Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Spring 2014, Vol. 40, No. 1 | Page 43

by Anna Saxman, Esq.

THE CHILDREN’S CORNER
Improving Outcomes for Families in Juvenile Court:
The Defender General’s Family Support Project
The Office of the Defender General, by
statute, provides representation to children and parents in abuse and neglect
cases as well as truancy and delinquency
cases. In 2009, the Defender General was
concerned with what appeared to be the
relatively high rate of children in DCF custody; the ODG wanted to see if we could
improve parental representation. At that
time, according to the ABA, Vermont had
the ninth highest percentage of children in
DCF custody in the nation.1 Many of the attorneys representing parents felt that the
deck was stacked against their clients due
to poverty and the associated lack of housing, child care, and access to transportation. The clients also had multiple needs
for substance abuse and mental health
treatment. The courts were concerned that
it was difficult for the attorneys to contact
their clients and time was wasted while the
attorneys met with the clients at the courthouse for an update.
To address these issues the Defender General developed a program called
the Family Support Project, which provides trained advocates of diverse backgrounds—some social workers, therapists,
a former teacher, some former substance
abuse providers, even one attorney—to
work with the parents and the parent’s attorneys in helping parents access needed
services in order to reunify with their children. The project is based upon the belief that all families should be given the
assistance and resources to parent their
children safely and well. This project was
modelled after the Washington State Public Defender’s Parents Representation Program, which was started in 2000 and has
been shown to be very successful. In a review of three similar projects, researchers
found that “improving legal representation
and support for parents in child welfare
proceedings results in better outcomes for
children and families and can lead to substantial savings of government funds.”2
The Washington State program has shown
a 39% increase in the rate of reunification
of families and has shortened the time to
all permanency outcomes.3 The Washington State program started with more than
$500,000 of new money to fund the program. In contrast, the Defender General’s office began the program with no new
money. Starting in Chittenden County, we
www.vtbar.org

hired one family support worker, who became the model for our other counties. We
now have six family support workers covering Chittenden, Addison, Franklin, Windham, Windsor, and Orleans counties and
are looking for more workers. Our FSWs
are not employees of the Defender General but are hired on a case-by-case basis. An
attorney representing a parent in an abuse
and neglect case (a “CHINS” case) may request a family support worker to assist the
parent in keeping or regaining custody of
their children. The family support worker
gains the trust of the parents and meets
with them in their homes. The workers provide help in finding housing, accessing substance abuse or mental health treatment,
finding jobs, and attending visitation, parenting skills classes, and team meetings.
Here are some representative examples of
how the project has helped.
A young drug-addicted mother with
learning disabilities had an infant with complex medical issues. The Department of
Children and Families (DCF) took the child
into custody. With the help of a dedicated family support worker, DCF, and a good
lawyer, she was able to have visitation
with the child every day during the week
for several hours and was able to Skype
with him on other occasions. The mother
got into a good drug rehab program and,
with very little backsliding, was able to become clean. She is a devoted member of
AA now. She also got into mental health
treatment. Although there were concerns
that she would not be able to learn how
to care for her child’s significant medical
needs, she and the family support worker attended every class the nurses offered
on dealing with the child’s special issues.
With the support of her worker, the mother
showed DCF she could learn and take care
of her child. The child is now at home in her
custody and thriving. But for the dedicated
support of the family support worker and
DCF’s willingness to give this young mother a chance, the child would never have
been reunited with his mother.
In another case, the mother was living
with an abusive partner and her three children when they became homeless. DCF
took the children into custody upon reports of neglect by both parents and abuse
by the father. The parents lived for a while
i