Center for Family Representation

Interdisciplinary Family defense teams:our mission is to defend primarily black and brown parents and prevent or minimize the time any child spends in foster care. We defend more than 2,500 parents annually and have defended nearly 12,000 parents since 2007 against charges of neglect or abuse in manhattan and queens Family courts. Our successful model combines an attorney, a social worker, and a parent advocate- system impacted parents who have lost their children to foster care and reunified their families. By combining legal and social work advocacy with parent mentoring, we consistently keep half our clients' children out of care and significantly reduce foster care stays. We save millions in tax dollars and more importantly permit children to grow up in their own families.

Expense home for good: cfr families often face several challenges in addition to a Family court case and often need assistance in the areas of housing (to prevent eviction and obtain stable housing), immigration (to achieve legal status and access culturally competent services), public benefits (to secure and sustain important benefits like medicaid), and in criminal court (to defend allegations that are related to their Family court case). Challenges in any of these areas can lead children to enter, remain in, or re-enter foster care. Our home for good initiative gives families an efficient one-stop solution to provide them with needed advocacy in these other areas and so keep their families stable. Our civil legal services team, immigration team, and criminal defense team have already helped over 500 families keep their children home for good.

Community advocacy project (cap):cap provides 'early defense' to parents facing a city investigation of maltreatment, with the goal of avoiding a court prosecution altogether and keeping families intact and connected to services. Cap also provides parents with Representation to modify the state records that correspond to a child welfare investigation; the records often prevent parents from seeking employment in fields where employers regularly check these records. When a parent's Family defense case is dismissed or they have overcome challenges that lead to maltreatment charges, cap assists parents with amending these records, thus expanding employment opportunities for our clients.

Youth defense practice 540,478: the same city agency that runs the foster care system also runs the teenage incarceration system. We represent primarily black and brown youth who are criminally charged in Family court or "youth parts" in queens and manhattan with the same interdsicplinarly model we bring to Family defense. Our goal is to keep youth home, with their famlies to avoid the devastating impact of separation and incarceration. Training, technical assistance, and policy advocacy 21,295: annually cfr provides training and t.a. To more than 1,400 professionals across the country, including judges, on our interdisciplinary model. Staff also regularly host community based trainings for parents and youth. To date, we have worked with over 10,000 practitioners in 20 states, who hope to replicate some or all of our nationally recognized interdisciplinary cornerstone advocacy model. Cfr staff regularly present at national conferences and sit on advisory boards and work groups directed toward legislative and policy reform to promote justice for indigent families and youth.