CityLimits Examines Challenges Faced By Family Law Advocates in Cases Involving Mental Health Issues

In an August 9th article, CityLimits reporter Kelly Virella speaks with Brooklyn Family Defense Project Director Lauren Shapiro and Supervising Attorney Jessica Marcus about systemic problems with the child welfare system’s management of mental health issues and how advocates are working for change.  

From the article:

A few years ago, Jessica Marcus, a Brooklyn-based family law attorney, took on a client who was mildly mentally retarded and fighting charges that she abused and neglected her three sons. Because the woman was also depressed, her doctor gave her an anti-depressant. Initially, this pleased her case worker at the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, but as time passed, the case worker became frustrated with what he perceived as the mother’s lack of progress. Because the caseworker didn’t understand the difference between mental illness and mental retardation, he assumed that the anti-depressant would cure her of both.

It’s a common misconception, within New York City’s child welfare system, says Lauren Shapiro, the executive director of Brooklyn Family Defense Project, where Marcus works. “There’s a total lack of understanding of the difference between the two,” Shapiro says. “They’re really not equipped to deal with mental health issues.”

Parents who actually do have mental illness sometimes get mishandled too, Shapiro says, by a system that assumes it’s impossible for them to be fit parents simply because they have a diagnosis. “We see insensitivity toward our clients, laughing at behaviors that are a result of mental health issues,” Shapiro says. “What we see is that parent’s conditions also really deteriorate when they come into the ACS system.”

Shapiro’s perception is one that is shared by several child welfare advocates and echoed by a winter 2009 Child Welfare Watch report that documented systemic problems with the child welfare system’s management of mental health issues. The report found that mental health evaluations “are requested far more often than necessary, even in cases in which there is no mental health allegation.”

Often the evaluations were based on a single period of observation of a parent without the children present, the report says. Because there is no standard for conducting mental health evaluations in New York City, repeated evaluations of the same person routinely yield contradictory diagnoses, the report says.

Since the report was released, officials have taken a number of steps to improve training and procedures where mental health issues involved. CityLimits reports that a coalition of family law attorneys, social workers and advocates is developing a plan to address those concerns that remain. 

“If someone has a mental illness, the way that you can help the children is by doing a safety plan that says ‘Who’s gonna take the children? Where and when? What are the triggers?’ And the parents themselves can have safety plans so they know when they need help,” Shapiro says. The coalition also wants the guidelines to set some standards that help determine when parents and children should be subjected to mental health evaluations.

The mental health subcommittee was inspired to begin developing guidelines after [the Adoptions and Safe Families Task Force] succeeded in getting ACS to adopt guidelines governing visits between children in foster care and their parents, Shapiro says. The process and outcome of the visiting guidelines initiative provided a good model for collaborating with ACS.

Once the guidelines have been developed, members of the coalition hope to begin using them as the basis of trainings and further advocacy work.

“The issue is that parents with mental illness need very particular accommodations and they’re not trained so they don’t know how to deal with it,” Shapiro says.

Read the full piece at CityLimits.org.