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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Davene Roseborough, Parent Advocate from Center for Family Representation
2:52:39
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Davene Roseborough, a parent advocate at the Center for Family Representation (CFR), testified about the challenges faced by families in the foster care system and the need for transparency and accountability. She highlighted CFR's role in providing legal representation to parents facing ACS prosecution and their efforts to reunite families separated by the foster care system.
- CFR uses an interdisciplinary model, assigning each parent an attorney, social worker, and staff member supported by a paralegal supervisor and parent advocate.
- Roseborough, who has personal experience with the foster care system, emphasized how compliance often takes precedence over addressing safety concerns and reuniting families.
- She called for additional data to improve transparency and accountability in promoting family integrity.
Davene Roseborough
2:52:39
My name is Davine Roseboro.
2:52:41
I'm a parent advocate at the Center for Family Representation.
2:52:44
Thank you, chair Stevens, the committee, and city council for giving us this opportunity to testify.
2:52:50
CFR is a citywide assigned indigent defense provider for parents who are facing ACS prosecution.
2:52:56
In Lower Manhattan, Queens, Richmond County, CFR is also a conflict provider for parents representation in the Bronx County.
2:53:04
CFR employees a interdisciplinary model of representation.
2:53:08
Every parent is assigned a attorney, social worker, staff member, and these members are supported by a paralegal supervisor and parent advocate.
2:53:17
CFR families CFR help families prevent and navigate family police and investigation and work zealously to reunite families who are separated by the foster care system.
2:53:27
We know that family safety and well-being can be achieved without surveillance, prosecution, separation.
2:53:33
We join the testimony of the other defense officers calling for additional data to improve transparency, accountability to promote family integrity.
2:53:42
At CFR, we often see that families are separated and children are placed into into the foster care system, fundamental questions about safety are replaced with questions around compliance as an impact.
2:53:54
The parent, myself, raised in the foster care system, I have been punished about the compliance with the agency, and it seems like this was the agency cared about the most.
2:54:03
Often, the focus was placed on the moves that the agency were trying to enforce on my attitude towards the workers rather than the services I completed and the determination and drive I had in meeting the needs of my children and addressing any safety concerns.
2:54:17
This ended my process with obtaining my children back in my care.
2:54:20
At CFR, we see countless other families experience the same thing.