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To Reunite Families, Agencies Try a Holistic Approach


With a pert smile, S. kept a tight watch over her baby boy's crib in her modest, brightly painted Bronx apartment. It was a mundane scene, but in light of what she had gone through a few months earlier, S., who asked to remain anonymous, kept her joy closely guarded.

Last year, S. saw her baby taken from her after a heated argument with her son's father ended with police intervening and taking her into detention. Soon, S. recalled in an interview, she found herself isolated at the precinct, while child welfare authorities placed the baby in the father's care. S. couldn't make sense of the decision: The Administration of Children's Services had not only overlooked the father's criminal record, she said, but also ignored an offer from S's mother to take temporary custody.

This is the third and final article in a series on the connections between the criminal justice and child welfare systems in New York City. Previously:

Going to Jail, Losing a Child -- When a mother goes to prison, she may have to give up her child as well as her freedom, and many families investigated for mistreating a child have had a member in prison. The two major institutions involved with protecting children interact in many families.

The Long Road Out of Foster Care -- Mothers who go to jail risk losing their children to the foster care system. Even if the families finally reunite, it can take years to repair the breach.

One Fanily's Story (video): Brenda Gittens talks about her journey through addiction and the child welfare system at a support group for mothers whose children have been removed. Her son Jacob's story was profiled in “The Long Road Out of Foster Care.” Jacob produced this video as part of an ongoing project of documenting his family's history. You can view it here.

In criminal court, S.'s case was quickly dismissed and the judge released her from detention. But it took weeks for her to wade through the family court process and scrutiny from children's services. Her contact with her baby was limited to supervised visitations; she even had to nurse her baby under the watch of an agency worker, S. recalled. "I was being looked at ... as a monstrous individual," she said.

Still, in a system where children may languish for months or years in foster care, S.'s separation from her son ended relatively quickly. Her rare example speaks to new strategies in the social service community to help distressed families cope.

In contrast to S.'s story, many troubled families get caught up in government systems. As parents and children try to deal with an array of interrelated problems -- such as mental illness, drugs, family violence, poverty and racial discrimination -- they get stuck in the bureaucracies that are supposed to hel them. But some advocates now recognize this web of crises and are trying new ways to enable families to untangle it.

The Whole Picture

S. got her son back, thanks to the Bronx Defenders, a public defender office that helps low-income families navigate the legal , welfare, housing and immigration systems. A lawyer, social worker and parent advocate teamed up to help S. deal with family court and criminal court simultaneously. This enabled her to arrange a visitation schedule and and support services, and regain custody soon after.

Kara Finck, managing attorney of the Bronx Defenders Family Defense Practice, said that in many cases, a child will be placed in care upon a parent's arrest, even if the charges are not related to the child's treatment. And even if the charges are later dismissed, their family court case will drag on, since the Administration for Children's Services will pursue its investigation of the parents' conduct independently. As their work continues, the child may remain with a relative or in foster care indefinitely.

If "a technicality in criminal court means you can't see your child for three months, and your child's three months old -- that's twice their life," Finck said.Over a family's lifetime, interwoven social and economic hardships can drive parents and children apart as they deal with police, courts, child protection agencies or some combination. Still, law enforcement and social service agencies may often operate separately without communicating -- despite research showing that in many cases, parents in the child welfare system have had past involvement with the criminal justice system or get arrested after losing their children. The bureaucratic dissonance, advocates say, can traumatize families, and could be avoided if agencies were more sensitive to the various burdens parents must juggle.

To harmonize those systems, groups like the Bronx Defenders have developed a holistic strategy for legal services. Attorneys know the ins and outs of the child welfare, legal and immigration bureaucracies, as well as how those institutions intersect when, say, a parent gets arrested in an immigration raid and her child winds up in foster care.

"The biggest thing that we're seeing within the system is this awakening that these children are present, and they bring with them a kind of extra burden," said Dee Ann Newell, a coordinator of http://www.sfcipp.org/rights.html national campaign to establish a Bill of Rights for children of incarcerated parents. "The stigma and the shame and the silence are for me the three S's that these children cope with, in addition to the fact that they have all these preceding risk factors."

A Web of Services

Since parents may see child-protection interventions as intrusive and humiliating, some groups use a "wraparound" approach focused on community bonds and group decision-making. Everyone, from siblings to grandparents to teachers, have a stake in planning a child's custody arrangement, for example, or a parent's drug treatment plan.

Carol Shapiro, a research scholar with Columbia University's < a href="http://iserp.columbia.edu/"> Institute for Economic and Social Research and Policy, said that agencies could improve outcomes if they just stopped treating clients as "people that need to be fixed, and instead, building on their assets. ... We respond much better to things we feel good about."

