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Helping Families Be Heard - CFR's Policy Impact Work
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CFR's Policy Impact Work is informed by the day to day experience of parents struggling to do their best
for their children and by the difficulties children face in foster care. Even though they are
well intentioned, child welfare policies and laws have long been created without this critical input from
families who experience the child welfare and family court systems. For example, although most
children placed in foster care eventually come home, the law only requires agencies to arrange visits with
their parents every other week; the equivalent of just one day a year. This obviously is not
sufficient for either a child or parent attempting to put their family back together.
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CFR is unique in its ability to do effective work on multiple levels, from the individual client to the
system as a whole. CFR's expertise, in addressing how best to serve needy families, is increasingly
sought in local, regional and national arenas. Whenever possible, in order to break the code on
long-standing problems that undermine families, CFR partners with the very same parties that it may litigate
against: foster care agencies, law guardians and prosecutors.
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Through our Policy Impact Work, CFR proposes and comments on legislation and meets regularly with state
officials as well as with other stakeholders, including judges, to provide feedback on laws and regulations
that impact children and their families. We also participate in numerous task forces and work
groups, often as chair or co-chairs making recommendations on needed policy and program initiatives for both
the child welfare and the family court systems. We are frequently asked to participate in advisory
boards to high-ranking officials such as the ACS Commissioner and the Administrative Judge of the Family Court.
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Recent Accomplishments
- CFR was awarded a prestigious Skadden Fellowship to expand its advocacy and policy work to
parents attempting to secure needed educational services for their children and for teen parents
struggling to stay in school;
- CFR's Executive Director is the chair of the Council on Children at the Association of the Bar
of the City of New York and sits on advisory boards to the ACS Commissioner as well as the
Administrative Judge of the Family Court;
- Together with New York University School of Law, CFR convened the first-ever national meeting of
attorneys representing parents;
- CFR was among a group of national experts chosen to speak at an Annie E. Casey sponsored conference
that brought together child welfare staff from 50 states to speak on how to achieve better outcomes for
teenagers in foster care;
- CFR is the only organization working with parents appointed to a state-wide task force convened by
the State Office of Family and Children's Services to address the state's compliance with Federal
child welfare audits;
- CFR's Deputy Director was named Co-Chair of the Children's Law Institute, an annual teach-in on
best practices in Family Court;
- Chief Judge Judith Kaye asked CFR to participate in the each of its last three annual state wide
roundtables to review legislative proposals with judges and other advocates;
- At the request of Casey Family Services, CFR staff addressed judges, practitioners and legislators
in the state of Connecticut on new models of serving families involved in family court.
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For more information on CFR's Policy Impact Work, contact us at info@cfrny.org
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