Senior Social Worker, Youth Defense Practice, Bronx

CFR designed the Senior Social Worker position to create additional professional development opportunities for program staff that go beyond direct client representation and case management and provide CFR with additional administrative and program support. Professional development opportunities will include supervision of staff and interns, increased training  opportunities and responsibilities, recruitment and management of Social Work interns, and working with supervisors and executive staff on strategic planning and overall management and improvement of the Youth Defense Practice (YDP). 

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, Staten Island and the Bronx with an interdisciplinary legal defense model that serves more than 2400 clients every year. 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.

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 the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan in Juvenile Delinquency proceedings in Family Court. CFR’s Home for Good program provides legal and social work services to 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. 

CFR has an immediate opening for a Senior Social Worker for our Youth Defense Practice (YDP) in the Bronx. Objectives of YDP include providing high-quality, interdisciplinary representation to Adolescent Offenders (AOs) and JD/PINS clients, building CFR’s reputation with the Court, Corporation Counsel, Probation and other agencies serving these youth. Also building community partnerships that benefit clients, and engaging in systemic and organizational advocacy to improve support for juvenile justice engaged youth and their families. Objectives of CFR’s YDP also include demonstrating the effectiveness of the CFR collaborative model for serving YDP clients, and reducing recidivism.

Primary responsibilities will include: 

• Carry a caseload of (60-80% of full caseload)
• Supervise 1-2 MSW Social Work staff and/or interns of varying degrees of experience, who work in CFR’s interdisciplinary team model to represent YDP clients. 
• Work in partnership with the YDP Supervisors to help provide formal training to CFR’s YDP staff.  
• Help YDP Social Work staff develop mastery of skills and values introduced in initial and ongoing trainings which include: court advocacy (both verbal and written), interviewing clients, assessing their needs and providing appropriate service referrals. 

• Work collaboratively with YDP attorneys, social work staff, and paralegals to  represent youth both on Delinquency and PINS cases in Family Court, and at times in the Supreme Court Youth Part. 
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