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Understanding the Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach to Parental Representation in Child Welfare

June 2020
Children and Youth Services Review 116(3):105163

DOI:10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105163

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Authors:

Martin Guggenheim

New York University

Yuk C. Pang

University of Michigan

Timothy Ross

Action Research

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Prior research demonstrates that the interdisciplinary law office approach to parental representation in child welfare, used in the New York City Family Court, speeds up the time to permanency for children in foster care with no effect on child safety. Interrogating these findings further, this study utilizes a qualitative interview-based design to understand how the model works in practice to impact the outcomes of families’ cases. We interviewed 42 practitioners in the New York City Family Court and 16 parents who had had a recent child protection case in the New York City Family Court. Practitioners included judges, court attorneys, attorneys who represent parents in these cases, attorneys who represent children in these cases, and attorneys for the child welfare agency. Based on our analysis of these interviews, we identify three elements critical to the success of the interdisciplinary law office case practice approach: [1] uniform high-quality representation, [2] interdisciplinary practice, and [3] paying attention to the client’s well-being. These results shed light on why interdisciplinary law office parental representation effectively hastens reunification for children in foster care as compared to a solo practitioner attorney.

Practitioner Sample Characteristics (N = 42).

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Parent Sample Characteristics (N = 17).

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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Children and Youth Services Review

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth

Understanding the eﬀects of an interdisciplinary approach to parental

representation in child welfare

Lucas A. Gerber

a,⁎

, Martin Guggenheim

, Yuk C. Pang

, Timothy Ross

, Yana Mayevskaya

Susan Jacobs

, Peter J. Pecora

Action Research, 132 32nd Street, Suite 110, Brooklyn, NY 11232, United States

Fiorello LaGuardia, Professor of Clinical Law, New York University, School of Law, 245 Sullivan St. Room 620, New York, NY, United States

Independent Consultant, United States

Managing Director of Research Services, Casey Family Programs, and Professor, School of Social Work, University of Washington, 2001 8th Avenue, Suite 2700, Seattle,

WA, 98121, United States

ARTICLE INFO

Keywords:

Juvenile court

Parents’right to counsel

Family reuniﬁcation

Family preservation

ABSTRACT

Prior research demonstrates that the interdisciplinary law oﬃce approach to parental representation in child

welfare, used in the New York City Family Court, speeds up the time to permanency for children in foster care

with no eﬀect on child safety. Interrogating these ﬁndings further, this study utilizes a qualitative interview-

based design to understand how the model works in practice to impact the outcomes of families’cases. We

interviewed 42 practitioners in the New York City Family Court and 17 parents who had had a recent child

protection case in the New York City Family Court. Practitioners included judges, court attorneys, attorneys who

represent parents in these cases, attorneys who represent children in these cases, and attorneys for the child

welfare agency. Based on our analysis of these interviews, we identify three elements critical to the success of the

interdisciplinary law oﬃce case practice approach: [1] uniform high-quality representation, [2] interdisciplinary

practice, and [3] paying attention to the client’s well-being. These results shed light on why interdisciplinary law

oﬃce parental representation eﬀectively hastens reuniﬁcation for children in foster care as compared to a solo

practitioner attorney.

1. Introduction

With the paradigm in child welfare policy in the U.S. shifting to one

of prevention of foster care through the Family First Prevention

Services Act of 2018, calls for high quality parental representation in

child welfare cases have risen to the national policy agenda. At the end

of 2018, the U.S. DHHS amended the Child Welfare Policy Manual to

allow state child welfare agencies operating pursuant to Title IV-E of

the Social Security Act to seek reimbursement from the federal gov-

ernment for administrative costs for attorneys to provide legal re-

presentation to parents and children in child welfare cases. A year

earlier, the same agency released a memo encouraging child welfare

agencies and courts to ensure all parties within child welfare proceed-

ings receive high quality legal representation (Administration on

Children, Youth, and Families, 2017). The American Bar Association, in

particular, has led the movement for high quality legal representation

for parents in child welfare cases through the National Alliance for

Parent Representation and the Family Justice Initiative (ABA National

Project to Improve Representation for Parents, 2017; Heimov, Laver, &

Carr, 2017).

With the renewed urgency to provide improved parental re-

presentation in child welfare cases, stakeholders and researchers have

increasingly asked: what kind of representation should be provided to

parents? Two landmark studies completed in Washington and New

York have identiﬁed elements of improved parental representation that

sped up children’s time to permanency (Courtney & Hook, 2012; Gerber

et al., 2019). This study focuses on the model of parental representation

studied in New York called “Interdisciplinary Law Oﬃces”(ILOs) or

“multidisciplinary oﬃces”. The New York study compared the out-

comes of child welfare cases in which parents were represented by

lawyers who are members of the court-assigned panel and work as solo

practitioners on their cases, with cases in which parents were re-

presented by lawyers from the ILOs. Using a quasi-experimental design,

the study concluded that ILOs hastened reuniﬁcation for children in

foster care, with no changes in child maltreatment rates.

This article follows up on the original New York study to provide

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105163

Received 24 March 2020; Received in revised form 8 June 2020; Accepted 9 June 2020

⁎

Corresponding author.

E-mail addresses: lucas.a.gerber@gmail.com (L.A. Gerber), martin.guggenheim@nyu.edu (M. Guggenheim), Ppecora@casey.org (P.J. Pecora).

Children and Youth Services Review 116 (2020) 105163

Available online 12 June 2020

(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/).

deeper qualitative insight into how the ILO model works and why the

ILO model improves reuniﬁcation outcomes. We conducted nearly 60

interviews with key actors in the New York City Family Court child

welfare system, including parents, lawyers, and judges, among others.

In doing so, we sought to explain how ILOs speed up reuniﬁcation for

children in foster care. Understanding these mechanisms will provide

policymakers with the tools to assess what core components may make

the ILOs successful and whether ILOs would have similar impacts in a

particular jurisdiction.

2. The ILO model in context

Starting in 2007, the New York City Mayor’sOﬃce of Criminal

Justice, the oﬃce responsible for payment of legal services for indigent

parents in Family Court proceedings, entered into contracts with three

nonproﬁt organizations to provide interdisciplinary legal defense for

parents in Family Court. These organizations are the Center for Family

Representation, the Family Defense Practice of Brooklyn Defender

Services (formerly of Legal Services New York City), and the Bronx

Defenders. We refer to these oﬃces collectively as “Interdisciplinary

Law Oﬃces”(ILOs), or “multidisciplinary oﬃces”or, simply, “oﬃces.”

By the end of 2019, these oﬃces, and a fourth oﬃce that was not part of

this study, provide a substantial majority of the legal representation for

parents facing child maltreatment petitions in the New York City Family

Court. Panel attorneys, also known as “18-B attorneys”after the section

of New York County Law that describes their function, represent the

remaining parents. Panel attorneys are highly experienced private

practitioners who successfully applied and were appointed to the panel.

In contrast to the ILOs, panel attorneys manage their own practices

individually and do not have interdisciplinary teams by default. The

description of the ILO model below draws heavily on the original out-

come evaluation of the model (Gerber et al., 2019).

These oﬃces employ an interdisciplinary and holistic case practice

approach when representing parents, in contrast with the panel at-

torney model it replaced. In addition to staﬀattorneys who appear in

court and only represent parents in child welfare cases, these three

oﬃces employ social workers, parent advocates, lawyers who specialize

in particular aspects of child welfare law, supervisors, and other in-

house personnel. With this interdisciplinary case practice model, most

parents are represented by a lawyer along with a social worker and/or

parent advocate. Parent advocates are individuals who have faced

proceedings in the Family Court as parents charged with maltreating

their children. Some providers have additional experts on staﬀ, as well:

attorneys to represent clients in criminal, housing, and immigration

court; experts who focus on troubleshooting public assistance, educa-

tional issues, and other government systems; paralegals; and in-

vestigators.

While staﬀattorneys address in-court representation, social work

staﬀaddress issues outside the courtroom to support the family, in-

cluding advocating for parents at agency conferences, assisting parents

to enroll in court-ordered programs, and otherwise attending to their

needs. The oﬃces pay particular focus to shortening the time children

spend in foster care as well as on visiting arrangements for children and

their parents that are as frequent and long as possible and in natural

settings; placement arrangements that support a child’s connection to

family; services that address a parent and child’s strengths and needs

and which are tailored to the speciﬁc family; and, conferences and

meetings that occur out of court and provide opportunities for parents

and older youth to participate in their case planning (Cohen & Cortese,

2009; Stone-Levine, 2012).

A growing body of literature describes quantitatively how models of

improved parental representation beneﬁt case outcomes for children

and families, particularly speeding up the time to permanency out-

comes (see a review in Gerber et al., 2019). More recent studies have

explored qualitatively what the mechanisms are that may inﬂuence

these outcomes. A mixed method evaluation of a child protection law

clinic in a Midwestern state utilizing a somewhat similar model to the

ILO model found that, ﬁrst, clients appreciated the “strong, holistic and

humanistic”legal defense they received (Haight, Marshall, & Woolman,

2015). Additional research describes how the breadth of discussion at

the initial hearings in child protective cases increases the likelihood of

case closure and reuniﬁcation (Summers, Gatowski, & Gueller, 2017).

Second, in the Midwestern law clinic, maintaining a positive attorney-

client relationship—identiﬁed as a challenge—was believed to be a

critical element in successful representation. The study notes that

“many recognized the challenges faced by [law] student [attorneys] in

developing and sustaining relationships with distressed parents whose

life experiences were very diﬀerent from their own”(Haight et al.,

2015, p. 16). Furthermore, “some parents were concerned about the

apparent friendliness of their attorney with opposing counsel”which

“reﬂected their lack of familiarity with legal norms”(Haight et al.,

2015, p. 15). Third, research suggests that parent mentor programs si-

tuated outside of the formal child welfare system and which employ

parents from a community are better equipped to serve and develop

relationships with parents in that community who are involved with the

child welfare system. A study of the Minnesota One-Stop for Commu-

nities Parent Mentor Program, started by and employing African-

American parents from the local community, found that they were more

able to build trusting relationships with and address the needs of

African-American parents from nearby communities (Soﬀer-Elnekave,

Haight, & Jader, 2020).

