Parent Support Program Helps Repair Parent-Child Relationships

08/10/12 • -1 min

New Thinking, from the Center for Justice Innovation

The graduation of seven fathers serves as a jumping off point for Liberty Aldrich, director of the Center for
Court Innovation’s family
and domestic
violence programming, to discuss the Kings County Parent Support Program, which links non-custodial parents with needed services
to increase child support payments and maintain healthy parent-child relationships.

ROBERT V. WOLF: Hi, I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation.
And today I’m talking with Liberty Aldrich, who is our director of domestic violence and family court Programs.
Hi Liberty.

LIBERTY ALDRICH: Hi.

WOLF: We’re talking
today about the King’s County Parent Support Program, which the Center for Court Innovation operates in collaboration
with New York City Family Court and the city’s Human Resources Administration. The Parent Support
Program works closely with non-custodial parents who owe child support. Over the course of the program’s first
17 months there have been about $140,000 in child support collected. Liberty and I recently had a chance
to see a graduation of participants, so today I thought we would listen to some excerpts from that. To
start off, Liberty, I thought maybe you could give an overview of what the King’s County Parent Support Program is.

LIBERTY: Sure, thanks. The Parent Support Program takes a problem-solving approach to
address a problem that has bedeviled courts and parents and families for a long time, which is how can we address
the persistent problem of non-payment of child support in a way that is both fair to the non-custodial parents, but
also provides support to children. The Parent Support Program is open to any non-custodial parent in Brooklyn
who is in arrears on their child support. Support magistrates, attorneys, or other folks can refer potential participants
to the Parent Support Program and that program has a resource coordinator. The resource coordinator meets with the
non-custodial dad, sees whether he’s eligible for the program, sees what kind of services he needs in order
to become better employed, better able to support his children, and if it’s appropriate, she makes that recommendation
to the support magistrate that that non-custodial dad be ordered to participate in those programs in lieu of more
traditional sanctions. The court continues to monitor his compliance with the programs on a regular basis, bringing
him back to court and checking in to see if, in fact, he’s taking advantage of the services offered.

WOLF: I’m gathering that the program really is to support, as its name suggests. I thought
maybe we could listen to some of the things we heard from the graduation. Here, in her welcoming remarks,
Theodora Andreopoulos, the deputy borough chief of child support for the Brooklyn Family Court Division, pointed
out that the Parent Support Program goes beyond focusing just on the parent’s failures to actually trying to
offer some concrete help.

THEODORA ANDREOPOULOS: Enforcement petitions are often viewed
as proceedings which focus on a parent’s failure to pay child support. However the Parent Support Program and
the success of the graduates today has shown that enforcement petitions can be more than that. They can be an opportunity
for a second chance to be given to a parent who wished to comply with the child support order but had not had the
ability to do so in the past, because of his or her own personal circumstances.

WOLF:
So maybe you can tell me what kind of personal circumstances might prevent a parent from being able to make child
support payments.

ALDRICH: In a lot of the cases that we’ve had so far, and so
far we’ve worked with over 120 non-custodial parents, the major issues are a history of incarceration, which
makes it very difficult to find adequate employment, and under-employment. So folks who’ve lost their jobs,
folks who were previously making a regular salary who are no longer able to sustain that level of income, and so
they may be making ends meet for their personal needs by doing odd jobs, but they are unable to find adequate employment.

WOLF: Let’s listen to what Devin Banton said about why he wasn’t able to make his payments.

WOLF: What brought you to the program? What was the situation that got you here?

DEVIN BANTON: The situation was that you know, the economy got bad and I had my own vehicle, and
I had an accident, twice. Not my fault, but because of the accident...

LIBERTY ALDRICH: Hi.

WOLF:
So maybe you can tell me what kind of personal circumstances might prevent a parent from being able to make child
support payments.

WOLF: Let’s listen to what Devin Banton said about why he wasn’t able to make his payments.

