What Happened To Kevin Rutherford, Articles B

Today (A.B.A., June 4, 2019), https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/child_law/resources/child_law_practiceonline/january---december-2019/providing-parents-multidisciplinary-legal-representation-signifi/. Part II briefly describes the findings in the quantitative analysis. 93. The defense team not only was able to achieve the return of Ms. Andersons daughter to her custody, it resolved the entire case, eliminating further need for court appearances. Several years earlier, she gave birth when she was still in foster care. Instead, the agency has conducted the conferences within a day or two after a newborns birth, at a time when the mother is not in a position to participate effectively. Our attorneys, social workers and other staff work together to advise, assist and represent parents every step of the way. If you are not a current client and need assistance, click here to get help. 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. Homicide Unit Mitigation Social . As soon as this case was assigned to Ms. Greens counsel, her team of attorneys and social work professionals began to put in place a strategy to try to have Sophia returned to her care as soon as possible. 61. If the study discussions in the previous section show anything, it is that being at the table when the agency fashions the case plan is a critical stage in the proceeding with profound long-term implications for all that follows. 30+ days ago. But the defender community maintains meaningful pressure on the system to live up to this rhetoric. Brooklyn Defender Services Aug 2017 - Aug 2019 2 years 1 month. In those cases, the parent would not have had anyone to attend the child safety conference with her at the hospital. 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. Before going to housing court, the defender offices housing specialist contacted the City office that was providing the rental subsidy to explain the problem and was able to get the office to write an additional check to her landlord to eliminate all arrears on her rent. They communicate frequently with caseworkers to rearrange meetings and services, to plan for the next steps, and for many other reasons. 42 (2019), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.04.022 [hereinafter Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach]. In re Ella B., 285 N.E.2d 288, 290 (N.Y. 1972). BDS is a public defense office that represents low-income New Yorkers in criminal, family, immigration, and civil legal matters. Emma S. Ketteringham et al., Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies: A Reproductive Justice Response to the Womb-to-Foster-Care Pipeline, 20 CUNY L. Rev. At the end of the nine-month period, the case was dismissed. The previous studies limited their focus to quantitative outcomes achieved at court or to reporting the views of stakeholders focused on the differences between the two kinds of representation made available to parents in New York City.58 This Article starts where the prior two articles left off. at 14. Bronx Defenders began as an organization that only did criminal defense. Brooklyn Defender Services - Idealist P (718) 254-0700; F (718) 254-0897; E info@bds.org; Facebook; Twitter; Rev. 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. Yet it was the out-of-court advocacy that made all the difference. 29. 77, 105 (2016). Ms. Green did not provide a clear answer, and she said she wondered whether it happened when Sophia fell off a bed. Admin. In sharing some of these accounts, the reader should pay particular attention to the frequency with which investigators from the child welfare agencies make mistakes, get facts wrong, fail to show up for critical meetings, or base recommendations on faulty information that is either flatly wrong or materially incomplete. Hum. 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. Ct. Act 262. Law 424 (McKinney 2020). 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. These plans are best developed out of court in conjunction with the agency overseeing the case.64 No good lawyer can afford to ignore the administrative process, which commonly begins when a family comes to the attention of an investigating caseworker following a report of suspected maltreatment made to the child protection agency. Mr. Sanchez was permitted to take his son to Mexico for the treatment he preferred. . Id. 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. The goal was to secure evidence from an independent, well-respected therapist that Ms. Green possessed the temperament and capability of raising her child safely. The true meaning of the findings in the quantitative study that these offices secure the return of children to their families significantly sooner than would happen without them is that child welfare practice without the kind of oversight accomplished by the offices wrongfully separates children from families in a significant percentage of cases. The team met with Ms. Barrow and began the task of coordinating the substantial support needed in managing Ms. Barrows mental illness and disability. Experienced Attorney, Criminal Defense Practice - Idealist 2 (. 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. 83. See Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 1; see also Understanding the Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach, supra note 4. But among the most important reforms needed in child welfare once investigations into families are started is to offer the family the services of a committed preventive and reunification service, precisely what the family defenders in New York are. See N.Y.C. Lawyers Assn, 763 N.Y.S.2d at 40102, 407. 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). Brooklyn Defender Services. 99. The agency was unwilling to accept the defense teams claims without doing its own investigation. 6. Brooklyn Defender Services serves communities in the State of New York. 24. Ct. 2003). Lauren Shapiro - Managing.. - Brooklyn Defender Services | ZoomInfo Ms. Barrow and the defense team jointly developed a new plan for her that included referring her to a therapist, a psychiatrist who was able to prescribe new medication, and a medication management provider. Once in court, families often face prolonged separation and years of supervision by the Administration for Children's Services. 33. The first article, Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach to Parental Representation in Child Welfare, was published in 2019.1 It described the results of a multiyear study in New York City that compared the outcomes of child welfare cases in which parents were represented by multidisciplinary family defender offices with cases in which parents were represented by solo practitioners assigned from a rotating panel of lawyers.2 The outcomes were dramatically better in cases handled by these offices, as measured by the reduced amount of time children were kept from their parents custody as compared with parents whose lawyers were solo practitioners.3 The second article was a qualitative analysis that described the interviews conducted of a wide group of professionals and former clients who work closely with the two different kinds of legal representation models that were compared.4 That article revealed the opinions of a broad range of professionals working in the courts on what distinguishes the family defender offices practice from the work done by panel lawyers.5. 