Drawing on the insights from these studies, here we continue to

explore how the quality and scope of representation provided, the in-

terdisciplinary team members including parent mentors, and the at-

torney-client relationship are linked to one another and the outcomes of

cases.

3. Research methods

3.1. Overview

We designed this study to help explain diﬀerences in case outcomes

established in a quasi-experimental study which, through a propensity

score matching design, concluded that ILOs in NYC hastened re-

uniﬁcation for children in foster care, with no changes in child mal-

treatment rates as compared to panel attorneys (Gerber et al., 2019). In

order to understand ILO case practice, parents’experiences and court

functioning, we interviewed a range of key actors in the NYC Family

Court, including parents who had experienced a family court case and

representatives from every party in child protection cases. Interviewing

stakeholders from all the parties involved in child protection court cases

allowed us to compare responses on important topics from many van-

tage points. We conducted the qualitative interviews with the following

research question in mind: How do any diﬀerences between the ILO model

and the panel attorney model account for the variation in outcomes between

the two models? In answering this question, we explored three guiding

questions listed below:

How does the ILO model diﬀer from the panel attorney model in

practice?

How do parents’experiences diﬀer with the ILO model than with the

panel attorney model?

What eﬀects has the ILO model had on overall court functioning and

other court stakeholders?

Ultimately, we synthesized our answers to these three sub-questions

to help explain the diﬀerences seen in the outcome data, and we discuss

the implications for policy and practice.

3.2. Sample

We interviewed a range of key actors in the NYC Family Court: [1]

L.A. Gerber, et al. Children and Youth Services Review 116 (2020) 105163

parents who had experienced a child protection case, [2] attorneys from

both models of representation—ILO and 18-B panel, [3] judges and

court attorneys, [4] attorneys that prosecute cases for the child welfare

agency (known as “FCLS”attorneys as these staﬀare part of the Family

Court Legal Services division of the NYC Administration for Children’s

Services), and [5] attorneys who represent children in child protection

cases.

Our interview respondents are described in Tables 1 and 2. Our

analysis sample comprises 42 legal practitioners, and 17 parents who

had a recent child protection case in the NYC Family Court and met the

study’s criteria. We interviewed 7 additional parents who were ex-

cluded because they had cases only prior to 2007, or only had family

court cases that were not child protection cases.

Table 2 shows the demographic information we gathered about

parents who participated in the study. Of the 17 parents who met the

criteria, seven were represented by panel attorneys, seven by ILO at-

torneys, one parent by both types of attorneys, one parent by a privately

hired attorney, and one parent by an attorney we could not identify.

The most common ﬁnal case outcome for parents we interviewed was

reuniﬁcation (14 parents), followed by some children reuniﬁed and

some released to a relative (2 parents), and some children reuniﬁed and

some adopted (1). Case outcomes happened to distribute evenly across

attorney types and so are unlikely to bias our results across attorney

type. Of the parents who had children released to a relative, one was

represented by an ILO attorney and one by a panel attorney; and the

parent who had children who were adopted was represented by both

types of attorneys. Demographic characteristics seem to be re-

presentative of parents who have children removed to NYC’s foster care

system. Of parents who identiﬁed their racial and ethnic identities,

100% were people of color, and of all parents, 69% identiﬁed as Black

or African-American—reﬂecting the reality of entrenched systemic ra-

cism in NYC’s foster care system.

For each practitioner group, we interviewed at least one profes-

sional from every court borough. Practitioners we interviewed had

extensive experience practicing in the NYC Family Court, with most

having over ten years of experience.

3.3. Procedures

Two researchers conducted most of the interviews, and three

trained law students conducted the remaining interviews. Most inter-

views were conducted in-person, and some were conducted over the

phone (3 practitioners and 7 parents) depending on the individual’s

preference. For most interviews, individuals did not consent to be audio

recorded, so we relied on notes taken during and after the interview;

some interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim (4 practi-

tioners and 7 parents). Practitioner interviews were conducted in the

individual’soﬃce or at the courthouse. Parent interviews were con-

ducted at a variety of locations with the individual’s convenience and

comfort determining the location, oftentimes at a coﬀee shop or res-

taurant near the person’s home or work. Interviews lasted approxi-

mately 40 min on average. We received approval from the Casey Family

Programs Human Subjects Review Committee, the New York University

IRB, and Solutions IRB to conduct this study. Recruitment materials,

interview questionnaires, consent forms, and telephone scripts may be

obtained from the authors upon request.

3.4. Recruitment protocol

Regarding recruitment, parents needed to meet the following cri-

teria to be eligible: they must have been a parent respondent in a child

protection proceeding in the NYC Family Court that began after 2007,

and they could not have an open case with the ACS or the NYC Family

Court as of the screening date. By recommendation from our advisory

board group, we did not interview any parents with an active ACS or

family court case. We were advised that parents with any active in-

volvement in any child welfare court proceeding might feel coerced

into participating or that their participation might impact the outcome

of their case. To recruit parents, we set up a phone line and email ad-

dress where parents could contact the research team. Each parent who

contacted us was screened for eligibility and, if eligible, interviewed in-

person or over the phone. Each parent received a $100 gift card for

participation in the study.

With the phone and email in place, we conducted outreach to solicit

responses from parents using three strategies: [1] outreach to local

service agencies and community organizations, [2] partnering with

parent advocacy organizations, and [3] referrals from interview parti-

cipants. First, the research team identiﬁed a list of hundreds of local

services agencies and community organizations, such as foster care

agencies, preventive service agencies, churches, community centers,

libraries, food pantries, homeless shelters, medical providers, and

Table 1

Practitioner Sample Characteristics (N = 42).

Practitioner Type No. %

ILO Attorney 19 45%

FCLS (ACS Attorney) 8 19%

Judge 6 14%

Legal Aid 4 10%

Court Attorney 3 7%

Panel Attorney 2 5%

Table 2

Parent Sample Characteristics (N = 17).

Sample Characteristics No. %

Attorney Type

ILO 7 41%

Panel 7 41%

Both 16%

Private 16%

Unidentiﬁed 16%

First Petition Filing Year

2003 16%

2010 2 12%

2011 16%

2012 2 12%

2013 16%

2014 2 12%

2015 3 18%

2016 4 24%

2017 16%

Court Borough

Brooklyn 4 24%

Bronx 7 41%

Manhattan 5 29%

Queens 16%

English as Primary Language

Yes 15 88%

No 2 12%

Race/Ethnicity

Black or African-American 10 59%

Hispanic/Latinx 5 29%

Native-American 16%

Unidentiﬁed 16%

Highest Education Obtained

High school/GED 8 47%

Some College 5 29%

College Degree 3 18%

Graduate Education or Degree 16%

Age Group

22–30 7 41%

31–40 5 29%

41–50 4 24%

51–60 16%

L.A. Gerber, et al. Children and Youth Services Review 116 (2020) 105163

welfare oﬃces. We emailed information about the study and brochures

to each provider for the provider to share. The team also presented at a

few local service provider meetings. Second, the research team con-

tacted organizations that advocate on behalf of parents who have ex-

perienced child welfare cases, such as the Child Welfare Organizing

Project (CWOP) and RISE magazine. These organizations shared in-

formation about the study with parents involved in their organizations,

and more broadly to other parents. Third, at the end of each interview

with a parent, we shared our contact information with them so that

they could pass it along to anyone they may know who could then

During the interviews, we asked parents for information about their

family court case, how their attorney and other staﬀrepresented them

and prepared them for court hearings and conferences, services they

received during their case, and the overall impact of their attorney and

team on their court case. We learned about parent perceptions of due

process and fairness, eﬀective and ineﬀective characteristics of re-

presentation, challenges and frustrations parents faced when working

with their attorneys, and the ideal role of parent representation based

on their own experiences.

In sampling court practitioners, we wanted to interview at least one

professional from every relevant court borough for each practitioner

group, in order to understand the diﬀerences across courts. We also

intended only to interview professionals with ﬁve or more years of

experience in the NYC Family Court to get a more knowledgeable

group. To achieve an unbiased array of perspectives, we attempted to

get a random sample of legal practitioner participants by randomly

selecting them from a list (using the above criteria) and inviting them to

participate by email. When we needed additional participants due to

low response rates, we sought recommendations from our advisory

board group—which included judges, representatives from the child

welfare agency and foster care providers, an active panel attorney, and

a representative from an ILO, among others.

Each practitioner group required a slightly diﬀerent manner of se-

lection described below. Judges and court attorneys were initially

selected randomly from a list of active judges and invited to participate.

Several of these individuals either did not respond or declined to be

interviewed. To ensure that we gathered the views of judges, we in-

terviewed some jurists who were recommended by our advisory board.

Executive staﬀfrom the Administration for Children’s Services Family

Court Legal Services Division selected FCLS attorneys for interviews,

and executive staﬀfrom the Legal Aid Society recommended super-

vising child attorneys for interviews. Both FCLS and the Legal Aid

Society used the criteria above in making these recommendations. We

don’t believe that either group skewed the perspective we received from

our interview participants. Neither group had a vested ﬁnancial or

other interest in giving us a more or less favorable view of the ILO

model, and FCLS staﬀtold us explicitly that they wanted us to speak to

some attorneys who had unfavorable views of the ILO model and some

who had favorable views so that both would be represented. Parent

attorneys from each representation model were randomly selected to

participate in the study. Based on staﬀrosters, we developed lists of

currently practicing attorneys from each panel and provider who had

been practicing for at least ﬁve years. We achieved a 100% response

rate from the ILO attorneys. We sent out multiple emails to individual

panel attorneys but received no responses that led to interviews. We

then spoke to panel attorneys at the courthouses to request interviews

and were able to recruit some attorneys to participate in interviews.

