returned to their care so the small pool of parents we have are not available for the commitment. Other parents are still in the process of dealing with the system and therefore it is difficult for them to participate in this work; while others may be struggling to come to terms with the loss of their children.
It’s also because the ‘parent movement’ is not fully organized to lead the charge in Western Australia. There’s a lot to do to change our community expectations and our culture about how we view parents involved in the child protection system. There is certainly some shift in perspective and perceptions of parents by stakeholders. We have some excellent partners advocating for parent inclusion and parent leadership and we now have to grow that.
Q: How hopeful are you that there will be significant change? What specific policy changes are being considered and how might those changes be implemented?
Henderson: We are forever and always hopeful. I think we’re a long way from achieving change that provides a truly just and fair system in terms of legal representation. Still, it is important to acknowledge the small, incremental actions that have, and are occurring purely from our advocacy in this space. The Women’s Legal Service of WA is partnering with a large private legal firm, Ashurst Lawyers, and they’re providing pro bono work in child protection (such as affidavits) for women across the state of Western Australia. Ruah, one of the large community organizations in Western Australia has joined with the WA Mental Health Legal Centre and developed a pilot project of legal and support services for parents. The minister and policy leaders are aware of the advocacy in this space and are watching with interest.
There have been conversations with the Attorney General’s Office who funds the legal services in Western Australia. Services are stretched and building capacity is an ongoing challenge. We have a significant task ahead in acquiring the funds needed to provide the necessary legal representation and support required for parents. To fully fund what families require is a massive investment, but that is the ultimate goal. In the meantime, seeking increases of funding for legal representation that will allow parents to participate more effectively in the process– such as all parents being represented in specific processes of the court, pre-birth and pre-hearing conferences—can only be a ‘win-win’ for all concerned.
Parent Defender Agencies Lobby for Legal Protections for Parents in New York City
In recent years, parent defender agencies in New York City have increasingly focused on working alongside parent advocates and others to pass legislation at city and state levels to protect the rights of parents and families in child welfare.
Below is a list of some of the laws that parent defender agencies, working in conjunction with parent advocates and activists, have been in the forefront of passing, as well as bills that they are still working to pass.
Early Defense: Representing Parents During Investigations
In New York City, roughly half of all removals are made on an emergency basis without judicial oversight and parents are only provided an attorney and allowed to access legal advice when a case goes to family court.
Until recently, most parents were left to fend for themselves during an investigation period without being informed of their rights, what it means to be investigated, and what their options are. That’s also the case everywhere around the world where child protective investigations are carried out.
But in 2018, the Bronx Defenders received a private grant for a lawyer, social worker, and parent advocate to provide legal services to 200 walk-in clients a year under child protection services investigation. Also in 2018, NYC’s City Council issued money to legal defense agencies to provide early representation.
In 2019, Brooklyn Defender Services received a special grant from the state and opened a walk-in center to provide legal help for everything from housing to education to criminal and child welfare cases.
Although the project ended, the Center for Family Representation (CFR) used to receive state funding prior to 2019 to provide early legal defense, meaning legal representation to parents during an investigation. During the time CFR received funding from the state, 80% of families under investigation that were provided legal representation did not have their child removed and did not have a court filing.
Today in NYC, parents who are being investigated won’t be assigned a lawyer like they do when they go into court. But if they reach out to one of the defender agencies on their own initiative during their investigation, they can be provided with a lawyer.
Legislatively, in October 2019, NYC’s Progressive Caucus along with Brooklyn Defender Services and other advocates introduced a child welfare reform package. If passed, several of the introduced bills would ensure that parents investigated by ACS would have information about how to access a lawyer and the opportunity to do so.
These bills include:
Int 1715-2019, which would provide parents in NYC access to a lawyer during a fair hearing to contest an indicated case.
Int 1718-2019, which would require NYC’s child welfare system to provide information to parents about their rights during an investigation, and would be provided in multiple languages.
Int 1728-2019, which would provide legal representation to parents in NYC during an investigation if the report is indicated after the first contact with the child protective investigator.
Int 1736-2019, which would require child protective investigators in NYC to inform parents about their rights during the first contact of an investigation.
Res 0736-2019, which would require New York State to provide parents with a bill of rights during the first contact of an investigation, and the bill would be made available online.
As of June 2021, these bills are currently laid over in committee and pending motion.
Strengthening the Evidentiary Standard and Reducing the Time Parents Spend on a Register for Child Abuse/Neglect
The parent advocacy movement has found success in lobbying for the passage of reforms that raise the standard of evidence before a parent can be found to have abused or neglected a child and that reduces the amount of time that a parent found to have neglected a child remains on the State Central Registry (SCR). On April 3, 2020, NYS Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the State Central Register Reform Bill (S6427A/A8060). The bill raised the standard of evidence required to find a parent guilty of abusing or neglecting a child from ‘some credible evidence’ to requiring a ‘preponderance of evidence’.
Previously, parents had to wait until their youngest child turned 28 to be taken off the register but once the legislation goes into effect in January 2022, parents will automatically be taken off the register 8 years after a neglect charge.
Read an article from Rise magazine that explains the legislation in greater depth here.
Read the New York State Senate and Assembly Bills here and here.
Preserving Family Bonds
Another area of advocacy in NYC is the effort to preserve family bonds and ensure visitation rights after adoption. The bill is known as the Preserving Family Bonds Act (S6357) and it will allow children adopted from foster care to continue to have contact with their parents if a judge agrees that it’s in the child’s best interest. Previously, termination of parental rights amounted to a ‘civil death penalty’ but the bill will protect family bonds even if the child cannot return home. Currently, the bill passed the Senate and Assembly and is waiting to see if the governor will sign.
Read the New York State Senate and Assembly Bill here.
[2] Attorneys who are hired by the state to represent parents or others in family or criminal court and are paid per client rather than being salaried are called 18B lawyers because of the section of the New York County law that created them.