Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
Q&A
Legal assistance and options for older adult kinship caregivers
1:04:15
ยท
65 sec
The Deputy Commissioner explains how NYC Children's Services ensures older adult caregivers understand their legal options and receive timely legal assistance.
- For children in foster care who will not return home, NYC Children's Services can provide funding for a private lawyer to assist with adoption or guardianship proceedings
- This legal assistance is available to relative foster parents or persons seeking guardianship through family court
- For kinship caregivers outside the foster care system, preventive service providers can make referrals to legal assistance as part of their responsibilities
- NYC Children's Services is not directly involved with relative caregivers seeking custody or guardianship privately outside the child welfare system
- The agency's role in providing legal assistance is primarily focused on cases within the foster care system
Crystal Hudson
1:04:15
Okay.
1:04:16
That's fair.
1:04:17
How does NYC children ensure older adult caregivers understand their legal options, for example, guardianship versus custody versus adoption, and receive timely legal assistance?
UNKNOWN
1:04:28
When children are in foster care and they're not going to return home, so either they're going to be adopted or kin gap, there is we're able to provide the relative, foster parent, or person seeking guardianship adoption through the family court with the lawyer not with the lawyer, but with the funding for the lawyer.
1:04:51
They get a private lawyer, but we are able to pay for that.
1:04:56
For those who are outside of our system, on the prevention side, preventive providers have connections and can make referrals to legal assistance as part of what they're supposed to do.
1:05:10
But we wouldn't ACS wouldn't be directly involved with a relative caregiver seeking custody or guardianship privately outside of the child welfare system.