3.5. Analytic approach

In analyzing our interview data, we began by reading through the

interview data which comprised interview notes and transcripts. Then,

we developed a codebook of themes and sub-themes, each with a de-

scription and keywords, drawing our initial list of codebook items from

the questions in our interview instruments. These topics comprised

parent attorney case practice, court functioning and the system-wide

impact of parent representation, parents’experiences and satisfaction,

and overall assessments of the two models of parent representation.

Once the research team agreed on an initial codebook, three researchers

coded a small subset of the interviews and compared responses. The

research team then revised the codebook to include additional themes

and collapse similar themes. After consensus was reached on the

meaning of each theme, the three researchers double-coded 6 inter-

views of multiple participant types in order to assess the reliability of

the coding and align their coding schemes. The researchers discussed

and manually reviewed the 6 double-coded interviews, and there was

high agreement in coding across the interviews though we did not use a

statistical measure of inter-rater reliability. The three researchers then

divided up the remaining interviews and coded line-by-line in NVivo

with the ﬁnalized codebook.

After the interviews were coded, we summarized insights from each

group and compared instances of each theme and sub-theme across the

interview participant groups listed above to answer the three guiding

questions. We focused on what interview participants frequently said

about each theme, what insights we could ﬁnd that were relevant to our

questions, and how statements from one group compared to what other

groups of interview participants said. In analyzing the transcripts, we

most importantly intended to compare experiences with the ILO and

panel attorney models of parent representation. We were additionally

mindful of several dichotomies among our interview participants: [1]

ILO attorneys versus panel attorneys, [2] parents represented by ILOs

versus parents represented by panel attorneys, [3] parents versus parent

attorneys, [4] parent attorneys versus other court actors, and [5] court

practitioners who worked in the NYC Family Court before and after

ILOs were implemented versus court practitioners who worked in the

NYC Family Court only after ILOs were implemented. Through

matching quotations across themes and comparison groups, we wove

together the stories and perspectives that parents and practitioners

shared in order to answer our research question.

4. Findings

4.1. Overview

As we discussed earlier, this study investigates the ILO model with

the research question: how do any diﬀerences between the ILO model

and the panel attorney model account for the outcome data? Prior

ﬁndings showed that the ILO model in New York City signiﬁcantly

shortened foster care stays when parents were represented by ILOs as

compared with representation provided by solo practitioner attorneys.

In this study, we gather what can be learned about why outcomes dif-

fered. What are the mechanisms through which ILOs are able to secure

the safe return of children from foster care to their families more

quickly?

Through our analysis of our interviews, we identiﬁed three core

components that appear to make the ILO model successful: [1] uniform

high-quality representation, [2] interdisciplinary practice, and [3] paying

attention to the client’s well-being. The following sections describe each

component.

4.2. Uniform high-quality representation

From our analysis of our interviews, the ﬁrst key factor in the ILO

model shortening time in foster care is uniform high-quality re-

presentation. The ILO case practice approach focuses on well-executed

creative and aggressive court hearing practice in a standardized way

across attorneys trained within each organization. We use the term

“high-quality”referencing the deﬁnition for high-quality legal ad-

vocacy for parent attorneys created by the Family Justice Initiative

(FJI). According to FJI, high-quality legal advocacy comprises the fol-

lowing four elements:

L.A. Gerber, et al. Children and Youth Services Review 116 (2020) 105163

Develop a case theory and legal strategy for adjudication, and advance

other client objectives and issues that support reuniﬁcation (e.g., litiga-

tion to increase visitation).

Engage in proactive case planning, develop and propose a case plan,

identify service providers, and set a visitation schedule (if family main-

tenance or immediate family reuniﬁcation is not possible).

Litigate issues and use experts, as needed, to achieve clients’case goals,

including through active motion practice throughout proceedings, not

only at statutorily set periodic review dates.

Explain to clients their right to attend court hearings and advocate for

clients who want to attend court proceedings to attend in person. (Family

Justice Initiative, 2019)

Below we highlight the major ways that the ILO oﬃces, according to

one judge, “changed the culture at court”through uniform high-quality

representation and how that leads to faster reuniﬁcation for families.

4.2.1. Client contact

Most parents who were represented by ILO lawyers were very sa-

tisﬁed with how their attorney contacted and prepared them for court

hearings: “when I called her, she always called me back right after on

the same day.”We found in analyzing our interviews that the presence

of social workers and parent advocates in the ILO representation model

appeared to increase the amount of communication between court

appearances. As one parent who was represented by an ILO lawyer said,

“I [saw] the social worker more because she made herself”available to

me. Attorneys from both models reported spending a majority of their

day in court, going from hearing to hearing with little downtime. ILO

attorneys, however, relied on other team members, particularly the

social workers and parent advocates, to stay in touch with the client

and respond promptly to their inquiries. Other practitioner groups also

found that ILO teams responded faster to their communications, facil-

itating the interaction between the parties to move the case forward

more quickly. For example, one Legal Aid lawyer explained that law-

yers from the ILOs responded to out-of-court communications much

faster than panel lawyers did, something this lawyer believed is an

important reason that they achieve better results for their clients.

In contrast, among the parents we spoke to, parents represented by

panel lawyers were much more likely to complain about the lack of

communication between court appearances. “I always felt like I was

doing the work opposed to him. Like I would just call him and tell him,

hey, I found out this, hey, I found out that.”Another parent who had a

panel lawyer said, “I understand that lawyers have a lot of cases, but

when you tell me to call you and I call you, then answer.”Panel at-

torneys, according to our interview respondents, while being well-

meaning, passionate, and skilled practitioners, lack the resources to

maintain close contact with clients. Shuﬄed from hearing to hearing

during the workday, panel attorneys often cannot respond to client

inquiries within a reasonable time.

ILO attorneys had social workers and other team members to sup-

port maintaining close contact with clients. On the other hand, panel

attorneys did not have those resources and, therefore, were “pretty

much never oﬀ[work].”One panel attorney described herculean eﬀorts

to stay in contact with clients: I “talk to my clients, meet my clients,

read every document they give me, answer every single text they send

me at 7:00 am in the morning, at 1:00 am on Saturdays, on Sundays.”

But, the voices from parents and other stakeholders told a diﬀerent

story –one where panel attorneys often could not live up to this stan-

dard, because of the lack of team member support. In addition to im-

proving client satisfaction, the capability to maintain frequent client

contact—buoyed by the interdisciplinary team—facilitates better court

preparation within the ILO model, and other advantages, as we describe

below.

4.2.2. Court preparation

The consensus among court practitioners was that “ILOs were better

prepared on average”for hearings. One FCLS attorney described that

the ILOs are “more aggressive in requesting that children be returned to

their families quicker, more aggressive getting discovery at [con-

ferences], advocating [for clients’] next visitation …generally more

prepared in hearings than panel lawyers.”One judge stated that “the

oﬃces really do high quality work; they are better prepared”than the

panel lawyers. Practitioners stressed that ILO attorneys strategically

prepared to leverage each court hearing to resolve their client’s case,

recognizing that months may disappear between hearings and their

client may continue to be separated from their children. In a deeper

way than panel lawyers, the ILOs prepare to use each court appearance

to advance their client’s cause, often accelerating the time cases can be

resolved. By actively preparing how to use each court appearance as a

potentially signiﬁcant one, the ILOs help secure children’s return to

their families more quickly through advancing the parent’s interests

and providing the judge a more holistic picture of the case.

Judges told us that better court preparation from the parent’s at-

torney led to quicker decisions on their part. One judge stressed that

“whether or not we [judges] are presented with the evidence that we

need”impacts the judge’s ability to decide the case correctly and

timely. In her words, “if all you hear from is ACS and we don’t hear

from the parents’attorneys who haven’t gone and subpoenaed wit-

nesses or uncovered records or brought in whatever other pieces…then

I’m simply missing that information. My job is made more complicated

if you feel like the attorney representing the parent is not actually

bringing out information that might be out there that they haven’t ac-

tually tapped into.”When the attorney has adequately prepared for the

hearing and planned how to leverage that hearing to move the case

forward, judges have all the information they need to make quicker

decisions and the parents’interests are advanced to a greater degree.

Because of better court preparation, one Legal Aid lawyer said that

lawyers from the ILOs “hold the system accountable in a way that the

panel attorneys cannot.”This lawyer explained that the ILO lawyers

“are very concrete in making sure everyone knows where the failings

are, if it’s a failing by an agency.”This lawyer also explained that the

ILOs approached court proceedings more formally than the panel at-

torneys, insisting that everyone follow the law; the lawyer believed

that, by doing so, children stayed in care for shorter periods of time.

Ultimately, one Legal Aid attorney expressed that “ILOs have made us

do our jobs better and contributed to this court being more of a real trial

court. It used to be that instead of putting a witness on, attorneys would

just tell the court [what is going on]. Now we have more real hearings,

more demanding hearings. We are all more skilled trial attorneys be-

cause of it.”

In addition to supervision and training for attorneys, part of what

allows the ILO attorneys to prepare better for hearings is that the legal

team maintains close contact with the parent and thus has more com-

plete evidence to share and a more developed case theory and legal

strategy.

4.2.3. Legal motions

Respondents reported that ILO lawyers ﬁle many more motions and

requests for court hearings than panel lawyers. As one FCLS lawyer

expressed it, “Before [the ILO oﬃce] came onto the scene, there was

very little motion practice in the courts. The panel lawyers took the

position that it would be good enough to discuss the case next time in

court.”A second FCLS lawyer said the ILO oﬃces “changed the practice

from one in which motions were rare to where they are a regular fea-

ture of practice.”One judge explained how the new ILO oﬃces raised

the level of practice in Family Court considerably when they began in

2007. “When the lawyers from the oﬃces came in and started making

motions and ﬁling appeals and doing zealous practice, everybody

started –the panel lawyers took notice.”Like other legal practitioners,

Legal Aid lawyers emphasized the extent to which the ILOs changed the

culture of the court by practicing at a level unseen before. One Legal

Aid lawyer explained that the ILOs utilize superior motion practice –

L.A. Gerber, et al. Children and Youth Services Review 116 (2020) 105163

part of “a whole team to step up the game.”