When she led the New York-based nonprofit Family Justice (which has since been incorporated into the Vera Institute of Justice), Shapiro put this concept to the test in San Francisco with Communities of Opportunity. In neighborhoods where poor families frequently encounter law enforcement and child welfare, the program immerses at-risk parents at the center of a network of services including probation authorities, school officials, and health and social service agencies.

Back in Brooklyn, the Women's Prison Association helps formerly incarcerated mothers cope with the challenges of transitioning back into the community. Clients are typically eager to reunite with their children, but must wrestle with unemployment, lack of housing or emotional instability. Federal laws limiting the time a child can stay in foster care further complicate the process of regaining custody.

The association's transitional housing facility, Huntington House, gives homeless, formerly incarcerated women a space to prepare for reunification with children who have been placed in foster care. The program places mothers in apartments shared by other clients, where they receive personalized employment and treatment services. After children return to their custody, mothers move into family-style apartments. Staff continue supporting the entire family until they are ready to move on to independent housing in the community.

"We have a built-in way to avoid the trap of housing being the last barrier to getting your children back," said executive director Georgia Lerner.

The group also works uses an intensive "home-based service model" to help women at risk of losing custody. Case managers visit women at home to give them what they need to keep their households running, whether it's support for staying clean, working with probation authorities, keeping up with court dates or signing up for food stamps.

When working with formerly incarcerated women, Lerner said, part of the job is acknowledging that reunification is not the only possible goal and regaining full custody may be out of reach for some women. The Women's Prison Association may instead help a parent devise an alternative custody setup, such as living with a relative under legal guardianship. The central aim, Lerner said, is to protect the parent's role in determining the healthiest care arrangement for the child, and to empower mothers to "make the best decisions and to be full, informed participants in the decision."

Protecting Family Rights

Many advocacy groups also believe police and other government agencies must change the way they treat parents and the children whose safety they are trying to protect.

The Osborne Association, a New York-based nonprofit that works with families affected by the criminal justice system, has drafted guidelines to help state and local law enforcement deal with children of arrested parents. The clinical language hints at the emotional tension of a police encounter: Officers are advised to "consider arresting, handcuffing and questioning of parents out of the view of their children," and to be conscious that "children may feel safer about the situation when compassion is shown to the arrestee." The San Francisco Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership, a coalition of community groups, service providers and government representatives,has published a Children of Incarcerated Parents Bill of Rights as a reference for families, service providers and government agencies. The core principles include the right to regular family visits, the right to be "considered in decisions about a parent," and the right to a "lifelong relationship" between parent and child.

"When a parent is incarcerated, there's sort of an assumption that that that relationship is not as valuable as other parent-child relationships," said partnership coordinator Nell Bernstein. "And of course when a family is involved with child welfare, there's also an assumption of 'this is a bad parent.' Put those two together, and this is a family that is at tremendous risk of dissolution."

The Bill of Rights website features testimony by Ahmad, who was born during his mother's incarceration, adopted as a young child and reunified with his birth family as a teen. The turbulent journey taught him that the child welfare system ignores what matters most.

"All the system saw," he said, "was a drug-addicted mother. 'The baby could do better without her.' They wanted to protect little Ahmad. Why didn't they care about his mother? ... What would have helped me most is compassion for my mom. We have to bring the mom back, so the mom can be a mother to the child."

Michelle Chen is a freelance writer and a native New Yorker. This article is part of a series exploring the connections between the criminal justice and child welfare systems in New York City. The project was supported by a fellowship from the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Bloomberg on Poverty: A War or Small Skirmishes?


Photo (cc) PhillipC
Mayor Bloomberg has widened the criteria to define poverty in New York. Under the new calculations, the number of New Yorkers living in poverty increased from 18.9 to 23 percent over 2006.

Correction: This story, as it originally appeared, reported as fact poverty statistics that Bloomberg administration disputes. The story has been updated to reflect the debate.

U.S. Census data released in September revealed that more than 1.5 million New Yorkers lived in poverty in 2008, before the financial crisis hit its heights. The city reports that meant the number of its residents living below the poverty line had fallen by 168,454 since 2000. Some activists, using a different methodology, see the number of New Yorkers living in poverty as having increased by 126,458 between 2000 and 20008. In either case, that total is expected to rise sharply.

While social services were relatively low on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s list of priorities during his first term, around the time of his 2005 re-election, he made it a point to reset that agenda. Bloomberg focused on two areas in particular: homelessness and an attempt to eradicate -- or at least reduce -- poverty in New York, a city that traditionally has offered a reasonably generous safety net in the face of emergency crisis.

