Last year, my six year old son, Zade, hosted a Mother’s Day party for me.

Unfortunately, there are many mothers in the city who could not spend this Mother’s Day with their children. For these parents and their kids, removed from each other because of circumstances often stemming from poverty, including domestic violence, mental illness, and drug and alcohol abuse, the day will undoubtedly be a painful reminder of how hard it is to be separated from your loved ones.

The Center for Family Representation strives each day to assist families in crisis to safely remain together. CFR’s innovative approach provides to clients the services and support of lawyers, social workers, and, very importantly, parent advocates—trained professionals who have experienced the child welfare system firsthand and have successfully reunited with their families. The team approach helps ensure that all who come into contact with the child welfare system receive critical assistance and fair legal treatment. CFR’s work helps parents in need avoid the loss, grief, frustration, and negative outcomes associated with children being separated from their families.

I have been on the Board of CFR since 2007, and I am so happy to be part of this pioneering and well-run organization. Seven years ago, a law firm colleague invited me to an event in support of CFR. I had been working as a litigation partner for several years, and while I had been engaged on a number of pro bono cases in the past, I had not connected to any particular cause on a truly personal level. As a mother of three young boys, I know how much it takes in terms of time, energy, and resources to function normally, much less to overcome a crisis of health or circumstance. The more I learned about CFR, the more I was struck by how vital its efforts are to keep children with their parents.

As we celebrate this Mother’s Day, my hope is that CFR, and organizations like it, are able to sustain and expand their reach so that mothers and families in need can celebrate the joys of parenthood and of being together in safety, health, and happiness.

Happy Mother’s Day!

As a CFR Social Worker, I meet a new client for the first time on the day her case is filed in court, which is often a time of crisis for the family. The Family Court system can be confusing, so my first responsibility is to ensure that there is a meaningful exchange of information between all parties on a case. Along with my CFR attorney teammate, I help my client understand confusing legal processes so she can make the best decisions for her family.

The systems that are put in place to help families can sometimes seem daunting in their complexity—helping my clients to access and navigate these systems is central to what I do as a social worker. I communicate regularly not only with my clients and teammates, but with caseworkers from ACS and foster care agencies, attorneys for my clients’ children, with service providers around the city, and more. I help ensure that my client gets support for her unique circumstances so she can address the problems that brought her to Family Court in the first place and reunify her family as quickly as possible.

My everyday work varies from case to case. For example, some of my clients in Queens are immigrants working to obtain legal status for themselves and their children. One of my clients has legal status and recently sponsored his daughter to come to the US; but while she was in foster care, her passport expired. Working with the agency caseworker, I am now helping my client to obtain passport photos and apply for a new passport for his daughter so she can remain in the US legally.

Housing is often a serious challenge for poor families, especially in New York City. Recently, my client wanted to move in with her mother rather than remain at a shelter for domestic violence victims, although her placement there had been difficult to obtain. But my client had a difficult relationship with her ACS caseworker and was afraid that the caseworker would not understand her decision. My client invited me to a meeting with ACS to help her explain the reason she was leaving the shelter was because she was concerned for her children’s safety—the windows did not close, there was no heat, and the ceiling had started falling in. With my advocacy, the change in living arrangements was approved and the family can stay together in a safer environment.

Ensuring that my clients with children in foster care have sufficient visits is also a critical part of my job. Recently, a Family Court judge had approved unsupervised visits for my client and her five children, as she had been making great progress in her services and her therapist had recommended an increase in visitation. But these visits had not been implemented by the agency. The visits they had were very short and my client was concerned that they did not allow her children to spend enough time together. I contacted the caseworker to reiterate the judge’s decision and to ask that visits happen more frequently and for longer periods of time. I also emailed the children’s attorney so she was aware of the situation. With all parties better informed, the agency is working to increase visits to allow the family more time together in order to better prepare for reunification.

Working with parents as they struggle to overcome these crises can be challenging. But it is rewarding to witness the transformation that many clients make over the course of our work together. As a social worker, I often ask myself, “Is my work making a difference?” Despite the tremendously difficult challenges that poor parents encounter trying to raise their children, it is clear that my work at CFR does make a difference.

National data indicates that children of all races are equally likely to suffer from child abuse and neglect. Yet African Americans are investigated for child abuse and neglect twice as often as whites and the majority of children in foster care are children of color. I witness this disproportionality every day in my work, as 94% of the families we serve at CFR are people of color.

CFR has already blazed a trail in providing interdisciplinary team representation and service delivery for parents. We are also learning the importance of thinking critically about the social and political environment in which we work. Along with a small group of CFR staff members, I recently participated in a series of trainings on structural racism within different systems. This month, the entire CFR staff convened for a discussion that broadened our understanding of how structural racism impacts our work, our interactions with clients and each other.

This important discourse is also being explored in the Manhattan Family Court, where the Disproportionate Minority Representation Committee, an alliance of child welfare professionals, examines why there are a disproportionate number of families of color in the child welfare system. In October, the Committee held a screening of the film Race: the Power of an Illusion, followed by a panel discussion of how race, racism, class, and poverty affect how cases are handled and families are treated in NYC Family Court.  CFR’s own Darlene Jorif-Mangane, Litigation Supervisor, sat on the panel that led the discussion. Additionally, CFR Parent Advocate Sabra Jackson is active in the Undoing Racism in Child Welfare group, a collective of parent advocates, ACS caseworkers, agency staff, and other professionals who meet monthly to discuss anti-racist strategies within the child welfare system.

It is significant for me, as a child welfare practitioner of color with CFR who identifies so closely with the communities we serve, to be able to take part in such an important endeavor. I look forward to continuing this discourse and to helping to lead efforts to improve our practice and the way that we seek justice for all families.