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. 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. 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. 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. Only six babies (8 percent) were placed in foster care with strangers. In this sense, family defenders make child welfare work better. See id. These plans are routinely included in the reports agencies are required to submit every six months whenever children remain in foster care. The Bronx Office was part of a larger organization whose principal work was indigent criminal defense. brooklyn defender services bds brooklyn defender service brooklyn defenders family defense practice bds associates inc Brooklyn Defender Services Global Presence Search All Employees 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. BDS is a public defense office that represents low-income New Yorkers in criminal, family, immigration, and civil legal matters. Family Defense Practice. 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. In most of these cases, the mother is already represented by a lawyer. See N.Y. Fam. [or] ensure that clients receive necessary services and prepare appropriate service plans . 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). 8 Brooklyn Defender Services jobs available in Brooklyn, NY on Indeed.com. After consulting with an orthopedic surgeon at the hospital, Mr. Sanchez opted for a nonsurgical option to be secured in Mexico. One such case involved the representation by one of the family defender offices. Unfortunately, a complication temporarily derailed the effort just when the team was hopeful for a satisfactory resolution of the visitation motion and the underlying petition itself. I had never been so scared in my life. Without the surgeons letter, the case almost certainly would have ended with the court ordering the surgery in a legal proceeding that would have lingered for months. See N.Y. Cty. The non-profit organization, Brooklyn Defender Services, which provides legal defense to Brooklynites who can't afford private counsel, includes public defenders, lawyers in family practice . BDS attorneys, social workers, paralegals, investigators and administrative professionals have an unwavering commitment to the people we represent. Mr. Sanchez again brought his son to the hospital and, again, Mr. Sanchez informed the treating physician that, rather than consenting to surgery, he intended to take Eduardo back to Mexico for more nonsurgical treatment. At the end of the six months, the case was dismissed. Ct. 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. 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. Brooklyn Defender Services is a company located in Brooklyn, NY, United States. Her defense team at first consisted of a family court lawyer and a social worker. 384-b(7)(f)(1). Caseworkers are a critical player in each case. Her child was placed in foster care. Our team works to find temporary custody arrangements, refute false allegations and help inform parents of their rights at early stages of an ACS investigation about their family. FDP represents over 4,000 parents and caretakers each year in Abuse and Neglect and related cases in Brooklyn Family Court. 31. Brooklyn Defender Services is part of the Law Firms & Legal Services industry, and located in New York, United States. Programs, https://www.casey.org/who-we-are/about/ (last visited Oct. 18, 2020). & Lauren Shapiro, Dir., Family Def. 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. 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. Family Defense Practice Seeks Entry Level Attorney Candidates View job. 30. 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. Since the family defender offices opened in 2007 in New York City, the community whose children have been wrested from poor families has had a collective voice in the form of lobbying efforts by the newly created family defender advocates. 89. 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. The Brooklyn Officethe Brooklyn Family Defense Projectwas a project of the largest civil legal services organization in New York City, Legal Services for New York, now Legal Services NYC. Visit Us . Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) represents over 35,000 clients in criminal, family, immigration and civil cases annually. No case is filed; no court time is taken up; no court personnel are assigned to the matter. . Even these remarkable efforts would have been insufficient. 94. The teams social worker met with Ms. Barrows medication management provider to develop a plan for re-engaging with her medication upon the birth of the baby. One day, Ms. Green noticed a bump on Sophias head that concerned her. In the year before the petition was filed, Eduardo sustained an injury that required medical attention. at 3940 (oral testimony of Caitlin Becker, MSW, Managing Dire., Soc. Rev. 40592/88, 1989 WL 1715714 (N.Y. Sup. Melissa Trent - Supervising Attorney, Family Defense Practice Such services might include attending parenting skills or anger management classes, or participating in therapy, counseling, or drug treatment programs. Dir., Brooklyn Defender Serv. Ms. Greens attorneys used this knowledge to start planning their settlement and trial strategy.73. Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) is one of the largest public defense providers in the United States. Very commonly, abuse petitions involving physical injuries to children are filed in the absence of direct evidence concerning how the injury was sustained. The last 15 months have taken a toll on all of us. Approximately 20 percent of the Brooklyn Defender Services Family Defense Practice clients are immigrants, and many do not speak English as their first language. 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. These reviews are essential to the success of reunification efforts. Today, we are the primary provider of legal representation to parents facing the removal of their children to the foster system in Brooklyn Family Court. of BDS' family defense clients were reunited with their children at the conclusion of their family court case. Brooklyn, NY, US. In addition, the social work staff helped Ms. Green coordinate and expand visitation. See Paredes v. City of New York, No. Id. All of this was reported to the judge at the status conference. See N.Y. County Law 722(3) (McKinney 2020). Are you concerned that you or someone you know may be arrested by ICE? Brooklyn public defenders seek to form union - nydailynews.com Easily apply. This kind of advocacy can only be implemented by multiperson offices. Parent lawyers who fail to participate in the development of a case plan and who wait until going to court to advocate for their clients often discover that the original plan developed at the case conference will remain in place throughout the proceeding.66. 