A New Measure

Perhaps the most universally acclaimed element of Bloomberg’s effort has been the attention he has brought to the issue of poverty and his push to redefine who actually lives in poverty. The Center for Economic Opportunity, a special commission Bloomberg created with the singular purpose of fighting poverty, determined that the high cost of food and housing in the expensive city that is New York should be considered in calculating the threshold for being considered poor here. Using that new measure, the percent of New Yorkers living in poverty was recalculated and increased from 18.9 to 23 percent over 2006.

"Mayor Bloomberg proposed a more realistic measure of poverty that took some account of higher living costs in New York City. ... Bloomberg was right: The official poverty line in the United States is unreal. It does not take account of the actual costs of basic subsistence," wrote CUNY Graduate Professor Frances Fox Piven in an email. However, she added, "If we thought a new measure would mean more generous policies, we were wrong." Piven is an expert on social movements and welfare policy.

The mayor received so much recognition and acclaim for his efforts that at least 10 other U.S. cities are attempting to replicate his actions. The center also is working with the Obama administration to create a Federal Urban Innovation Fund, an "evidence-based" anti-poverty program modeled after the center itself.

40 Steps

In 2006, Bloomberg announced joint private/public funding of a $150 million annual commitment to combat poverty.

The initiative featured about 40 different pilot programs. "Anything you do to make a difference is an important lesson," said Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs, who lauded the mayor’s "willingness and bravery" to take on such a complex issue.

The specific projects include "conditional cash payments” called Opportunity NYC, which are contingent upon family members' actions. Other programs would provide a childcare tax credit -- which Gibbs described as "more budget secure" than city-funded childcare slots -- and job training. Together the efforts offer a "chance to re-examine [existing programs]. We know not all will be winners -- it's trial and error, but it also lays the groundwork," Gibbs said.

Brooklyn’s Bill de Blasio, chair of the City Council's General Welfare Committee and Democratic nominee for public advocate, observed that while the "motivation was good, [the city] didn't create meaningful" change.

Gibbs strongly disagreed, pointing out city agencies are now working in tandem and every initiative is being tracked and evaluated closely.

For example, more New Yorkers now are eligible for -- and receive -- food stamps thanks to improvements in technology and office design, the Human Resources Administration reports. The office hours have been expanded and the application time has been reduced. People who receive federal Supplement Security Income now are automatically enrolled for food stamps. Applications, re-certifications and necessary documents can be submitted online or over the telephone in some cases.

A Broader Approach?

In general, de Blasio said, he "never felt social services was one of the chief concerns" of the mayor and so Bloomberg never got as personally involved in poverty-related issues as in some other areas.

For example, de Blasio said, the mayor could have done something "tangible" to help the city's poor and working poor, by blocking the rent increases imposed by the Rent Guidelines Board, the body that decides rents for the city’s million stabilized apartments. He did not do that and in fact, has appointed the members who have raised those rents.

Andrew Brent, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said in an email, "There is no question that any increase in rents is particularly difficult for people to handle right now. At the same time," he continued, "the costs to maintain and heat buildings have risen" and the board has "to find the right balance.”

Brent added, “We're focused on building the 165,000 affordable housing units that comprise the New Housing Marketplace Plan. …The units built through the plan are made permanently affordable.”

Joel Berg, executive director of the NYC Coalition Against Hunger also criticized the initiative for its limited scope. "Only 3 percent of poor New Yorkers have been helped by the anti-poverty effort, and New York still leads the nation in income inequality," he said. The number aided by the mayor's effort is equal to about 42,000 people, according to Berg.

From July 2008 to July 2009, Berg said, 5,000 fewer people received public assistance while 276,000 more got food stamps. "The same offices that give food stamps turn people away from" welfare, he said. "This situations has "disproportionately affected minorites and defies logic. It just doesn't make sense."

"When it comes to poverty, when a mayor essentially says that we are only going to have small pilot projects that help less than [3 percent] of the target population, and, by the way, the overall poverty rate -- as well as the rate of homelessness and the rate of hunger -- will all be higher than when I started" and is then "hailed as an courageous innovator for even touching the problem, I don’t think such grandiose credit is deserved,” Berg said in 2008 testimony before the City Council.

Seeking a Big Impact from Small Programs

Gibbs' office said Berg's 3 percent figure does not reflect the actual reach the Center for Economic Opportunity has had since it launched in 2006. More than 100,000 individuals participated in one of the center's initiatives in both fiscal years 2008 and 2009, according to the city. Some programs affect a larger number of people, Gibbs said, such as the new Office of Financial Empowerment, which educates poor people about "asset development [and saving] strategies."