The kind of motions mentioned most frequently were requests for

evidentiary hearings pursuant to sections 1027 or 1028 of the New York

Family Court Act (known as 1027 or 1028 hearings) at the very be-

ginning of the case challenging the recommendation of the child wel-

fare agency that the child or children be placed in foster care. Parents

have the option to oppose the placement of a child into foster care at

any time during the pendency of the case. Once requested, the hearing

must begin within 72 hours of the request. The issue to be decided is

either whether there was a lawful basis for the child’s removal or, even

if there was, whether changes in conditions since the child’s placement

make it safe to return the child.

Before the ILO oﬃces opened, very few contested hearings were

held challenging a child’s foster care placement. Court practitioners

unanimously described an uptick in these hearings following the im-

plementation of ILOs. According to one judge, because panel lawyers

“also have other caseloads at the same time,”they would not bother

seeking these hearings. But with the coverage made available to the

staﬀlawyers in the ILO oﬃces, “they are able to insist upon these

hearings.”Today, these hearings are commonplace in the NYC Family

Court. By using each court appearance to advance their client’s cause,

as one Legal Aid lawyer put it, the new oﬃces greatly accelerated the

return of children to their families and the court’s oversight of place-

ment decisions when children were removed from their parents.

According to the court actors we interviewed, the ILOs frequently

ﬁle other motions previously unknown in the court system, ranging

from seeking more frequent visitation and under the least restrictive

conditions when children are in foster care to more complete discovery

(sharing of documents and information relating to the case) so that they

are better prepared to defend their clients. One Legal Aid attorney who

had practiced before the ILOs began mentioned that “previously, ACS’s

not responding to discovery demands was a problem, now it’s routine to

get discovery early in a case”because of frequent motions from ILO

attorneys. According to one FCLS attorney who had been practicing

prior to ILOs, “panel attorneys didn’t usually ﬁle motions too much …

they never put a motion on paper but might verbally argue it for the

court.”The motions can speed up the court process by pressuring other

parties to respond to the respondent parents’requests within statutorily

deﬁned timeframes.

Certain features of the ILO model make ﬁling motions easier and

more consistent with best legal practice than for panel attorneys. One

judge pointed to the excellent supervision provided by the oﬃces as

maintaining a high level of practice consistently, whereas panel attor-

neys have no supervisor and more variation in practice. The judge ex-

plained further that “it’s more than just an individual's supervision. It’s

an agency that has the ability to look on a broader scale at policy and

outcomes and what needs to happen to improve the level of practice.”

As a single nonproﬁt entity, each ILO shares motions across cases,

conducts regular trainings to develop practice, and disseminates recent

rulings or updates to law. Each provider retains a digital database of all

motions ﬁled by topic of law. Over time, an institutional knowledge

base has developed where an ILO attorney can easily ﬁnd a readily

usable template for complex motions that a panel attorney would need

to draft from scratch. Furthermore, representing parents in potentially

thousands of cases each year allows the ILO oﬃces to identify and

improve patterns in practice.

4.2.4. Court process and timeliness

Legal practitioners outlined several ways that ILO case practice sped

up the court process. This occurred, they believe, because ILOs reduced

the need for postponements compared to panel lawyers—whether due

to illness, vacation or conﬂict with another court appearance having

been scheduled at the same time. The ILO system of representation

allows for another lawyer from the oﬃce to appear in place of the as-

signed lawyer who is unavailable, speeding up the process overall. Each

oﬃce shares a case management system so substitute attorneys can

review the details of the case. One court attorney explained that, “You

are much more likely to have nonappearances by panel

attorneys…They're all independent practitioners, so if they’re hospita-

lized or out sick or disorganized, there isn't necessarily anyone to cover

that case for them.”

A judge explained that the ILO lawyers get started on cases much

more quickly than panel lawyers, because sometimes no panel lawyers

are ready and available to be assigned to cases. This judge said, with

panel attorneys “we are having delays where we simply can't ﬁnd an

attorney to accept the case. We try, and it impacts our overtime which

isn't really the big issue for this study…That's diﬀerent with the in-

stitutional providers, to have a really reliable and steady stream of

people who are committed to appearing on the number of cases.”One

judge said that the ILO model did not make court practice more eﬃ-

cient, but rather suggested that it made aspects of court work easier

because of better coverage and management of court dates.

The ILO model, however, challenged many FCLS attorneys in a more

adversarial way than panel attorneys, negatively impacting some FCLS

attorneys’workloads and job satisfaction. Some FCLS attorneys appre-

ciated that ILO attorneys could be easier to contact due to a centralized

oﬃce number and supervisors, and that ILO attorneys assisted parents

with services which helped resolve cases more quickly. Some FCLS at-

torneys believed that the oﬃces’penchant for ﬁling motions and

hearings slowed down the court system by requiring the judges, and the

related court personnel (prosecuting lawyers, children’s lawyers, and

witnesses), to spend more time hearing evidence or reviewing court

papers. One FCLS lawyer stated that the ILO attorneys inhibited their

ability to hire new FCLS attorneys, because of how ILO attorneys treat

FCLS attorneys and how the oﬃces engage in media eﬀorts to portray

the ACS negatively. One FCLS lawyer even wondered whether the of-

ﬁces were preventing children from being reunited sooner because of

their adversarial posture, suggesting that the more aggressive advocacy

engaged in by the institutional providers “hurt[s] their clients because

it can be unlikely to settle and more likely to go to trial. The constant

need to litigate everything limits the amount of good work ACS can do.”

This lawyer explained that panel attorneys will listen to what she and

the caseworkers have to say and why the case is in court. In contrast,

the oﬃce providers too often “are not interested in hearing any of that;

they talk to their clients and get their client’s position, and they won’t

listen to any other story or facts.”

Notably, the quantitative study of the ILO model referenced earlier

found that, in the aggregate, the ILO model sped up the time to children

returning home as compared to the panel attorney model. Given this

ﬁnding, while it may be possible that an ILO attorney utilizing excessive

litigation or being unwilling to settle may delay some cases, that does

not appear to be common. It is possible that FCLS attorneys had

adoption cases in mind, as the quantitative study found no diﬀerence in

the timeliness to adoption, and ILO attorneys would, in most cases,

heavily contest any termination of parental rights and subsequent

adoption.

4.3. Interdisciplinary practice

The second key factor in the success of the ILO model is inter-

disciplinary practice. By interdisciplinary practice, we mean that most

parents are represented by a lawyer along with a social worker and/or

parent advocate. While the legal staﬀaddress in-court representation,

social work staﬀsupport the parent outside the courtroom, including

advocating for parents at agency conferences, assisting parents to enroll

in court-ordered programs, and otherwise attending to their needs. In

contrast, holistic practice refers to the work of addressing con-

temporaneous collateral legal issues to the child protection case, which

may involve additional experts on staﬀ. For example, holistic practice

may involve attorneys to represent clients in criminal, housing, and

immigration court, or experts who focus on troubleshooting public as-

sistance, educational issues, and other government systems. Below we

L.A. Gerber, et al. Children and Youth Services Review 116 (2020) 105163

describe the critical ways that the ILO interdisciplinary practice allows

children to be reunited sooner with their parents.

4.3.1. Utilization of interdisciplinary teams

All the parents represented by ILO attorneys mentioned that the

lawyer was supported either by a parent advocate, social worker, or

both, and most parents appreciated the support. As one parent shared,

“the social worker was there, and she was very helpful and under-

standing. I can go to her and she was deﬁnitely available to me.”One

Legal Aid attorney put it, “with [ILOs], the social worker is built into

the model.”The diﬀerent oﬃces in the study employ their inter-

disciplinary staﬀdiﬀerently. As of the time we conducted interviews,

the Center for Family Representation strives to use lawyers and social

workers on virtually every case. The Bronx Defenders and Brooklyn

Defenders are more likely to make case-by-case determinations re-

garding whether and to what extent to add non-attorney resources to a

particular case.

Almost every parent represented by panel attorneys said that their

lawyer was the only person working on their case. One panel attorney

interviewed acknowledged that he “hadn’t felt the need [to have ad-

ditional staﬀmembers helping] on the particular cases that I have with

the particular clients that I have.”He went on to add that “many of

them are lucky enough to have family who can help guide them if they

need some assistance. Another panel lawyer explained “I don’t need

social workers. I did social work for 15 years before I started practicing.

I’ve taught in social work schools, so I’m the social worker.”

Court practitioners agreed that panel attorneys rarely asked judges

to assign a social worker to work with them, despite a provision in the

law permitting them to do so. Among other issues, the procedure for

doing so is onerous. An attorney must complete the petition to the

court, wait for the order to be approved, select a social worker from an

approved court list, and then call and hire the social worker pending

their availability. As one Legal Aid attorney (who represents children)

said, by the time a panel attorney “[gets] a court order [to appoint a

social worker], they are behind the ball already.”However, even when

the provision is used, the social worker may not be integrated into the

case practice eﬀectively. In the one case where a parent represented by

a panel attorney had a social worker, the parent “didn’t understand the

point of the social worker, she didn’t help much, she was just there.”

This parent’s experience suggests that there is a signiﬁcant diﬀerence

when the social worker is a part of the core team from the very be-

ginning versus when the social worker is added on to perform a speciﬁc

task.

Below, we describe the key functions we discovered of the inter-

disciplinary team and how these functions potentially impact case

outcomes.

