Reuniting Familes: Lawyers Team Up With Social Workers

Lauren Shapiro (Photos by Stephen Nessen)

When the Brooklyn Family Defense Project started two years ago, it became one of only three publicly funded law offices in New York City that have full-time social workers and “parent advocates” on staff. Parent advocates are usually parents who went through the child welfare system themselves and were reunited with their children. The two other such publicly funded law offices with social workers and parent advocates on staff are The Bronx Defenders and Center for Family Representation in Manhattan.

Lauren Shapiro, the director of Brooklyn Family Defense Project, says the involvement of social workers and parent advocates is crucial because these staff members give moral support and find the best services for clients outside the courtroom. She says there simply isn’t enough time in the day for lawyers to be social workers too. Making sure parents are finding the right drug treatment, family counseling, personal counseling, anger management classes, and other services is a round-the-clock job. And it’s an important job because parents might not be reunified with their children if they don’t complete those programs successfully. However, only about half the parents in Brooklyn who end up in the Family Court system end up assigned to lawyers from Brooklyn Family Defense Project.

Before these three offices started this integrated practice, court-appointed lawyers for parents in Family Court could request funding for assistance from social workers, but didn’t always see their requests granted.

Sue Jacobs, the director of Center for Family Representation, says only a few other cities in the country are beginning to experiment with automatically pairing social workers with lawyers who defend parents in most abuse and neglect cases.