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Strengthening Families in Crisis
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About the Center for Family Representation
The Center for Family Representation (CFR) was founded in 2002 to provide families in crisis with free
legal representation and social work services to enable children to live with their parents safely.
CFR works to prevent foster care placement, and when it cannot be avoided, we work to shorten children's
length of stay in care in order to minimize the negative consequences of prolonged separation from
their families.
Our Team Model
CFR is the first organization of its kind in the nation to provide an innovative model of services to
low-income families facing separation: the Community Advocacy Team (CAT).
Every CFR client works with a team of professionals comprised of a lawyer, a social worker, and a Parent
Advocate—a trained professional who has experienced the child welfare system firsthand and has successfully
reunited with her family.
The CAT model is a response to three distinct but related realities:
one, it is primarily poor families of color whose children end up in foster care and almost always poor parents
who end up charged with neglect. Second, foster care can have long term, detrimental effects on
children of any age. And third, very often children who spend time in foster care grow up to
become adults whose own children go into foster care, continuing a detrimental cycle that spans generations.
CFR combats these issues with comprehensive services by specially trained staff. The lawyer provides
quality legal representation in court, while the social worker gets to the root of the problem and helps them
engage in stabilizing services, such as housing, employment, and therapy. The Parent Advocate, who
can empathize because she has overcome the same sorts of challenges, provides emotional support and helps the
client engage fully in services.
CFR is nationally recognized for our pioneering efforts in the child welfare field and has been rewarded for our
high rates of success. In 2007, we received a contract from the City of New York to provide
representation and social work services to at least 500 families in Manhattan Family Court per year, and this
contract was renewed in 2009. In 2010, CFR was granted an additional contract to provide these services
to 600 families per year in the Queens Family Court. We began serving clients in Queens in early 2011
and have already made significant progress on behalf of families.
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Our Results
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Since our founding, CFR has served nearly 3,000 families with nearly 6,000 children. In a
single year, CFR provides services to about 1,300 families.
CFR consistently keeps more than 50% of children out of foster care entirely. For those who must
enter care, their stay was just four and a half months, with a median of 57 days. This is
significantly shorter New York State average of two and a half years, which is the one of the worst
reunification rates in the country, as well as the City median of 6.4 months.
CFR ensures that children do not languish in foster care longer than necessary if their parents can safely
care for them.
More than one third of CFR cases have been dismissed against parents since 2007, often pursuant to a section
of the child welfare statute that permits a court to rule that the family no longer needs services.
This is three times as many cases as were typically dismissed in Manhattan prior to CFR becoming the primary
institutional provider for parents.
Between 2007 and 2011, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) reported that the median length of
stay for children entering foster care for the first time dropped from 11.5 months to 6.4 months.
This decrease shows that CFR, along with other organizations that have adopted some of the same practices,
are making a big difference in the lives of children by reuniting them with their parents as quickly as possible.
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Why CAT Works
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CFR provides parents with trusted advocates who provide additional referrals to services such as substance
abuse treatment and counseling. Social workers and parent advocates accompany parents to ACS
meetings to insure protective concerns are addressed while helping parents stay engaged in every aspect
of the process, and attorneys assist families with entitlements they need to get services.
If a case goes to court or children are removed, attorneys represent the parents until the case is over.
A family's ability to safely and quickly reunify usually results from two things: intensive
help for the family outside of court and a great deal of information available when the family is
before the court so that a judge can make informed decisions. CFR staff provides this help
outside of court and make sure that judges know all they need to make sound decisions for a family.
Foster care agency workers are often overworked and turnover is high. They prescribe formulaic
service plans that are ill-suited to a parent's strengths or needs. CFR provides enhanced
referrals to well-matched services and additional case management and assists parents between court
appearances. Too often parent-child visits occur in sterile agency settings without attention
to the underlying problems that led to a removal. We frequently help recruit visit hosts and
visit coaches and assure visits integrate therapeutic needs of the family. CFR team members
attend these meetings with the parent to help them engage productively, to collaborate on a service plan,
and later provide results to the court.
Finally, we work with families even after children come home, ensuring that parents remain in services
and to assist with issues that may arise that could compromise a family's progress.
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Our Clients
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100% of the families served by CFR are living in poverty, which increases their chances of facing neglect
charges and losing their children to foster care. 80% are women and 95% are people of color.
35% of our clients are currently receiving some sort of public assistance.
21% of our clients have been the victims of domestic violence, 32% have struggled with substance abuse, 22%
have a mental health diagnosis, 15% are homeless, and 11% have a criminal history. 27% of our
clients are under the age of 25, of whom 32% have experienced the foster care system.
10% of our do not speak English and 10% are immigrants.
CFR helps struggling families to become stable by engaging parents in a broad spectrum of services, including
mental health treatment, domestic violence counseling, housing programs, and parenting skills classes, as well
as aiding them in acquiring public benefits. Working with partner organizations, our teams strive
to create for each family a specialized plan that will achieve long-term success so that they can stay together
safely and permanently.
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The Effects of Foster Care
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While always well intentioned, foster care can have long-term negative effects on children.
While the foster care system is a solution for some children, for too many others it is a
one-size-fits-all approach that separates families who could live safely together with the
proper support and resources.
Nearly 15,000 children currently live in foster care in New York City. Many are
never reunited with their families—more than 1,200 children age out of foster care each
year in New York City alone and are often inadequately prepared to live in the difficult
adult world. Only half of New York City foster youth find full time employment
after aging out. Numerous studies show the detrimental effects of foster care
on a national level. Fewer than half of former foster youth are employed at age
24, and just 3% had completed a bachelor’s degree by age 24, compared with 28% of the general
population of the same age. Female foster youth are more than twice as likely as
the general population to become pregnant by age 19.
Children who spend extended time in foster care more frequently experience emotional,
psychiatric and educational difficulties and as adults often fall victim to poverty,
homelessness, unemployment and incarceration. One third of young adults who
aged out of foster care faced mental health problems such as depression, substance abuse,
and anxiety. One third of male youth had been arrested and 16% were currently
incarcerated at age 24. More than a quarter of all youth who had aged out had
formal charges filed against them in court by age 24. 25% of the incarcerated
population spent time in foster care. 40% of former foster youth had been homeless
at some point before age 24 and 30% of the homeless population spent time in foster care.
References:
- Mayor's Management Report, Administration for Children’s Services section, 2011
- Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth: Outcomes at Ages 23 and 24, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, 2010
- Foster Care by the Numbers, Casey Family Programs, 2010
- Fostering Careers, Center for an Urban Future, September 2011
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children and Families
- Uncertain futures: Foster youth transition to adulthood, Child Welfare League of America, 2003
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Our Cost Savings
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While our work is tremendously beneficial for children, it also has a substantial impact
on the public at large. The average cost of keeping one child in foster care
in New York State is $29,000 per year. CFR's services, however, cost just $5,900
per family, regardless of the length of the case or the number of children.
As a result, we saved taxpayers more than $9 million annually.
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Our Expertise
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CFR serves families across the country by providing training and technical assistance to
child welfare practitioners. Click here to read more about our training activities.
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How You Can Help
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If you would like enable CFR to help keep families together, make a donation today!
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