Liz Hernandez Majumder is a Bilingual Family Advocate at the Center for Family Representation. She is part of the Disproportionate Minority Representation Committee and holds her MS in Urban Policy Analysis from the Milano School of International Affairs at The New School. She lives in Brooklyn.

When CFR met Marie nearly a year ago, she was facing neglect charges and her two children had been placed in foster care. With help from her CFR team, Marie made outstanding efforts to reunite her family and completed every service asked of her. Within months, a Family Court judge ruled that reunification was in the children’s best interest. However, an order of protection previously issued in Criminal Court barred Marie from contact with her children, but had language that made clear that this barrier could be removed by the Family Court. Nonetheless, the Family Court judge thought that she could not change the order to permit Marie’s children to come home.

For many years, there has been disagreement among Family Court judges about whether they can modify Criminal Court orders to reunite families like Marie’s. The Family Court judge believed that the children could not be returned to Marie because of the criminal order of protection. When the judge decided she was powerless to let the children return even though she wanted to, CFR teamed up with pro bono attorneys from Proskauer Rose LLP to appeal the decision.

While the appeal was pending, CFR’s team went to criminal court and convinced that judge to expressly allow reunification. After spending nine months in foster care, Marie’s children were able to return home. Just a few months later, on December 26th, the Appellate Division, 2nd Department, overturned the Family Court and decided in favor of CFR and Proskauer.

This important decision puts a longstanding discrepancy to rest and acknowledges that despite Criminal Court orders, Family Courts are in the best position to make decisions about reunifying families. Not only will CFR clients benefit, but so possibly will many vulnerable families throughout the State. With help from Proskauer Rose, CFR is proud to have laid the groundwork for countless families to stay together.

Read the full text of the Matter of Brianna L. decision here.

In my search for a volunteer activity, I knew I wanted to make a real difference in people’s lives. Since I was interested in advocacy work, a friend who is a former Family Court judge suggested the Center for Family Representation. CFR’s work with parents at risk of losing their children to foster care really resonated with me, so I went on a tour of Family Court. It was just fascinating. I got excited about advocacy and thought it was really something I could do.

In the fall of 2010, I began my training to become a volunteer Family Advocate—a Bachelor’s level Social Worker who provides direct support and advocacy for parents as part of a CFR team. Working for CFR entails a very steep learning curve. On my first day of training, I thought my head was going to explode! I had no idea that the law was such an integral part of the work and I realized how challenging my job would be.

I learned so much from the CFR lawyers and social workers when we began working on cases together. Even just sitting and listening as they talked to clients was an education in itself! My colleagues were so professional, yet so empathetic at the same time. There was no condescension, just patience and understanding. That was amazing to me.

Living in poverty, as CFR clients do, is incredibly challenging. It takes a while to realize you’re not in a soap opera—you’re dealing with people’s real lives. At first I thought I could be my clients’ best friend. I just wanted to find a way to make their lives easier. My supervisor helped me understand that I couldn’t just deal with what was on the surface level—I had to get to the root of my clients’ problems and find out what was really going on in order to help them.

I developed a lot of patience and learned to accept when things didn’t go smoothly. And when I really got to know clients and learned their stories, I realized how far they’d come and how much I’d helped them. I came to recognize the major contrast between families like mine and the families CFR helps—we can often overcome family crises because we have resources, whereas these parents can’t do that. Problems that all families experience can end up following them forever.

After 18 months of working with CFR, I decided to cut back on volunteering to spend time with my own family. But through my work, I gained a deeper understanding of how difficult disadvantaged families’ lives really are. Now when I read the paper or hear a story about a family in distress, I wonder if it’s one of our clients. I know that by continuing to support CFR as an organization, I can still make a real difference in their lives.

Sue Jacobs (left) with founding Board members Philip Segal, Jane Spinak, and Martin Guggenheim in 2002.

I founded CFR in 2002 with others who had been advocates for children and saw firsthand how poor families were torn apart. As lawyers and social workers, we set out to change the paradigm for legal services provided to poor families. We knew that, in the words of former Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) President Douglas Nelson, “Children do better when their parents do better.”

CFR came about during a crisis: numerous articles and reports cited the challenges that poor families experienced when navigating the child welfare and family court systems. They always referenced the need for a better system of counsel for parents, who were then represented by solo attorneys working for low rates and without the aid of a social worker or parent advocate with experience in the system. The lack of an interdisciplinary approach was a critical gap.

Fortunately, there was serious interest from many child welfare experts who had been talking and writing about this issue for years. This gap in services for parents was also known to AECF, which, from its work helping reform the NYC child welfare system, was familiar with family court proceedings and interested in supporting a new model of representation. In 2001, with a group of dedicated people behind me, I approached AECF to ask if they would receive a proposal to fund a new model of parent representation based on an interdisciplinary approach. They agreed—and CFR was born.

With AECF’s cornerstone support, CFR opened our doors ten years ago with two employees in a sublet space in Brooklyn and a budget of just $250,000. While we primarily provided training and technical assistance in those early days, the core values we developed continue to guide us: fiscal responsibility, innovation, and efficiency—while providing excellent representation and achieving outstanding results.

Today, CFR has a talented staff of 77 and a dedicated board, many of whom have been with us since our founding. Our budget is now more than $7 million, raised through hundreds of generous supporters. Our teams have served more than 3,600 families, kept thousands of children safely home and generated more than $40 million in taxpayer savings.

It’s not every day that one’s visions come true, and I’m honored and humbled as CFR begins its next decade of serving New York’s families.

In honor of our 10th anniversary, CFR is thrilled to welcome you to our new website! Please take a moment to read about our important work, to learn about the difficult challenges our families face, and to get to know some of our families who have successfully reunified.

Don’t forget to help CFR keep families together by making a donation today!