4.3.2. Out-of-court case conferences

In New York, as in many jurisdictions, the majority of discussions

that focus on service plans, the case planning goal, and the details re-

garding visitation of children in foster care occur outside of the court-

room in a series of case conferences run by the child welfare agency.

Parents are obligated to attend these conferences. While these con-

ferences are extra-judicial, the recommendations and decisions made at

them often have an outsized inﬂuence on what happens in the court-

room. In court, caseworkers commonly make key case recommenda-

tions based on what transpired at the out-of-court conferences.

Furthermore, caseworkers can bring information or statements from

these conferences into the courtroom, in the form of evidence or tes-

timony. As one judge explained, the most important part of what

happens in a child welfare case “doesn’t happen in the court room”;

what’s most important is “how you engage with the agency, understand

the case plan, assist the case plan, tailor the case plan to the client’s

needs.”The judge added that “the attorneys from the ILOs are more

eﬀective [than panel attorneys] in negotiating with the agencies.”

One of the deﬁning qualities of ILO practice is to accompany

parents, to the extent feasible, to all meetings and conferences with the

child welfare agency. In the ILO interdisciplinary team practice, the

lawyer appears in court and either the social work or parent advocate

member of the team (or both) attend these meetings. Parents who were

clients of the ILOs told us they were regularly accompanied by staﬀat

these conferences. One parent said, “I was never alone at the ACS

conferences.”Having a trained advocate on the parent’s side at these

meetings shifts the dynamic of the conference and ensures that the

parent’s voice will be heard; in many cases, practitioners and parents

believed that this led to decisions more favorable to parents than would

otherwise have happened.

An additional beneﬁt to having members of the ILO team attending

agency conferences is that the attorney is well-informed of case-related

changes between court appearances which they are able to bring to the

attention of the legal staﬀfor the child welfare agency. One experienced

FCLS lawyer told us that there are many more out-of-court and be-

tween-court-appearances conversations with the lawyers from the of-

ﬁces than with the panel attorneys, which leads to speedier outcomes in

many cases. He characterized the oﬃce practice as “more structured”

and said that their social workers frequently inﬂuence case conferences

by identifying services that parents need, as well as services they should

not be required to engage.

Panel lawyers, who lack these co-professionals, rarely, if ever, at-

tend these conferences. As one panel lawyer put it, they “don’t have

time to go to that.”One panel lawyer, recognizing the importance of

knowing what happens between court appearances, but having no

means to ﬁnd out himself, “always tell[s his] client, write down ev-

erything that happens, write down the time you did something, who

you spoke to.”Unfortunately, this lawyer explained: “I almost never get

a client who does that, I have given clients calendars and said, just write

it down. Very, very rarely have I had anybody who’s ever done that.”

Both panel lawyers we 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. Instead of looking into services for their clients, including en-

suring the services are necessary, culturally appropriate and convenient

for the client, they rely on ACS. When 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.”

That panel lawyers do not attend these out-of-court conferences

conﬁnes their eﬀorts in advocating for their clients’positions to only

inside the courtroom which means missing key opportunities to gather

information and move their clients’cases forward outside of court.

Panel attorneys often must rely on documentation from ACS on what

happened in conferences because no one from the legal team attended,

and this limits their ability to present the parent’s story of what hap-

pened and develop a legal strategy. Even if the parent takes notes in the

meeting, it may not be held as equal evidence to the perspective of a

caseworker or social worker. This dynamic can also erode the trust in

the parent-attorney relationship if, for example, an attorney questions a

parents’account of a conference because of a lack of documentation.

Furthermore, as we describe below, because panel lawyers do not at-

tend out-of-court conferences due to the lack of interdisciplinary team

members, panel lawyers often lean on service plans developed by ACS.

This, in turn, inhibits their ability to develop a trusting and supportive

relationship with the parent because the parent may view the attorney

as siding with ACS.

4.3.3. Services

Successful reuniﬁcation of children and parents in child welfare

cases often hinges on the parents’engagement in a social “service plan”

to address and ameliorate underlying problems which led to a child’s

removal to foster care. It is crucial that the service plan be appropriate

for the family, including that the services required of the parent are in

fact necessary and match their needs, and are provided by culturally

L.A. Gerber, et al. Children and Youth Services Review 116 (2020) 105163

competent agencies which are accessible to the parent both regarding

hours and location. The ILO social work staﬀspend considerable time

arranging for or vetting such services. In addition to ensuring appro-

priate services for their clients, ILO staﬀhelp guard against pressure

from ACS to enroll parents in unnecessary or duplicative services.

Parents represented by ILOs expressed their appreciation when their

attorneys “chopped half of the services from [the] ACS [proposed case

plans], so I can be more focused and have more time for my counseling

and get [my life] together.”In contrast, parents represented by panel

attorneys often felt frustrated with the burden of their service plans and

their attorneys not contesting them. As one parent represented by a

panel attorney said about her lawyer, “he would never argue about

what services I should do and would never defend me…the judge would

make me do more things every time there were more allegations.”

Other parents with panel representation described a check-the-box

mentality toward services that “the court would give [me a] list of what

they wanted me to do…the lawyer would help coordinate services to

keep ACS out of [my] business.”Adding extra services can delay the

time to reuniﬁcation as the parent has more items to complete, which

means additional burdens on the parent and more chances to miss an

appointment or otherwise experience a circumstance that would set

back the timeline for reuniﬁcation like losing a job (Lee, 2016).

The ILO social work staﬀdoes far more than ﬁnd services for clients:

they arrange transportation, sometimes accompany clients to services,

troubleshoot with the provider around schedule and other issues which

may arise, and document parents' progress. As one parent who was

represented by an ILO shared, her social worker “helped me ﬁnd par-

enting classes and anger management. She’ll call them and have them

follow up with me. She told them that I am coming to those services.

She would call them to check in. She took pictures to show that I

completed those classes. She was in it every step of the way.”While ILO

teams take on the work of engaging parents in services, it’s important to

note that this is actually the responsibility of ACS to make “reasonable

eﬀorts”to return children home as quickly as possible. The oﬃces are

eﬀectively remedying failings in child protection casework practice as

we explore further in the conclusion.

One FCLS attorney attributed diﬀerences in outcomes between the

oﬃces and panel lawyers to the oﬃces’interdisciplinary approach to

representation: “they can reach out to services and do more service,

making sure clients go to service providers compared to the panel

lawyers.”Another FCLS lawyer told us that the ILOs’major contribution

to the ﬁeld is the services the oﬃces are able to secure for parents

through the eﬀorts of their social work staﬀ. This lawyer provided a

vivid example of how interdisciplinary parental representation makes a

diﬀerence for parents. When the agency recommends a service provider

that has a waitlist, if the parent were represented by a panel attorney,

the parent would have to wait until there was an opening. But the in-

terdisciplinary oﬃce’s proactive involvement results in the social

worker ﬁnding a diﬀerent provider and securing the service for the

parent months or sometimes years sooner. As one parent told us “They

made sure my kids got educational services and proper evaluation di-

agnoses. Financially, they helped me with housing. They just helped me

all the way around and tried to help me stay stable.”

Panel attorneys often have a diﬀerent conception of the best way to

ensure that their clients have appropriate services. Unlike the ILO of-

ﬁces that independently work to identify the most appropriate services

for their clients, panel lawyers rely on the referrals from ACS case-

workers. As one panel attorney explained how he connects his clients to

services: “I speak to the ACS attorney and try to get them.”Panel at-

torneys lack the social worker resources to refer parents to services

independently and meet regularly with the caseworker on the case.

Many parents represented by panel attorneys mentioned how little their

lawyer did to help them with services; one parent shared that her

lawyer did not help her receive any services, which she directly at-

tributed to her being poor and having a court-appointed panel attorney.

Parents recognize that panel attorneys cannot assist with services and

rely on ACS for any service referrals, and therefore may view their at-

torney as part of the system as opposed to their advocate against the

system. The ultimate impact is that the parent may not trust their at-

torney as much which can reduce the attorney’s ability to advocate

eﬀectively for the parent.

4.4. Paying attention to the client’s well-being

The ﬁnal key factor we identiﬁed from our interviews is that the ILO

case practice approach emphasizes paying attention to the client’s well-

being. The interdisciplinary team closely attends to the client’semo-

tional well-being and provides support that parents appreciate. Parent

advocates, in particular, occupy a unique position, bringing their own

personal experience to the parent’s situation. Collectively, when the

model’s focus on the client’s well-being succeeds, the parent feels

trusting and supported; the legal team can more successfully advocate

for the parent, and the parent may complete their service plan more

quickly. Below we highlight the major ways that ILOs concentrate on

parents’well-being and how that may impact case outcomes.

4.4.1. Creating a supportive relationship between parents and the legal team

Most parents with ILO attorneys shared that they had respectful and

supportive relationships with their attorneys and the rest of the team

(e.g., social worker, parent advocate, and other members of the legal

team working on the case). Some parents stated their attorney tried to

gain a full understanding of their situation without making them feel

inadequate or inferior. Many parents represented by ILOs shared posi-

tive reviews of their experiences with their attorneys, citing great

support systems, attorney availability, a strong emphasis on protecting

their rights, and the social worker and parent advocate model as the

main reasons for satisfaction with their legal team. As one parent told

us of their ILO legal team, “Overall, I was lucky they are 100% sup-

portive –they never [judged] me. Welcoming their ability not to judge

me just [helped] the process [be] smooth. Made me feel like I don't have

to listen to ACS if it's not right.”A small number of parents also stated

they have maintained contact and relationships with their ILO attorneys

after their cases ended. For example, one parent stated about their ILO

legal team, “We had a good relationship. I felt like they are people that I

can talk to, and they care about me. They tried to help me in any way

they could, and they are very supportive. I still have communication

with them and they help me with [advice]. They are my support system,

and I will continue to contact them with questions.”

