Spotlight: Aubrey Rose & the Family Defense Practice Mental Health Committee

In New York, having a mental health condition can be enough to pull a family into the family policing system, especially if that family is low-income or Black or brown. Instead of receiving care and support, parents are often met with investigation and judgment by systems ill-equipped to understand mental health conditions. Aubrey Rose, Mental Health Team Leader in Brooklyn Defender Services’ Family Defense Practice, is working to change that. In this Spotlight, she shares how BDS’ Family Defense Practice Mental Health Committee brings attorneys and social workers together to challenge harmful assumptions by the family policing system, connect families to support, and reimagine what justice looks like for parents with mental health conditions who are targeted by investigation and prosecution, which can lead to family separation.

Q: To start, can you situate us? What is your role within the Family Defense Practice (FDP), and what is the focus of FDP’s Mental Health Committee?

I have been an attorney in the Family Defense Practice (FDP) for six years. I’m now a mental health team leader. FDP represents parents who are facing investigations by the Administration for Children’s Services and are accused of abuse and neglect in Brooklyn’s family court. We work to keep families together and disentangled from the foster and family policing systems. 

The representation of parents targeted due to their perceived or real mental health challenges benefits from having attorneys and social workers who have specialized knowledge about mental health diagnoses and treatment options. Advocating for these parents requires an enormous amount of knowledge about the landscape of services and resources available in New York City, which is constantly shifting, as well as the deep stigma around mental health and parenting in these systems. It’s a huge lift for any single attorney or social worker to track. We created the Committee to build institutional knowledge and stay up to date on the best ways to support our clients with mental health conditions.  We hold monthly case consultations, develop model motions and trainings, and identify mental health experts who can educate the Court and ACS about the many ways a parent can manage a mental health condition safely. We also try to use the Americans with Disabilities Act to inform the family court and family policing systems and to ensure that they provide parents with the assistance they need. 

Q: Many people assume a finding that a parent neglected a child requires intentional harm. How does New York law actually approach neglect when mental health is involved?

In New York state, parents are often accused of abuse or neglect based on their mental health condition even though the law says a mental health condition alone is not enough for a finding of neglect. This is a very broad way of thinking about neglect. Under the law, ACS may only investigate where a parent’s condition is alleged to have caused harm or imminent risk of harm to their child. However, in practice, ACS often makes harmful assumptions regarding a person’s capacity to parent based on their diagnosis alone. 

Because of how these assumptions overlay with the ways in which this system disproportionately targets Black and brown families, we have a very unequal system in New York City for how you approach a parent who has a mental health crisis.

Q: How do race, class, and access to resources shape what happens next for these parents?

If you are a rich person with resources in the city and you are struggling with a mental health condition, you can get support for that condition privately. You can access therapy, you can seek medication support, you can do all of these things in order to be the best parent that you can be — and ACS does not investigate you and does not take your child.

However, if you live in a poor community, an over-policed community, or are a Black or brown parent, you may experience an ACS investigation simply because you’re struggling with a mental health crisis.  Very often these parents do not have the same financial support from their families who may also be struggling with lack of resources.

Q: Once a family enters the family policing system, what does the experience tend to look like?

In our Practice, we talk a lot about supporting families rather than surveilling them. If you are poor and living in New York City and you have a mental health condition, you are going to be surveilled and punished for that condition rather than supported.

You’re on a track where an ACS worker is investigating your home. ACS workers are not licensed social workers and rarely have training in working with people with mental health conditions. Our clients regularly tell us that they feel the ACS worker is judging them for their condition but not able to connect them to the best services. This stress often makes recovering from a mental health crisis more difficult than it would be if you received support and not policing.  If your children end up in the foster system, it is very hard to get them out due to the same prejudices. 

Q: How does this play out for new parents, particularly mothers dealing with postpartum conditions?

If you take the example of postpartum disorders, there are thousands of mothers and birthing parents across the city struggling with postpartum depression or anxiety. These conditions often appear without warning after the birth of your child and are very common and treatable.

If you have resources, you are allowed to seek therapy, consider the pros and cons of medication, and heal privately with the support of family. ACS never knocks on your door and your baby is not taken away from you. 

But if you’re poor and from a Black and brown community, you are not given that autonomy or dignity. You are investigated as if you are neglecting your child, which creates more stress at a vulnerable time. In some cases, ACS could remove your baby from your care and require that you participate in services for long, uncertain periods of time. We advocate daily in court to keep these families together, but we are met with a lot of resistance. This separation ultimately compounds the trauma for both the parent and the baby at a time when they should be healing as a family unit. The disparate treatment of parents with postpartum mental health challenges is perhaps the starkest example of the inequities of this system.

Q: The Mental Health Committee brings together attorneys and social workers. Why is that interdisciplinary structure so important?

We formed an interdisciplinary committee involving attorneys and social workers to bring our different approaches and perspectives to develop the most creative and nuanced solutions to issues. 

Attorneys can come to us and say, “I’m representing this client who has a mental health condition. We’re struggling to make progress towards reunification. What ideas can we brainstorm to better support our client?” We use the committee to do case consults and offer suggestions, but also to track the trends and patterns we’re seeing in court.

The most creative litigation in mental health cases is informed by a social worker’s broader perspective. Social workers may have novel ideas for supporting our clients that require in-court advocacy or motions to ensure our clients have access to the best resources for their recovery, and that push back against further surveillance. When we collaborate closely, we can be more assertive in pushing for reunification. 

Q: You’ve described this work as part of a broader disability rights framework. How does that shape your approach?

I see my work as part of a disability rights perspective. I grew up around a community program that my father helped build in the 1980s, during the movement to get people out of psychiatric hospitals and into the community to live full and dignified lives.

One frontier in disability rights is: what if you want to be a parent? What if you are parenting with a mental health condition? How can you be supported in society to keep you and your kids safe, rather than being blamed, judged, and stigmatized?

Q: Ultimately, what are you working toward for the families you represent?

You deserve to be able to keep your family together with support. New York City has a responsibility to ensure that parents living with a mental health condition are treated equally across class and race. 

This approach ultimately makes families healthier and safer. It’s good for children because children are healthier when they are not forcibly separated from their loving parents and community. We have a long way to go in making sure people get the support they need so families can thrive rather than be punished.