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Center for Family Representation, Inc. (CFR)
2007 ACCOMPLISHMENTS
- CFR was awarded a multi-million dollar contract from the City Criminal Justice
Coordinator's office to provide interdisciplinary representation to families charged with
abuse or neglect in Manhattan Family Court. CFR's commitment under this contract
is to serve more than 1,500 new families between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2009.
- 337 parents of 575 children were served using the CAT model, 285 of these families were new clients.
- More than 60% of the children of CFR's CAT families either did not enter foster care or
returned home, on average in just under four months; by comparison, the City of New York
reports that of children who did return home, the median length of stay was just
under one year, while its average length of foster care for all children in care continues
to be just under four years.1
- 49 training and technical assistance sessions were provided to help family court and
child welfare practitioners employ new strategies to strengthen families, including sessions
for national audiences on working with teen parents at the Child Welfare League of America
Conference and on interdisciplinary practice at Casey Family Services in New Haven, CT.
- In a major victory for our policy advocacy, CFR convinced the City of New York to direct
foster care agencies to begin recruiting Visit Hosts to help families safely reunify:
A Visit Host is someone identified by a family, such as a pastor, neighbor or teacher, who can
monitor visits in lieu of a foster care caseworker and who can allow the family to visit in the
community and a more natural family time together, while still assuring a child's safety.
- CFR developed a sophisticated client data base which will enable us to capture very detailed
information on the families we serve, such as the number of families that are headed by single
parents, by teen parents, or where children are in need of mental health and special education
services. This database will enable us to continually test the efficacy of CFR's
approach as well as better illuminate our successes.
2008 GOALS
- Serve 400 new families
- Additionally, serve 75 families whom we meet in their community, when a problem is first identified
- Hire a CAT project director
- Conduct 35-45 training sessions for parents and professionals, and implement "Train the
Trainer Sessions" on our unique interdisciplinary approach;
- Publish four new toolkits, including one on working with Teen Parents
- Develop Parents Putting Their Families First curriculum to enable CFR staff and
former clients to run workshops and support groups for parents engaged in the child
welfare system with the goal of helping them better identify and avoid risks to their
children and build their skills to advocate for themselves in a variety of settings
1Experts estimate that the average range of foster care stays in New York City are
between four and five years. This far exceeds the national average of 31 months and
is the second lengthiest in the country. "A Dangerous cycle: A Report by
the NYC Public Advocate," p. 13.
The 2008 New York City Mayor's Management Report cites the median length of stay in foster care
before child is adopted as 54.2 months. "2008 Preliminary Mayor's Management Report"
February 2008, p.36. See: http://www.nyc.gov/html/ops/downloads/pdf/_mmr/acs.pdf.
The median length of stay in foster care for children entering care for the first time who are
eventually returned to their parents in New York City was 11.5 months in 2007, up from 10.3
months in 2006, and 8.2 months in 2005; Ibid.
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