Overview

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.

Current opening:

CFR is seeking a Fair Hearing Representative to support our SCR practice. Under the supervision and guidance of an attorney supervisor, the Hearing Representative’s core responsibilities will be to work as part of CFR’s Community Advocacy Project to provide our clients with high quality advocacy during the SCR record challenge process. Responsibilities may include but are not limited to:

  • Provide SCR-related information and education to clients;
  • Draft letters to the SCR on behalf of clients to request records or initiate a challenge to their indicated reports, submit the requests to OCFS and track the progress of the requests;
  • Prepare for and conduct SCR hearings, which includes 
    • communicating with the hearing officer, opposing counsel, clients, and other related parties about appearances, discovery, and settlement; 
    • obtaining documentary evidence in support of our clients; 
    • interviewing clients and possible witnesses; 
    • preparing clients to testify, and 
    • conducting hearings.  
  • Work collaboratively with CFR’s interdisciplinary teams to identify clients who may benefit from challenging their SCR record, obtain relevant information about their family court case and services, and provide information about the impact of family court outcomes on their SCR record;
  • Track and record activities, outcomes and deliverables for the project.
  • Assist in efforts to conduct community outreach presentations, and develop training materials for parents, mandated reporters, external stakeholders/partners and CFR staff; 
  • Participate in CFR’s policy initiatives; 
  • Participate in citywide SCR Practice Group and on the community outreach team; 
  • Work alongside the Policy team to meet with other funders or elected officials who have supported our work .

Location

CFR currently has offices in Manhattan, Bronx, and Queens. This position will work with clients in the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. This will involve meeting in person with clients, CFR family defense teams and CAP staff in all boroughs. Hearings are generally conducted virtually, but are sometimes in person at the Bureau of Special Hearings on 125th Street in Manhattan.

Qualifications:

Candidates for this position should have a bachelor’s degree and at least one (1) year of related experience. Relevant education beyond a bachelor’s degree may be substituted for the required work experience. Candidates must demonstrate strong interpersonal and communication skills, organizational skills, and an ability to work as part of a team.

Ideal candidates will also: 

  • Have experience working alongside social workers and system impacted families 
  • Have experience providing direct advocacy of clients or prior paralegal experience
  • Be bilingual in Spanish or other languages

Candidates may be asked to work on a writing sample or writing exercise as part of the selection process and should expect there to be more than one interview.