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The Center for Family Representation Inc. (CFR) is an award-winning, innovative law and policy organization that serves primarily Black and Brown families and youth in Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx with an interdisciplinary legal defense model that serves more than 2400 clients every year. In 2024, CFR will expand our family defense practice to Richmond County. CFR was originally founded in 2002 to dramatically change the trajectory of indigent parents being prosecuted by the City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). Our goal is to defend and protect our clients’ rights, reduce the harm of family separation and prevent or minimize the time any child spends in the foster system.
CFR provides interdisciplinary family defense with a model that was unique at our founding and that is now being replicated nationally: we assign every client an attorney and a social work staff member, and teams have the support of parent advocates, who are parents with direct personal experience of being investigated and prosecuted by ACS. CFR was the first agency in the country to integrate parents with lived experience into legal teams and now has 7 parent advocates working in all three of our family defense locations. CFR’s Community Advocacy Project represents parents during a child protective investigation (to avoid court involvement where possible) and assists parents in clearing their names from state maltreatment records.
As an agency committed to securing justice for families, we built the Youth Defense practice (YDP) to defend youth at risk of family separation through incarceration. YDP uses the same interdisciplinary model to represent youth being prosecuted in Queens and Manhattan in Supreme Court Youth Parts, during Probation Adjustment and in Delinquency proceedings in Family Court. CFR’s Home for Good program provides legal and social work services to CFR clients in immigration, civil legal services and criminal defense matters, to afford clients an efficient and well-coordinated one-stop solution to a range of issues that threaten family stability.
Recognized as experts in our fields, we annually train over 500 practitioners in the city, state and around the country on strategies to promote family preservation and interdisciplinary representation, and we provide community based “Know Your Rights” presentations to parents, youth and service providers. We advocate at the city, state and national level for policies that reduce the harm of family separation, and promote parent engagement and justice for youth and families.
About the Position
CFR is seeking a Law Graduate that will begin working at CFR in Fall 2024 in our Manhattan office.
Responsibilities:
Law Graduates joining CFR can expect intensive, interdisciplinary training on CFR’s Cornerstone Advocacy model, family court, the child welfare/family regulation system, client interviewing, and other critical skills. CFR is dedicated to providing ongoing professional development in best practices in all these areas in a variety of training forums for all staff.
Law school graduates or current 3Ls who passed the February bar exam, or will take the bar for the first time in July 2024.
Prior experience with public benefits, housing, criminal defense or immigration is preferred.
Fluency in Spanish or other languages is preferable.
Individuals who apply should be able to demonstrate strong interpersonal and communication skills, a commitment to interdisciplinary representation of parents and a desire to share in both the exhilaration and challenges of a growing endeavor.
Other
Professional Associations
$142k-182k (estimate)
07/24/2023
09/29/2024
cfrny.org
NEW YORK, NY
25 - 50
2002
SUSAN JACOBS
$10M - $50M
Professional Associations
The Center for Family Representation (CFR) is a groundbreaking nonprofit organization that provides families in crisis with free legal representation and social work services to enable children from vulnerable families to live with their parents safely. We provide families with an innovative model of services: a team of an attorney, a social worker, and a parent advocatea professional who has experienced the child welfare system firsthand and has reunified their family. CFR teams assist poor families where there is a risk of a child entering foster care. We reach parents early on, often during... child protective investigations, to give families the assistance they need to avoid family court cases. If children must enter care, we represent parents in court and provide services following reunification to ensure that children do not re-enter foster care. CFR serves the majority of families appearing in Manhattan and Queens Family Courts for neglect and abuse proceedings. CFR also trains practitioners in the child welfare and court systems on best practices to support families and supports policy initiatives at the city, state and national level in order strengthen at-risk families.
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