WOLF: What brought you to the program? What was the situation that got you here?

DEVIN BANTON: The situation was that you know, the economy got bad and I had my own vehicle, and
I had an accident, twice. Not my fault, but because of the accident...

Previous Episode

Lacking U.S. Citizenship, Some Survivors of Domestic Violence Face Extra Challenges

Gail Pendleton, co-director of ASISTA, which advises and trains advocates and attorneys who work with immigrant
survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, discusses some of the complex issues non-citizen survivors face. July
2012

SARAH SCHWEIG: Hi, I’m Sarah Schweig at the Center for Court Innovation
and today I’m speaking with Gail Pendleton about how issues around domestic violence become far more complicated
when they involve victims with pending immigration status. Gail Pendleton is co-director of ASISTA, a national immigration
law technical assistance project supported by the Federal Office on Violence Against Women. Thank you for speaking
with me today and welcome.

GAIL PENDLETON: Thank you.

SARAH SCHWEIG: Women
who are victims of domestic violence already face a number of hurdles, and women who aren’t citizens often face
a much more complex situation. Can you give a sense of these challenges and, you know, for instance, how does immigration
status factor into the sort of abuse patterns that they’re experiencing?

GAIL PENDLETON:
Well the first thing to think about is how is this similar to what you might see with citizen survivors? So for instance,
language might be an issue for deaf women, for instance, right? Language access and understanding what they’re
saying, and who’s information are you taking as true, if you’re not getting it directly from their mouth.
Culture also could be an issue. Is the pastor or the religious leader telling people they should stay married?
That could be true for immigrants, it could be true for citizens. Economics, also an issue for citizens, but when
you’re talking about someone who may not be able to work legally, or is working illegally, that adds an extra
tool of power and control in the hands of—particularly a documented spouse or intimate partner. And in our immigration
family system, prior to the Violence Against Women act, the U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident spouse controls
the immigration process. And so that’s why, in the Violence Against Women Act, Congress created a special route
to status for victims of domestic violence by citizens and lawful permanent residents. So that control of the immigration
status is the one weapon that, you know, wouldn’t happen to a U.S. citizen. And the other thing that I think
is probably true for a lot of citizen survivors, but especially true for a lot of non-citizens is who is their source
of information? Because the isolation may be even more intense for non-citizen survivors than it is for citizens,
their source of information is going to be their perpetrator and what are they telling them? They’re telling
them, you—our court system won’t help you because you’re undocumented, or semi-documented. I’ll get
custody of the kids, you’ll get deported, you’ll get turned over to ICE if you call the police. All of
those are very effective tools for abusers to keep their spouses and their kids in violent homes.

SARAH
SCHWEIG: Right. And ICE, just for our listeners—

GAIL PENDLETON: Oh right. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement.

SARAH SCHWEIG: Okay. A victim of domestic violence, a domestic violence offender,
and any children involved may have all varying immigration status. Is that right? How does that further complicate
the situation, and how do you sort of deal with those differences in the court system?

GAIL PENDLETON:
Well, the crucial role that we have tried to work on is ensuring that there are routes to status that allow victims
of domestic violence to pursue immigration status without the control of their abusers. And so most of the system,
unless you’re the—what we call the principal beneficiary of an immigration benefit, which is usually going to
be the abuser, frankly, like say engineers who come over on high-tech visas or whatever. Their family members are
here legally, but if they leave them then they get deported. So you can’t—and in the family-based system, as
I mentioned, the abuser controls—for the most part—controls the process. So that was the initial attempt was—it doesn’t
matter so much whether, what status they have. It matters who c controls getting a permanent status. And the safest
permanent status, short of citizenship, is a green card, what people call lawful permanent residents. And that actually
takes a long time, even if you do self-petitioning. Or the U-Visa, which is the other thing I wanted to mention because
self-petitioning just parallels regular family-based process, but those of you who work in court systems will know
that often times the abuser also lacks a secure immigration status, or doesn’t fit our normal family base, like
same-sex marriages, for instance. Immigration law does not recognize same sex marriages, because DOMA trumps, like
...