We found that when attorneys developed a supportive relationship,

parents trusted their attorneys and cited this as a reason for engaging in

services about which they may otherwise have been skeptical. Parents

also described being more open to disclosing conﬁdential personal in-

formation to their attorney which helped their case but they may

otherwise not have disclosed. While we have no quantitative data on

the connection between the client-attorney relationship and case out-

comes, parents believed this to be a critical component to their sa-

tisfaction and achieving desired outcomes in their cases. Prior research

shows that many parents report feelings of shame and loss of trust in

professionals following experiencing a child protective services case

and believe that these feelings lowered their ability to engage in ser-

vices (Haight, Sugrue, Calhoun, & Black, 2017). In this context, what

our interviews suggest is that eﬀective representation hinges on earning

the parent’s trust and maintaining a supportive relationship

throughout.

As one children’s attorney from Legal Aid said, an important reason

the oﬃces achieve better results is that “they are much more huma-

nizing; there’s more humanity in child welfare cases, so it’s much more

fair, there’s more due process—than someone who wouldn’t meet with

their clients between court dates.”This lawyer explained that by being

more collaborative with the children’s attorneys than panel lawyers,

ILO lawyers are more eﬀective in resolving cases. Even more im-

portantly, this lawyer said, the oﬃces address the needs of their clients

L.A. Gerber, et al. Children and Youth Services Review 116 (2020) 105163

beyond the particular case, which serves the long-term interests of fa-

milies. This lawyer said the ILOs better serve their clients because they

have much more contact with their clients outside of court, attending

cases conferences, and interacting with children’s attorneys regularly.

In one FCLS lawyer’s opinion, the proactive nature of the oﬃce practice

is “an amazing thing.”The oﬃce springs into motion from the very

beginning of the case, providing “so much support there for the parent”

which allows them to feel much more supported than they do when

represented by panel lawyers.

In contrast, many parents who were represented by panel attorneys

expressed that their voice was not heard, a collaborative relationship

was never formed, and there was an insuﬃcient amount of commu-

nication during the course of their case. Parents stressed that, despite

being confused by the process, they often had to gather materials alone

to keep their case moving forward, rather than receiving strong re-

presentation from their attorney at court. One parent who was re-

presented by a panel lawyer said, “I always felt like I was doing the

work opposed to him. Like I would just call him and tell him, hey, I

found out this, hey, I found out that. He would say, Oh, I'll look into it. I

don't think he was really any help. When this is something you've never

dealt before, you're just lost.”Still another parent explained, “I would

have to get service providers to send information to the ACS foster care

agency, and my attorneys would not help with this.”

These perceptions spanned the length of parents’cases, starting in

their ﬁrst encounters. One parent represented by a panel attorney de-

scribed her ﬁrst encounter with him: “The ﬁrst time I spoke to [my

attorney], he said, oh your papers just landed on my desk. Not like, Hi,

you know, I picked up your case. I’m going to be working with you…

your papers just landed on my desk.”Another parent said that in their

ﬁrst meeting, she told her attorney her story and “it was like it went in

one ear and it went out the other ear.”Social workers are never present

at the initial meeting with a panel attorney. Panel attorneys also em-

phasized trust-building, but they described their approach as “getting

the facts of the situation”and letting parents know you have to work

with the ACS “because that’s the reality of the situation.”As described

above, panel attorneys do not have the interdisciplinary team members

which limits their ability to maintain close contact with the parent,

attend out-of-court conferences, and provide any service referrals or

signiﬁcant service plan feedback. These factors make it more challen-

ging for panel attorneys to develop the supportive relationship needed

to provide eﬀective representation and be seen as a trusted partner in a

parent's case. As one parent lamented of her panel attorney, “I don't

think he cared about my case. …Like no one was really on my side.”

4.4.2. Addressing implicit bias, cultural competency, and trauma

Parents often perceived their attorney as either “on my side”—a

trustworthy advocate ﬁghting to make their voice heard—or the op-

posite, a person embedded in the court system and state bureaucracy.

Two factors that parents cited as inﬂuencing their relationship with

their attorney were how their attorney attended to the trauma of their

experience, and whether they experienced a lack of cultural compe-

tency or implicit bias from their attorney—sometimes in the form of

condescension or microaggressions. One parent, for example, com-

plained that her ILO lawyer spoke too much and too long using legal

and technical terms without giving her a chance to absorb all that was

said. As a result, as soon as each meeting ended, the parent would take

notes in the bathroom afterward so that she could try to understand

what she was being told. This person added, her lawyer seemed not to

“respect her knowledge and experience. It was frustrating that they

were underestimating me. There were also cultural diﬀerence(s), which

the team was not competent in dealing with.”She ultimately viewed

her attorney more as a tendril of the court system rather than as her

advocate and didn’t feel her voice was heard in court.

As the parents we interviewed had experienced the trauma of their

children being removed, their legal team supported them during what

some parents described as the most challenging moment of their

lives—the separation from their children. One parent said what she

appreciated most about her attorney was that “he’s there to represent

you to make you feel as safe, as comfortable as”you can be. Our in-

terviews suggested that parents appreciated when their legal team ac-

knowledged this trauma or oﬀered emotional support if desired. ILO

teams, we found, were better equipped to do this because of the in-

terdisciplinary team and training for team members.

Regarding implicit bias and cultural competency, some parents

described the challenges of navigating racial, cultural, economic,

gender, or other diﬀerences with their attorney and how this compli-

cated developing trust during their case. For example, one parent—a

black woman—described that when she ﬁrst met her ILO attorney—a

white man—“he was a little awkward…he’s like a young goofball.”She

then discussed how initially when she discussed her case with him, she

didn’t feel she could trust him based on their ﬁrst interactions. When

asked about her case, she simply told him, “My son got taken away from

me. Now they’re making me do X, Y, Z.”As her case proceeded and she

saw that her attorney respected her, patiently listened to her, and ad-

vocated for what she expressed as important, she felt, “Okay, I trust

you, I trust you”and “jumped right in”to services; her children were

reunited with her some months later. Ultimately, when asked how she

felt about her attorney, she said, “you could talk to him. Whatever you

needed, whatever you admired to want or to have, he would make that

eﬀort for you.”In summary, she said, “he represents me.”

How the attorney navigated clients’identities and experiences of

race, culture, class, gender, and others—interlaced with the trauma of

separation from their children—impacted whether trust developed be-

tween the parent and attorney. Many parents described that they were

ﬁghting a system unfairly stacked against them, as one parent said of

their ILO attorney, “She represented me fairly well, it was better with

her. I didn’t feel like I got what I wanted but did get the case to end, and

we got the best outcome we could have gotten. I understand what po-

sition she was in, that the court system is biased, this is the best way we

can get through the situation.”In this context, whether the parent

viewed their attorney as part of a biased system or part of their struggle

against that system depended critically on how attorneys navigated

these issues and developed trust.

In our observations conducting this study, we noticed that ILO staﬀ

appeared to more closely resemble the demographics of their cli-

ents—more female staﬀ, more staﬀof color, and more younger staf-

f—and that ILO oﬃces concentrated in a deeper way on addressing

implicit biases and understanding their clients’circumstances, than did

panel attorneys. The inclusion of parent advocates as staﬀat the oﬃces

seemed also to facilitate the teams connecting with individual clients on

their cases and to support eﬀorts to reduce implicit bias and promote

understanding. Our interviews with parents suggest that these factors

inﬂuence the trust and support that parents feel from their legal team.

And, as we describe above, when a trusting relationship develops be-

tween the parent and legal team, that can alter the outcome of the case

through presenting more complete information to the judge, better

representing the parents’perspective and voice in court, and engaging a

service plan that is more tailored and feasible for the parent.

5. Discussion

These interviews add to our understanding of the reasons the in-

terdisciplinary law oﬃces achieved shorter lengths of stay in foster care

than clients represented by solo practitioners. In broad strokes, the

diﬀerences seem to be attributable to three key components which

carry across multiple aspects of practice, and which distinguish the

method and format of the representation each version oﬀers: [1] uni-

form high-quality representation, [2] interdisciplinary practice, and [3]

paying attention to the client’s well-being. These factors are largely

consistent with prior research described previously, particularly the

salience of the client-attorney relationship illuminated in Haight et al.

(2015). To extend the research, we have traced how these components

L.A. Gerber, et al. Children and Youth Services Review 116 (2020) 105163

interact with one another, and, ultimately, suggest why these compo-

nents lead to children returning home faster.

The interdisciplinary law oﬃce approach to representing parents

places a premium on paying careful attention to what is happening in

the parents’lives throughout the life of the court case. The oﬃces also

appreciate that time is an extremely precious commodity in child wel-

fare cases. Legally, the length of time a child remains in foster care is an

important factor that will ultimately be considered when deciding the

outcome of the case. Emotionally, and in terms of human costs, the

impact on parents and children suﬀering the consequences of family

separation is incalculable. In light of this, the interdisciplinary law of-

ﬁces are organized to respond in the moment and proactively to ad-

vance their clients’case. Although we are unable to determine which

component is more important, it is clear from the summary of the in-

terviews that the three, in combination, go very far in explaining the

diﬀerent outcomes achieved by the two models. Institutional structures

of the ILO model promote uniform high-quality legal presentation

through frequent client contact, better court preparation, well-executed

legal motions that advance the parents’interests, and timely court

processing. Interdisciplinary practice facilitates more frequent client

contact and better court preparation. Furthermore, interdisciplinary

practice allows for the legal team to advocate for the parents’interests

at out-of-court conferences and provide service referrals independent of

ACS and the agency. In turn, these factors and the case practice em-

phasis attend closely to the client’s well-being, promoting a more sup-

portive relationship between the parent and legal team, while caring for

the client’s emotional experience of their case and navigating implicit

bias and cultural competency.

