Demographics and Needs
Much of the rationale for CWOP’s current objectives and methods can be illuminated through examination of our primary home community, East Harlem.
East Harlem, Manhattan Community District 11, is one of the least affluent communities in Manhattan, with 31.5% of families including children living below the poverty line, in contrast to a 19.3% rate for Manhattan as a whole (2008 American Community Survey Data – CB11). The stresses of poverty are clearly reflected in measures of child welfare and family cohesion. In 2008, the foster care placement rate for East Harlem was 8.6 per 1,000 children, the fifth highest such rate out of 59 Community Districts, as compared to 3.9 per 1,000 citywide (Citizens’ Committee for the Children of NY).
East Harlem is also a community that is rich in child and family service resources. As of March 2008, East Harlem had 619 families receiving preventive services, representing over 23% of the 2,630 Manhattan families receiving such services. (ACS Community Snapshots)
There seems to be a paradox between this relative wealth of services and some of the highest child maltreatment and placement rates in NYC. It is exactly this apparent disconnect between service providers and users that CWOP was formed to explore and address. CWOP has an organizational interest in developing and promoting models of child and family services grounded in principles of respect for, partnership with, responsiveness, and accountability to parents and children.
CWOP’s understanding of East Harlem is informed by staff members with multi-generational roots in the community.
East Harlem has seen a large influx of immigrant families, particularly from Mexico, in the past decade. Latinos comprise 56% percent of the East Harlem community (Nielsen Company 2007 population projections based on US Bureau of Census data). New community residents and other primarily Spanish-speaking families face linguistic and cultural barriers to service use, often exacerbated by negative experiences with and perceptions of public agencies. In 2000 and 2001, the Hunter College School of Social Work participated in an East Harlem Partnership Project through which student interns placed at local agencies conducted survey and focus group research with community residents intended to assess “service accessibility.” The main themes that consistently emerged from this research included:
- Parents, particularly non-English-speaking parents, often do not know their legal rights within child welfare and other public service systems.
- Professionals often fail to discuss parents’ rights and responsibilities with them or to give them relevant information about benefits and services.
- There are large power imbalances between public service authorities and parents that often result in parents – mothers, in particular – feeling demeaned, intimidated, and excluded from the very kinds of help they feel they need most.
These findings clearly reflect a broad consensus that exists among CWOP’s parent membership: families’ service needs often go unmet, not simply due to a lack of resources, but because available services are often not offered on terms that parents can understand or accept, or within an organizational culture of trust and respect.
These themes play out systemically in poor indicators of child welfare “family engagement,” such as parent / child visiting in foster care, and family participation in case conferencing, and in Family Court processes. There has been some improvement in certain indicators of family engagement over the past several years, which can be attributed to the ongoing work of CWOP and other committed organizations, including the Administration for Children’s Services. However, continued improvement is needed.
CWOP’s coordinated efforts to promote partnership between service providers and recipients are based on evidence- based and evidence-informed reunification practices (Edward Cohen & Linda Canan, “Close to Home: Parent Mentors in Child Welfare,” Child Welfare, September 2006). An essential feature of the CWOP approach is the fundamental role of Parent Advocates / Organizers – parents who have had direct experience with the child welfare system and who have been trained to work with other parents in similar situations.
CWOP’s own experience in serving parents through our Parent Leadership Curriculum has made it clear that reunification and shorter stays for children in foster care are associated with providing parents with information on the child welfare and court systems (including information on the role of their own attorneys) and guidance on how to best use this information to interact effectively with both the child welfare and judicial systems.
CWOP’s experience has also provided evidence that the strongest programming combines opportunities for parents to develop knowledge and skills to manage their own situations with child welfare agencies, and opportunities to develop skills in advocating for policy changes that improve the child welfare and judicial systems so that all families benefit. These evidence-informed practices are integral to all of our work.
