ROLE OF THE COURTS AND LEGAL PROFESSIONALS Courts and legal professionals play a powerful role in ensuring that children are placed with kin if they must be separated from their family. At the national level, the National Council on Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) has partnered with the American Bar Association and the Annie E. Casey Foundation to create a tip sheet for identifying and resolving barriers to kinship placement. xxiii In Pennsylvania, county agencies and the courts have benefitted from the efforts of the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, Office of Children and Families in the Court, which has taken a leadership role in integrating family finding and kinship care into legal practice. While many important efforts are underway, several effective strategies could be expanded and strengthened across the Commonwealth. High-Quality Legal Representation
resource for the child, despite the child welfare agency’s decision to place the child elsewhere. The federal government has recognized the unique benefits that legal representation can have on families, and in 2017 issued an Information Memorandum (IM) encouraging all jurisdictions to invest in high-quality legal representation at all phases of child welfare proceedings. xxiv The federal IM further recognized multi- disciplinary legal representation models—models that pair attorneys with social workers and peer advocates— are most likely to support positive outcomes for families. Recently, federal reimbursement was made available for the costs of parent and child attorneys, as well as their multi-disciplinary teams. xxv In addition, research confirms that investing in high-quality legal representation can significantly strengthen kinship practice. In New York City, a landmark study found that when parents received high-quality, multi-disciplinary legal representation, children were released to relatives twice as often in the first year of a case. xxvi Data released by Community Legal Services of Philadelphia (CLS), which offers multi-disciplinary legal representation for parents involved in the child welfare system, shows that the children of parents for whom CLS advocated were significantly more likely to experience kinship placements than other children in the jurisdiction. Among clients with children living in a family-like setting (rather than a group or institutional placement), the overwhelming majority (77%) were in kinship care, compared with a city average of 56%. xxvii Family Group Decision-Making Family group decision-making, a meeting that allows parents and children to identify their natural support system of relatives, neighbors or family friends, is another key strategy that agencies and courts can use to engage family and increase kinship placements. These individuals are then invited to work together with the parent and child to come up with a plan to stabilize and strengthen the family. This decision-making process is unique in that it encourages families, rather than professionals, to take the lead in problem solving.
High-quality legal representation for parents and children is an essential strategy to ensure that children are placed quickly with kin when removal is necessary. Attorneys for parents and children are often in the unique position to gain the trust of the individuals they represent, bringing families in crisis together while at the same time leveraging the legal expertise needed to resolve court and agency barriers to kinship placements. Both are also positioned to bring to the attention of the court alternative kinship resources who may be a better placement
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Kinship Care in Pennsylvania: Creating an Equitable System for Families – January 2021
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