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. Brooklyn residents are harmed and impacted by government policies and practices that fuel mass incarceration and the destruction of families. In addition, by being such a careful listener and advocate, the defender team also ensured that Mr. Sanchez felt supported during an especially challenging time in his life when he was forced to divert his attention from taking care of his son to defending his right to remain his sons parent. 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. 262(c); Merrill Sobie, Practice Commentaries (McKinney 2020). 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. Admin., The CITYFEPS Rent Supplement Program Fact Sheet, https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dhs/downloads/pdf/CITYFEPS/CITYFEPS-fact-sheet.pdf. Panel lawyers may be assigned to represent adult parties in a large range of other types of family court cases, including custody and visitation disputes, paternity proceedings, child support contempt proceedings, and cases involving domestic violence, in which the represented party might be the accused batterer or the alleged victim. 17. Accepting these conditions, Ms. Andersons lawyer requested that the court hold a status conference for the case within the following month to be convened by the judge. Instead of the family being reunited, the case might have resulted in a termination of parental rights. Beginning that year, the Office funded a new model of public defense for families facing charges of abuse or neglect in three counties in New York City. 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. 76. 1012(f). 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 . The examining doctors asked Ms. Greens mother what may have happened to Sophia and her mother was unable to provide them with a satisfactory answer. I think that every parent should have an advocate. Admin., The CITYFEPS Rent Supplement Program Fact Sheet, N.Y.C. Although impressed by all the work Ms. Anderson and her team had begun, the agency nonetheless was unwilling to allow Ms. Anderson to go home with her baby. When parents lawyers are entirely uninvolved in shaping these plans, the fate of children and families is left to the skill and ability of the agency alone to identify correctly the critical needs of the family. The active family defender community cannot take full credit for this this dramatic shrinking of the foster care population. After hearing these positive developments, the judge set a hearing to be held in one month, signaling that if things continued to go well, the judge would likely return the child then. N.Y. Unified Ct. Sys. The family defender offices organize themselves around the real-world needs of their clients and continue to work closely with them even when the next court appearance is not scheduled in the immediate future. 81. Without the defense teams constant communication with Ms. Barrow and her providers about her service plan, she would not have had the support necessary to achieve the progress in her mental health treatment. In that capacity, she also represented parents in a wide range of matters related to family law . In countless cases over the past decade in New York City, pregnant parents have had the benefit of representation by one of the family defender offices before any case was brought against them. The final order terminating her parental rights was entered a mere six weeks before Ms. Anderson, now in the late stages of her pregnancy, met with social workers at the unit. See N.Y. Fam. It turned out the agencys support for releasing Ms. Barrows newborn did not last one week. The Family Defense Practice at Brooklyn Defenders has been representing parents and other caregivers in Family Court since 2007. Res. Commn on Hum. Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) advises clients about the immigration consequences of criminal charges and helps clients apply for citizenship, green cards, visas for domestic violence or trafficking victims, deferred action, and other immigration benefits. 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. Caseworkers visit parents in their homes and talk to them and their service providers on a regular basis. You will receive assistance in areas impacting your life, such as immigration, housing, benefits, education and employment. Within nine months, Ms. Green had completed both the anger management and parenting class, all while working full time and finishing her GED. 82. The prior quantitative and qualitative studies focused exclusively on outcomes of cases and on the views of professionals who see the work of the family defenders in family court. 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. None of this work is possible when parents are assigned panel attorneys who work as solo practitioners on their cases. When Mr. Sanchez met with his lawyers and social worker, he provided the fuller picture. Jail Services Attorney/Advocate. Immigration. Martin Guggenheim is the Fiorello LaGuardia Professor of Clinical Law at New York University School of Law. What follows is their story. 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. from Columbia Law School and graduated from Amherst College summa cum laude with a B.A. Id. This, in turn, most commonly means focusing on how parents have changed since the case began. 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. for Child.s Servs., All Staff Bulletin, Child Welfare Watch, Tough Decisions: Dealing with Domestic Violence, N.Y.C. Article 10 Attorney for the Family Defense Practice Team. 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. These case summaries were provided by the professionals employed by various family defender offices in New York City. 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. One parent told the Commission she attended between twelve and fifteen conferences over a three-year period, and in every instance, she attended them alone.88 The second parent testified that she attended between twelve and eighteen such conferences over a longer period of time.89 She, too, was never accompanied by anyone to a conference.90 By way of comparison, the social work director at one of the family defender offices testified at the same hearing that her office has a team of nineteen parent advocates and social workers who attended nearly 1,000 conferences with parents in fiscal year 2018.91. His son, Eduardo, suffers from a genetic hip disorder and, as a consequence, he is highly prone to injury. BDS | Get Help 25. The national family defender movement is based at the American Bar Associations Center on Children and the Law under the leadership of Mimi Laver.