Next Episode

Improving Youth Programming: The Role of Research

Angela Irvine, director of research in the Criminal Justice Division of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency,
sat down for this podcast interview after participating in a research roundtable on youth courts that was sponsored
by the Center for Court Innovation and the Lowenstein Family Foundation on July 18, 2012. Irvine also discusses
research into lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender justice-involved youth.

ROBERT V.
WOLF: I’m Rob Wolf, director of communications at the Center for Court Innovation. In this New Thinking
podcast, I’m with Angela Irvine, director of research of the criminal justice division of the National Council
of Crime and Delinquency. And I have the good fortune to have a few minutes with her just as she’s finished
participating in a research roundtable on youth courts that the Center for Court Innovation hosted here today in
Manhattan, at the law firm of Skadden Arps. So thanks, Angela, for taking the time to talk with me.

ANGELA
IRVINE: Thank you for having me.

WOLF: Are there particular challenges that researchers
face when looking at a justice program geared for youth?

IRVINE: I’m not sure if
there are different challenges. I think that people, in a lot of ways, have given up on adult criminals. In a lot
of ways I find research on adults challenging because it’s hard to engage a public, or to find a source of sympathy
for adult criminals. I think that what’s actually exciting about doing research in the juvenile justice arena
is that we have the possibility of engaging sympathy for different populations of youth who are engaged in the system.
I think if you look at girls in the juvenile justice system, researchers have done a really good job of sort of highlighting
the links between past traumatic experiences and how that drives young people into the juvenile justice system, and
how therefore we, as a society, need to take responsibility for creating firewalls so that girls who have experienced
trauma don’t end up in the juvenile justice system. And what I’m really interested in, moving forward, is thinking
about ways to engage the public in becoming more sympathetic to boys of color who are in the juvenile justice system
who’ve also experienced trauma.

WOLF: One thing I hear you saying is that there’s
a greater, perhaps, societal interest in research of justice programs that focus on youth, and that is because it’s
easier to have empathy for youth?

IRVINE: I think so, yes, compared to adults.

WOLF: And is it also because there’s this general sense that there’s a greater possibility
of rehabilitation?

IRVINE: I think that there is so much fear of boys of color, in particular—in
public schools, in public spaces, and so I’m not sure how much the general public thinks about wanting to rehabilitate
that population. In theory I think that the juvenile court system was developed to rehabilitate young people in a
different way than the adult criminal justice system has been, but I think that we’re caught in a little bit of a
quagmire right now. If you look from the ’80s on, I think that that’s when super-predators in urban Chicago,
urban New York, started to take over media. You know –

WOLF: Like “wilding,” that kind
of thing?

IRVINE: Yeah, exactly. And I think that it’s really important for us
to sort of stop the fear of those young people, and to try to move back in time, to a time when we really do think
of the juvenile justice system as different than the adult criminal justice system, and a system that does seriously
invest in the rehabilitation of those young people, because they’re all our kids.

WOLF:
And do you think researchers have a role to play in helping to change that orientation?

IRVINE:
Researcher always have a role in identifying which program should be invested in. So if researchers identify programs
that effectively reduce recidivism or improve graduation rates, I think that the government, the federal government,
state governments always justify their investment in programs based on research. I think that it’s really important
to think about who the researchers should be doing this work. I think it’s really important that we try to recruit
researchers of color who come from the neighborhoods where we are arresting most of the people, so that we can have
a richer discussion about what the findings are, but also have a richer discussion about what the possible solutions
are because in my experience, researchers who are more familiar with low-income communities of color come up with
more realistic solutions in terms of effectively changing behavior, essentially.

WOLF:
You’ve done a lot of research with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth, and they face a number of
problems that make...