A number of the initiatives already have proved successful, according to Gibbs. She cited the City University Accelerated Study in Associate Programs, which Gibbs said "structured more success in community college degree programs. ... We projected 50 percent [of participating students receiving degrees in less than three years] in three years, and 75 percent in four, and have already achieved 31 percent in two." That’s compared with 8 percent to 11 percent in a non-participating comparison group.

Then there’s the Teen Action plan, Gibbs noted, which funds a program for over 3,100 young people promoting "positive life skills, responsible citizenship ... with the goal of preventing teen pregnancy and school suspension." Only in New York, would people claim that helping 3,000 kids is insufficient, Gibbs observed.

All Work?

The single biggest problem with the administration, said Berg, is its belief that a job -- any job -- is the answer, no matter what. "Bloomberg has been so-so on affordable housing but miserable on wages," he said. For Berg, this "work first" philosophy has discounted the severity of poverty and hunger in New York City.

Lower-skilled, lower-paid workers are simply following the career "trajectory of every worker," Gibbs explained. To think they can "jump over others is unrealistic."

Responded Berg, “They are not on a career ladder that will eventually lead to living wage jobs. If folks were truly on career ladders upward, of course they’d have to pay their original dues, like my grandparents did after coming to America. ... The reality that the [administration] never wants to admit is that lower income workers are on a treadmill that’s going backward. ... That is why the working poor are the fastest growing poverty population in NYC."

This is underscored by misleading information the city has disseminated about welfare-to-work recipients, Berg said.

Replacing the Safety Net?

The emphasis on jobs reflects what some see as Bloomberg's belief that the poor deserve some blame for their poverty. The administration's idea of paying people to improve their behavior -- by making sure their children go to school say, or go to the doctor -- reinforces that idea.

In Berg's view, the administration's efforts are based on the "incorrect belief that large government anti-poverty programs haven’t worked, far too based on the false assumption that poor personal behavior is the main cause of poverty, and far too detached from efforts to create jobs and raise wages."

CUNY’s Piven gives Bloomberg credit for not following "Guiliani in singling out the poor for gratuitously mean-spirited initiatives." But, she continued, "neither has it seriously revamped the policies that keep the poor poor. Moreover, it has presided over a real estate boom that has steadily encroached on the neighborhoods of poor and working class people, replacing affordable housing with glass towers of multi million-dollar condos."

Gibbs said the city is "developing new models." At the end of those efforts, she said, it hopes to have created a better safety net -- one that "lifts [people] out of that" to live independently.

Jillian Jonas is a freelance journalist focusing on local and national politics, government and public policy. She is a former national political analyst for U.P.I.

Breaking Down Barriers in the Fight Against Domestic Violence


Photo (cc) oncl_wart

When Ling and her soon-to-be-former husband were dating, they enjoyed the music of Pink Floyd. They also shared the same tastes in movies and many other things. Although he was always the jealous type, she didn't think it was a big issue.

"I accepted it as part of his personality," said Ling, a native of Taiwan who requested her last name be withheld to protect her privacy. But five years into her marriage, her husband's jealous rage turned into physical violence.

"He always imagined someone else pursuing me," said Ling, who has been separated for almost two years and now shares an apartment with her daughter and a friend from church. "He hit me for the first time after the baby was born, and it just got worse." The last straw came when her husband left her bleeding badly after another violent episode and disappeared for days. She called the police and had her husband arrested.

With an American master's degree in business administration, Ling is fluent in Chinese, English and Japanese. She does not fit the image many may have of a typical victim of domestic violence. But a recent report by Garden of Hope, a Flushing-based organization that serves Chinese-speaking victims of domestic violence, showed that among the 200 clients interviewed, more than 40 percent have college degrees or higher. Among their abusers, more than 50 percent have received higher education.

"Domestic violence has nothing to do with race, age and educational background," said Kristen Liu, executive director of Garden of Hope.

The causes of domestic violence can be very complex, encompassing stress over work, drug use, alcoholism, extra-marital affairs, jealousy and different opinions on child rearing. In immigrant communities, cultural patterns and fear of going to the police add to the problem.

Hiding the Shame

In Ling's case, her husband is many of the above: a drug user, alcoholic, unemployed and later diagnosed with clinical depression. But she was reluctant to tell anyone because "saving face" is very important in Chinese culture

"In the beginning, I was thinking about getting help but I was ashamed," said Ling, who relied on her parents for money after her husband closed his business. "I was trying to maintain my social status. I couldn't tell my family or friends. ... I was too shy to tell the truth. I was scared to see how my parents would react."

