BY BEVANJAE KELLEY

	Art by Natanael Aquilar

Not long ago, I was called to an Initial Child Safety Conference. This is a meeting to determine whether a child will be placed in foster care. Parents who are facing removal are allowed to bring friends, family and community members to the conference to talk with child welfare staff about their family’s strengths and needs. But many parents are overwhelmed. They don’t know what to do or say at the meeting.

I work for an organization—the Child Welfare Organizing Project (CWOP)—that provides parents with trained Community Representatives to guide them. As a Community Rep, I help parents understand what they can ask for at the meeting. I help parents and child welfare staff work together to find a way to keep a child safe without placement in foster care, if possible.

All of the parents involved with CWOP have had direct personal experience with the child welfare system. CWOP trains parents to support their peers and advocate for child welfare system reform through a six-month course called the Parent Leadership Curriculum, which I graduated from in 2004. When New York City’s child welfare agency, Children’s Services (ACS), decided to work with CWOP to train child welfare-affected parents as Community Representatives, I was very happy to participate. This initiative brings the voice of a trained and informed parent to the table.

Working Together

If a family in East Harlem is scheduled for a Child Safety Conference, CWOP gets a call from the Children’s Services Field Office in Harlem. I go to the meeting, introduce myself to the parent and ask if the parent would like me to sit in.

During the conference, all of the participants are supposed to work together to decide whether the child must be removed, or, if not, what will keep the child safe at home.

At the conference I attended recently, the mother spoke only Spanish, so I was nervous about whether we’d be able to communicate. Luckily, she had a close friend who was bilingual, and before the conference started, I was able to tell her about my role and about CWOP, and she asked me to attend her conference. Inside, ACS provided an interpreter.

A Painful Case

The allegation was sexual abuse of the children by the husband. The husband had been locked up. The mother was arrested, too, because the child accused the mother of not keeping her safe. (Parents can be charged with “failure to protect,” even if they don’t harm a child themselves.) The child said her mother knew about the abuse—it was going on for four years.

At the conference, the mother showed no emotion. She was leaning toward her husband’s version of the truth. She said, “I can’t believe he did that.” That didn’t help her case. They ended up removing all of her children.

It was very hard for me to see the mother defending her husband and disbelieving her child. I know how important it is to validate what your child says in a case of sexual violence. My own daughter was a victim of sexual assault at a young age.

Still, I was able to assure the mother that, no matter how dark it seemed, the other CWOP parent organizers and I would try our best to help her reunite with her children. We got in her in touch with the Center for Family Representation, where she’ll have a lawyer, social worker and parent advocate working on her case. I also encouraged her to come to the CWOP support group to get help. CWOP holds a weekly support group for parents and I attend the group regularly because parents I’ve supported at Child Safety Conferences look forward to seeing me there when they come.

Building Trust

The following Wednesday, the mother came to the support group. Some people there were bilingual, so we were able to communicate. She gave me permission to tell her story to the group. She trusted me to tell something so serious and upsetting. That made me feel good. I thought to myself, “I guess language is not a barrier to trust.”

During the group, I told her, “The child is the most important part of the family. Your children are the ones you have to protect. They’re most vulnerable. A husband, a wife—they’re adults, they have to fend for themselves. You have to protect your children. You have to let them say what they have to say, and you have to help them move forward. If it turns out that what your child is saying is untrue, OK, but you have to go by it being true.” It was difficult, but this is what I had to convey to her.

She broke down crying. All her emotions came out.

As she listened to other people telling their stories, she thought about it and she said, “He can burn in hell! I’m going to do everything I can to get my kids back.”

In the conference she showed only denial; maybe she was in shock. But in the group, she was able to connect. It was a wonderful feeling.

A Sense of Hope

That same day, another parent whose case conference I had attended a few months before came to the support group, too. She was hugging me, saying, “I’m getting my baby back tomorrow!” I said, “That’s great!” I was impressed that she got her child back within a few months. When she told her story, it made everybody hyped. I was almost in tears.

I feel proud of the work I do and happy to see the impact we have on parents. Even though it is necessary for some children to be removed in some cases, we’ve seen that fewer children in East Harlem have been placed in foster care since parents trained as Community Representatives began attending the conferences. Many times, Community Reps can help the parents and agency workers come up with another solution that will keep children safe.

I also believe that parents whose children enter foster care feel a greater sense of hope because another parent is there to support and guide them from the very first day of their case. One man I worked with came to the support group with his mother. His mother was hugging me! That’s the reaction people have when they know you’re doing what you said you would do.

We don’t promise, “You’ll get your kids back” but we promise that we’ll show parents what they have to do to get their children home and keep them at home.