I am a social worker for a public defender agency, Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem. I am on the Family Defense Team, meaning I work on an interdisciplinary team of attorneys, social workers, and advocates to represent and support parents who have been alleged to have neglected or abused their a child under Article 10 of the Family Court Act. All of my clients are being supervised by the Administration for Children Services (ACS) and their children are either living with them, with a family member or reside in foster care, depending on the nature of the case. It is my job to advocate for my clients’ specific goals and needs, support them through navigating the child welfare system, help mitigate conflicts with ACS and foster care employees and provide supportive counseling and motivational interviewing. I also partner with their assigned attorneys to address our clients’ legal and well as personal needs.

 

When people hear about the child welfare system and ACS, the first thoughts that come to mind are that the system is set up to ‘rescue’ children from abusive and neglectful parents. While perhaps this is why ACS exists in the first place, the reality of the system as I have experienced it, is one in which outsiders often unnecessarily remove children from their parents, shatter families and use judgement, fear tactics and abuse of power to justify this, all in the name of ‘child safety.’ On three separate occasions, in the 8 months that I have been doing this work, I have witnessed ACS attempt (and twice succeed) in removing a newborn child from her mother simply because they (ACS) “did not have enough information about the mothers’ mental health treatment engagement.” On another occasion, I witnessed a client whose child was removed because while she was asleep, he ran out of the shelter where they live and got struck by a car. He was not seriously injured, but his mother was not only deemed not allowed to care for him but she was also arrested in front of him at the hospital. In a suburban (read: white) community, this might have been seen as an accident. But because my client is a Hispanic woman who lives in a shelter, she is a criminal not worthy of her son. Another client I have has been excluded from his home and his children’s’ lives because he suffered a psychotic break and tried to attempt suicide in front of his family. Instead of assisting this man with the help he needed, he became homeless and was hospitalized three more times, all the while his kids are wondering what happened to their father and why he can’t come home.