But eventually she learned about Garden of Hope from a friend in her church and sought its help.

"My counselors helped me to let go of my feelings through art therapy, the Bible and prayers," Ling said, adding that she has finally told her parents. "Now my life is calm," she said.

According to Liu's statistics, Garden of Hope received 1,430 calls and had 307 consultations in 2008. But only 145 individuals decided to take any action against their abusers.

Protection for the Victim

Often immigrant victims of abuse do not know they can turn to the police and social service organizations for help. Many come from countries where domestic violence may be prevalent and where victims have little protection.

"In the majority of Latin American countries, domestic violence is, what can I say, the thing of the day," said Haydee Zambrana, executive director of Latin Women in Action, which primarily serves the Mexican and Ecuadorian communities in Corona, Queens. "It takes place so often and the laws there, as many women indicated, do not protect them as well."

Often, spousal abuse leads to child abuse, Zambrana said. The abuse of a child, she said, is frequently what tips off the authorities to other violence in the home.

"The school is the number one reporter of child abuse," said Zambrana. "Then the Administration for Children's Services will require the parents to attend workshops on parenting, anger management and domestic violence. Through that way they become aware of the services they can receive ... and many women started to come forward."

Help Is Available

A number of community-based organizations like Garden of Hope and Latin Women in Action exist throughout the city to help victims of domestic violence. In addition, he Mayor's Office to Combat Domestic Violence, founded in 2001, has two family justice centers, one in Brooklyn and one in Queens, to provide walk-in services to victims of domestic violence. Its hotline is 1-800-621-HOPE or one can simply dial the city's help line, 311.

The two centers provide a wide variety of serviceswith on-site assistance from immigration attorneys, counselors, family lawyers, police officers, probation officers, case managers, assistant district attorneys and so on.

"The idea is to streamline the process," said Yolanda Jimenez, the office's commissioner who herself is an immigrant from Bogota, Colombia. "We want to ensure that they get everything they need."

About two thirds of the clients at the Queens center and more than a third of those in Brooklyn are foreign born. To serve these clients, the centers' staffs speak more than a dozen languages and offer interpretation in 150 languages through its Language Line Program. Among the many services provided, interpretation is one of the most popular. Every month an average of 225 people take advantage of the translation services at each center, according to Ruth Villalonga, the domestic violence office's communications and outreach manager.

To help victims of domestic violence get back on their feet and gain financial independence, many agencies offer self-sufficiency services, including career training and English as a second language classes.

Immigration and Legal Issues

Immigration status is the number one concern for many victims, service providers say. Many are afraid to go to the police because they have no legal status here or depend their spouse to remain in this country.

"We have seen some cases where immigrants with U.S. citizenship would go back to their home countries to find wives," said Liu of Garden of Hope. "Once they bring their new wives to the U.S., they don't allow them to go out or learn English. If the wives don't listen, they threaten to divorce them and find new ones."

But New York City does offer some protections.

"Anyone who is a victim of domestic violence or a witness of a crime, the police cannot inquire their immigration status," said Jimenez, citing Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Executive Order 41, issued in 2003 to allow all New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status, access to vital city services. As a result, she said, victims should "feel they can come to the police, hospitals, family justice centers and get into shelters."

Federal law may offer protection in some cases as well. Victims of domestic violence may be able to gain legal status under Violence Against Women Act asylum. U Visaprovides nonimmigrant status for four years to victims of crime who are willing to help law enforcement investigate the offense and prosecute. It was specifically created by the Department of Homeland Security in 2007 to "strengthen the ability of law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute cases of domestic violence," among other crimes. After three years, visa holders may apply for permanent residency.

In general, Liu said, any victim who "can prove that the marriage is in good faith and that violence does exist ... can self-petition for a green card."

Getting the Word Out

Meanwhile, all the agencies involved in this issue are trying to reach out to immigrant communities and raise the awareness of domestic violence. Garden of Hope and Latin Women in Action both hold seminars for immigrants, while the city office meets with leaders of various community-based organizations to spread the word.

"We found that often time the victims would talk to the clergy before they report to the authorities," said Jimenez.

After two years of separation, Ling is finalizing her divorce giving her full custody of her daughter while her husband is in jail for domestic violence against two other women and violation of his probation.

"I need to settle down my life and my daughter," said Ling, adding there is no chance that she will get back together with her husband. "Even my daughter doesn't want to see him." She plans to move in with her parents, who live in Japan.

Larry Tung, a native of Taiwan, teaches media and film courses at Kean University in Union, N.J. He is also a documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on immigrant and Asian American issues.



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