June 3, 2021

CONTACT: Laurette Mulry, cdanyoffice@gmail.com

*For Immediate Release*

The Chief Defenders Association of New York Calls on the State Legislature to Enact Key Family Defense Reforms in Final Days of Session

(Albany, NY) – The Chief Defenders Association of New York (CDANY) today called on the State Legislature and Governor Andrew Cuomo to pass The Preserving Family Bonds Act, S6357/A6700 (Savino/Joyner) and Informed Consent Act, S4821/A4285 (Salazar/Rosenthal), which would protect the rights of adopted youth to maintain ties with their biological family and prevent birthing parents from being subjected to drug screenings without their consent.

Laurette Mulry, President of CDANY, stated: “As defenders across New York who represent parents and children in the state’s family court system, we see the lasting harm of family surveillance and separation among the people we serve. Like the criminal legal system, race and poverty are defining characteristics of New York’s foster system, where poor, Black and brown families are disproportionately impacted and more likely to be separated.

In the past year, New Yorkers have engaged in a collective re-examination of our systems of surveillance and policing, which include our state’s foster system. This year, New York acknowledged the importance of access to counsel and the role it plays in protecting the rights of parents within the foster system. We thank the State Legislature and Governor Cuomo for supporting funding for the ILS Parent Representation Caseload Relief & Quality Improvement program in this year’s budget. Today, the State has another opportunity to reduce the harm of this system by passing two important bills, The Preserving Family Bonds Act and The Informed Consent Bill.

The Preserving Family Bonds Act gives family court judges’ discretion to allow adopted children to maintain contact with their families of origin when it is in a child’s best interest. This legislation brings New York in line with prevailing research on the best interest of adopted children. The Informed Consent Bill will prohibit non-consensual drug and alcohol testing and screening of pregnant and newly parenting people and their newborns. Healthcare providers routinely drug test and screen pregnant people, perinatal people, and their newborns often without a person’s knowledge, much less informed consent, and then report the positive results to foster system. This ‘test-and-report’ practice which disproportionately targets parents of color and too often results the removal of newborns to the foster system and deter families from receiving necessary healthcare treatment. This bill will require healthcare providers to obtain written and verbal informed consent before drug or alcohol testing and screening of pregnant people, new parents and their newborns.

These two bills offer New York’s children and parents protection from temporary and permanent separation. While there remains a lot of work to be done to reduce New York’s reliance on the foster system, it’s time New York prioritizes the families impacted by this system and these two bills move our state in the right direction.”

CDANY was created by a group of leaders of public defense organizations from across New York State. The organization advocates for those who administer mandated legal representation programs, as well as their staff and their clients, in an effort to bring positive change to the criminal justice system.

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