Although we believe we have credibly interpreted our interview

respondents, this study contains two major limitations originating in

our data collection: [1] we interviewed a small and not representative

sample of parents, and [2] we were unable to interview enough panel

attorneys to document the model fully from the practitioner perspec-

tive. With the ﬁrst, we have attempted to be mindful of the small

sample size and used only commonalities across parents’responses;

where possible, we lined up what we heard from parents with con-

sensus among practitioners to see whether the two weaved together a

consistent narrative or contradicted each other. We also reviewed prior

research on panel attorneys in New York City to understand how our

interviews aligned with the perspectives documented previously (Lee,

2016). Regarding the second limitation, although we received much

information about panel attorney practice from the panel attorneys and

other practitioners we interviewed, we consciously concentrated in this

study on the ILO model and how the model operates, rather than

striving for a direct comparison between the ILO model and the panel

attorney model. Panel attorney practice may vary signiﬁcantly from

attorney to attorney, and we recognize that we received only a very

partial picture because of the limited number of respondents who were

panel attorneys. Lastly, we believe that future research should extend

this qualitative framework by studying what happens when parents are

provided with interdisciplinary legal representation prior to court in-

volvement, at the point of child protection investigation. This is a

growing area of family defense practice with scant qualitative or

quantitative literature.

6. Conclusion

At a juncture in the U.S. child welfare policy paradigm where pre-

venting children from entering foster care and preserving families has

taken center stage, policymakers have increasingly explored parental

legal representation as an intervention to achieve this goal. When as-

sessing the potential success of replicating this parent legal re-

presentation model, jurisdictions should consider how the three com-

ponents that our interpretation suggests provide the foundation for the

ILO model’s success might apply. We recommend that jurisdictions

evaluate the environment of their family court, child welfare agency,

and safety net services to understand whether this kind of representa-

tion is possible. For example, when in each case are attorneys ap-

pointed? What tools and legal motions are available within the law that

parental lawyers may use? What social services are available in the

jurisdiction? The success of the ILO model’s interdisciplinary team

partially depends on the availability of social services within New York

City that may not be present elsewhere. However, paring down service

plans to only the most essential elements and advocating for parents in

out-of-court case conferences depend more on child welfare agency

practice rather than availability of services.

Lastly, paying attention to the client’s well-being animates both the

uniform high-quality representation and the interdisciplinary practice,

spotlighting one of the critical lessons of the success of the ILO model.

The “dual role”of the caseworker in child protection systems—to police

and to help, to protect children from their parents and to support

parents in taking care of their children is a fundamental dichotomy in

child welfare (Lee, 2016). To earn a parent’s trust to provide them with

support services and, simultaneously, to measure the information the

parent is entrusting to you to determine whether to remove their chil-

dren is a challenging task. Thus, the tension of these two roles can lead

to caseworkers “feeling that neither role was satisfactorily completed”

(Lee, 2016, p. 89). At a structural level, the surveillance role of child

protective workers and reporters has far-reaching implications for

parents’access to safety net services due to fear of child removal,

particularly for communities of color and parents living in poverty

(Fong, 2019).

An important feature of the ILO model, then, is that the inter-

disciplinary model intervenes to support parents who are involved in

the child welfare system while dislodging the “dual role”that often

constrains the relationship between a parent and caseworker. The ILO

attorney and social work staﬀprovide support to the parent that does

not come at the price of surveillance. In turn, this support allows the

legal team to create a supportive relationship with the parent that

translates to a more tailored plan for the family, and clearer advocacy

and services to achieve the family’s goal. While panel attorneys are

skilled legal practitioners who fearlessly advocate for their clients’in-

terests, the panel attorney model does not support uniform high-quality

representation, interdisciplinary practice, and paying attention to the

client’s well-being. Panel attorneys do not have supervisory, training,

and administrative structures that ILOs have to standardize legal

practice; panel attorneys do not possess the interdisciplinary team

members to stay in contact with clients, attend out-of-court con-

ferences, and address services plans independently of ACS and the

agency; and, due to these factors as well as the case practice model,

panel attorneys are not as equipped to pay attention to the client’s well-

being and build a supportive, trusting relationship that allows the at-

torney to be seen wholly as on the side of the parent.

Embedding a social worker or parent advocate into the parental

legal defense team coupled with a case practice model that pays at-

tention to the client’s well-being and promotes uniform high-quality

legal practice is an innovative and eﬀective contribution to the ﬁeld of

child welfare. That the intervention succeeds at keeping children safely

at home should encourage child welfare policymakers to ask how we

can further limit the policing role of caseworkers and service providers,

how we can more deeply address implicit bias and cultural competency,

and how we grow service models that support families outside the state

surveillance apparatus. The Minnesota One-Stop for Communities

Parent Mentor Program cited above is one example (Soﬀer-Elnekave

et al., 2020).

From our interviews, we have woven together the story of how ILOs

transformed practice in the New York City Family Court. We have

helped explain why the ILO model is able to secure the return of chil-

dren from foster care to their families quicker than the panel model it

has replaced. While respondents expressed a range of opinions about

speciﬁc issues and eﬀects of the introduction of ILOs, a consistent theme

emerged that parent representation markedly improved overall—with

L.A. Gerber, et al. Children and Youth Services Review 116 (2020) 105163

beneﬁts to parents, children, and the Family Court itself. As one Legal

Aid lawyer put it, approving the introduction of interdisciplinary law

oﬃces in New York City, “most problems [that] families have can be

resolved, and destroying families should be a last resort, and zealous

advocacy on all sides leads to better decisions and better outcomes for

families.”Most important of all, New York City’s implementation of the

ILO model means the child welfare system is more just—fairer to fa-

milies and parents who now have their voices ampliﬁed by their legal

teams.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Lucas A. Gerber: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software,

Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review

& editing, Supervision, Project administration. Martin Guggenheim:

Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Resources, Writing - original draft,

Writing - review & editing, Funding acquisition. Yuk C. Pang:

Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Data

curation, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Supervision, Project

administration. Timothy Ross: Conceptualization, Methodology,

Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition. Yana

Mayevskaya: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Formal ana-

lysis, Data curation, Writing - original draft. Susan Jacobs:

Conceptualization, Resources, Writing - review & editing, Funding ac-

quisition, Project administration. Peter J. Pecora: Conceptualization,

Methodology, Resources, Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

Action Research is a consultancy and was hired by the Center for

Family Representation for an unrelated small project that was com-

pleted before this study began. Professor Guggenheim is a member of

the board of directors of the Center for Family Representation. Susan

Jacobs, Esq. is the founder and former Executive Director of the Center

for Family Representation.

Acknowledgements

This publication was made possible in collaboration with Casey

Family Programs, whose mission is to provide, improve –and ulti-

mately prevent the need for –foster care, through a generous grant New

York University School of Law. The ﬁndings and conclusions presented

in this report are those of the author(s) alone, and do not necessarily

reﬂect the opinions of Casey Family Programs. We thank our Advisory

Board committee for guiding our design and data interpretation. We

appreciate those organizations and individuals who partnered with us:

the parents whom we interviewed, Bridge Builders, the Bronx

Defenders, Brooklyn Defender Services, the Center for Family

Representation, the Child Welfare Organizing Project, Gloria Vidal,

John Courtney, the First and Second Departments of the New York State

Supreme Court Appellate Division, Graham, the Legal Aid Society, New

York City Administration for Children’s Services Family Court Legal

Services Division and Oﬃce of Advocacy, and Rise Magazine.

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The effectiveness test based on the pre-test and post-test results showed that Sig. (2-tailed) <0,05 (α), which means that the parenting e-book media significantly increases mothers' understanding of parenting well-being practices in early childhood. The implications of this multimedia-based anyflip e-book can be downloaded via gadgets, android, laptop, practical, easy to read and repeated to accompany childcare activities from home. Keywords: Anyflip E-book, Early Childhood, Parenting References Banerjee, A., Hanna, R., Kyle, J., Olken, B. A., & Sumarto, S. (2019). Private Outsourcing and Competition: Subsidized Food Distribution in Indonesia. Journal of Political Economy, 127(1), 101–137. https://doi.org/10.1086/700734 Borg, W. R., & Gall, M. D. (2007). Educational Research an Introduction. Fourth Edition. Bacon Publishing. Bruni, O., Sette, S., Fontanesi, L., Baiocco, R., Laghi, F., & Baumgartner, E. (2015). Technology Use and Sleep Quality in Preadolescence and Adolescence. 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Full-text available

Sep 2022

There is no Family Court (FC) without families. However, historically and presently, families have not been centered in child welfare (CW) and family unification practices. This article aims to increase knowledge of parents’ experiences with CW and FC to illustrate how these institutions operate in the lives of the families they were built to serve. Data collected from in-depth interviews with parents ( n = 4) and parent advocates ( n = 6) illustrate how space, place, and time were recreated once parents engaged with CW and FC. These emergent findings show the FC’s replication of racial and social inequities among poor mothers of color and how the FC facilitated punitive pathways to reunification. This article ends with a call for institutional reforms to align FC practices with their stated purpose of supporting and centering families.

Family Rights of the Child and Their Legislative Support

Article

Dec 2021

The objective of the study was to identify the legal mechanisms for the protection of the family rights of the child and to outline the main problems of their implementation. The child's family rights system was found to contain the child's intangible basic rights, which establish his or her legal status in the family. This system includes the child's right to life, name, citizenship, knowledge of his parents, care of parents, coexistence with parents, preservation of his identity and citizenship, free expression of his own views. It states that the protection of the family rights of the child and the legal relations of parents and children is based on four principles. It is determined that the practical solution of issues related to the exercise of the family rights of the child is regulated by international law, which makes it possible to resolve issues related to the legal relationship between parents and children at the inter-State level. It is concluded that perspectives on legislative support for the family rights of the child demand further empirical research, as well as a theoretical and methodological justification for determining the legal mechanisms of their practical implementation.

Effects of an interdisciplinary approach to parental representation in child welfare

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2019
CHILD YOUTH SERV REV

This study utilizes a quasi-experimental propensity score matching design to assess the causal impact on child welfare outcomes when parents facing an abuse or neglect case in the New York City Family Court were provided interdisciplinary law office representation as opposed to a standard panel attorney. The interdisciplinary law office approach includes social work staff and parent advocates for the parent, and salaried attorneys working in nonprofit organizations. Using administrative child welfare data, the study assesses the foster care and safety outcomes of 9582 families and their 18,288 children. The propensity score matched results do not indicate a preventive effect toward foster care entry nor any difference in children's likelihoods of experiencing a subsequent substantiated report of maltreatment. However, when children's parents received the interdisciplinary representation and those children did enter foster care, children spent 118 fewer days on average in foster care during the four years following the abuse or neglect case filing. Subsequent competing risk models show that children whose parents received the interdisciplinary law office model achieved overall permanency, reunification, and guardianship more quickly. These results provide evidence that interdisciplinary law office parental representation is an effective intervention to promote permanency for children in foster care.

Parent mentoring relationships as a vehicle for reducing racial disparities: Experiences of child welfare-involved parents, mentors and professionals

Article

Feb 2020
CHILD YOUTH SERV REV

This qualitative study examines the Minnesota One-Stop for Communities Parent Mentor Program (MPMP). African American parents previously involved in the child welfare system conceptualized and spearheaded this program for parents currently involved in the system to reduce the involvement of families of color in child welfare, provide support and build protective factors. The MPMP exists alongside of, not as part of, state, county or tribal child welfare systems. This study included 15 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with parent mentors, parents and stakeholders, as well as participant observations and document reviews. Findings establish transferability of some of the positive findings of previous qualitative research on programs embedded within child welfare systems to the MPMP including the centrality of relationships to successful mentoring. It builds on existing research by providing insights into how to reduce racial disparities in the involvement of families of color in the child welfare system. Participants argued that by positioning their program outside of the formal child welfare system, they were better able to build trust and engage parents from African American and Indigenous communities, more flexibly address parent needs, and include parent mentors with a wide variety of life experiences. Implications for future research are discussed.

Concealment and Constraint: Child Protective Services Fears and Poor Mothers’ Institutional Engagement

Article

Jun 2019

Kelley Fong

With the expansion of state surveillance and enforcement efforts in recent decades, a growing literature examines how those vulnerable to punitive state contact strategize to evade it. This article draws on in-depth interviews with eighty-three low-income mothers to consider whether and how concerns about Child Protective Services (CPS), a widespread presence in poor communities with the power to remove children from their parents, inform poor mothers’ institutional engagement. Mothers recognized CPS reports as a risk in interactions with healthcare, educational, and social service systems legally mandated to report suspected child abuse or neglect. Departing from findings on responses to policing and immigration enforcement, I find that CPS concerns rarely prompted mothers to avoid systems wholesale. Within their system participation, however, mothers engaged in a selective or constrained visibility, concealing their hardships, home life, and parenting behavior from potential reporters. As reporting systems serve as vital sources of support for disadvantaged families, mothers’ practices of information management, while perhaps protecting them from CPS reports, may preclude opportunities for assistance and reinforce a sense of constraint in families’ institutional interactions.

Examining hearing quality in child abuse and neglect cases: The relationship between breadth of discussion and case outcomes

Article

Oct 2017
CHILD YOUTH SERV REV

Child abuse and neglect court hearings are complex, multifaceted, and necessary for judicial oversight to ensure safe, timely permanency for youth and families involved in the system. While best practices have been suggested, little research has been conducted to examine what the critical components of a “high quality” dependency court hearing are, and, more importantly how these factors might be related to improved outcomes for children and families. The current study explores the relationship between breadth of discussion at the first hearing on the case and subsequent case decisions and outcomes. Findings suggest a positive relationship between breadth of discussion at the initial hearing and a higher likelihood of relative or parent placements compared to foster care placements, increased presence of parents throughout the life of the case, and higher likelihood of case closure and reunification. The study is limited by a small sample size and focus on one of many court hearings; however, it does provide empirical support that the quality of the court hearing may be related to better outcomes for families.

“Basically, I look at it like combat”: Reflections on moral injury by parents involved with child protection services

Article

Oct 2017
CHILD YOUTH SERV REV

This study considers any “moral injury” occurring among parents involved with the Child Protection System (CPS). Moral injury refers to the lasting psychological, spiritual and social harm caused by one's own or another's actions in a high stakes situation that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations. The existing literature focuses on military contexts, but moral injury also may play a role in increasing the vulnerability of CPS clients who are threatened with loss of their parental rights and dissolution of their families. We administered a modified version of the Moral Injury Events Scale (MIES) (Nash et al., 2013) to 10 CPS involved parents. We then conducted in-depth, semi-structured, audio recorded individual interviews with parents to elaborate their responses to the MIES. Parents’ MIES scores and interview elaborations suggest that some CPS-involved parents do experience moral injury. Moral injury was reported as a result of their own parenting behaviors, but also as a result of parents’ involvement with professionals and within social systems that are charged with providing assistance to struggling families. For instance, some parents perceived professionals to be shaming, social services to be harmful and legal proceedings stigmatizing. Parents’ reported reactions to morally injurious events included lasting feelings of guilt, shame and anger; and loss of trust in professionals. These responses impeded their perceived abilities to fully engage in services. If involvement in CPS places parents at increased risk of moral injury, then moral injury is a critically important construct for child welfare policy makers and workers to understand and address in the conduct of effective, ethical child welfare practice.

Catching a Case: Inequality and Fear in New York City's Child Welfare System

Book

Mar 2016

Tina Lee

Influenced by news reports of young children brutalized by their parents, most of us see the role of child services as the prevention of severe physical abuse. But as Tina Lee shows in Catching a Case, most child welfare cases revolve around often ill-founded charges of neglect, and the parents swept into the system are generally struggling but loving, fighting to raise their children in the face of crushing poverty, violent crime, poor housing, lack of childcare, and failing schools. Lee explored the child welfare system in New York City, observing family courts, interviewing parents and following them through the system, asking caseworkers for descriptions of their work and their decision-making processes, and discussing cases with attorneys on all sides. What she discovered about the system is troubling. Lee reveals that, in the face of draconian budget cuts and a political climate that blames the poor for their own poverty, child welfare practices have become punitive, focused on removing children from their families and on parental compliance with rules. Rather than provide needed help for families, case workers often hold parents to standards almost impossible for working-class and poor parents to meet. For instance, parents can be accused of neglect for providing inadequate childcare or housing even when they cannot afford anything better. In many cases, child welfare exacerbates family problems and sometimes drives parents further into poverty while the family court system does little to protect their rights. Catching a Case is a much-needed wake-up call to improve the child welfare system, and to offer more comprehensive social services that will allow all children to thrive.

The Child Protection Clinic: A mixed method evaluation of parent legal representation

Article

Sep 2015
CHILD YOUTH SERV REV

Providing parents with low incomes accused of child maltreatment access to quality legal representation is both a social justice issue and potential resource for improving their children's well-being. This mixed methods research evaluates a law school clinic which provides indigent parents with legal representation by law students supervised by experienced attorneys. Thirty-nine individuals knowledgeable about the clinic (12 court professionals, 5 law school faculty, 2 parent mentors, 11 students, and 9 parent clients) participated in in-depth, semi-structured, audiotaped interviews focusing on the quality of parent representation. Interviews were contextualized by extensive participant observation and document reviews. Quantitative analyses of administrative data focused on case outcomes identified by participants as desired during qualitative interviews: family reunification, timely case closure and children's placement with relatives. Outcomes for 19 children whose parents were represented by student attorneys did not differ significantly from those of a propensity score matched comparison group of 19 children whose parents were represented by fully licensed attorneys. Participants described clinic staff as providing strong legal counsel to parents, building positive attorney–client relationships, possessing positive personal characteristics, and providing a needed service to the broader community. Participants also identified areas for improvement including: educating parents around court procedures, and better cross system collaboration between child welfare and legal professionals. The Child Protection Clinic is a promising model for providing quality legal representation to parents involved with child protection in order to support child well-being.

Evaluation of the impact of enhanced parental legal representation on the timing of permanency outcomes for children in foster care

Article

Jul 2012
CHILD YOUTH SERV REV

While the U.S. Supreme Court has expressed the opinion that providing parental counsel to indigent parents is generally a sound practice, it has ruled that parents do not have an absolute constitutional right to counsel in termination of parental rights proceedings, and not all states provide a statutory right to counsel after child protection proceedings have been initiated or in termination proceedings. What constitutes adequate representation for indigent parents involved in abuse and neglect and parental rights termination proceedings remains an open question. This study addresses gaps in knowledge about the functioning of child welfare services and juvenile courts by evaluating the impact of a program of enhanced parental legal representation on the timing of permanency outcomes for 12,104 children who entered court-supervised out-of-home care in Washington State for the first time between 2004 and 2007. The study employs methods that are methodologically superior to prior efforts to evaluate parental representation and focuses on key outcomes of the child welfare and dependency court systems. Study findings provide evidence that the availability of improved parental legal representation speeds reunification with parents, and for those children who do not reunify, it speeds achieving permanency through adoption and guardianship.

Cornerstone advocacy in the first 60 days: Achieving safe and lasting reunification for families

Jan 2009
33

Cohen

Cohen, J., & Cortese, M. (2009). Cornerstone advocacy in the first 60 days: Achieving safe and lasting reunification for families. ABA Child Law Practice, 28(3), 33-44.

Attributes of high-quality legal representation for children and parents in child welfare proceedings

Family Justice Initiative

Family Justice Initiative (2019). Attributes of high-quality legal representation for children and parents in child welfare proceedings. https://15ucklg5c821brpl4dycpk15-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/48/2019/05/fji-atttibutes-MAY2019.pdf.

Understanding the Effects of an Interdisciplinary Approach to Parental Representation in Child Welfare

Abstract and Figures

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