The purpose of the Family Defense Project (FDP) is to provide advocacy on behalf of low-income parents involved in, or at risk of becoming involved in, dependency court proceedings. In particular, Black and Brown parents are at disproportionate risk of being aggressively surveilled and unnecessarily separated from their children by the family regulation system (also known as the child welfare system). The dependency court system is highly discretionary and often conflates poverty with failed parenting, which could be mitigated by adequate provision of social services instead of by separating families. Too often, racism and bias also bleed into dependency court decisions, which leads to less institutional trust of parents of color and a misguided belief by the system that their children are better off in state custody.
Though the family defense movement has strong roots in New York City, similar momentum has yet to receive widespread support in California. FDP’s goals are: (1) to provide interdisciplinary legal services to families caught up in the family policing system in partnership with local organizations; and (2) to support the expansion and evolution of family defense in the Bay Area through policy advocacy and community organizing.
FDP students will have the opportunity to engage in a variety of projects to advance interdisciplinary family defense in partnership with East Bay Family Defenders, a project of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children. FDP’s projects for Fall 2024-Spring 2025 are as follows:
(1) System Navigation Workshop: Students will support the development and implementation of a System Navigation Workshop to empower parents with newly opened Dependency cases in San Francisco county.
(2) CACI Advocacy: Students will help parents contest their placement on the Child Abuse Central Index (CACI) and work on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to investigate the applicability of California’s 2020 Racial Justice Act to the CACI process.
(3) Family Court Handbook: Dependency and Family Court are closely intertwined, and students will help develop a handbook/guide for parents and families navigating custody issues in family court. This may involve observing Family Court and conducting interviews with Family Court attorneys.
In addition to these distinct projects, there will be multiple opportunities for students to involve themselves in community organizing and policy advocacy with Reimagine Child Safety Bay Area and Beyond (RCSBAB), to support a planned symposium and collaborative learning event in Fall 2024 alongside the Berkeley Law Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice, and to continue work done over the 2023-2024 year with the Berkeley Law Criminal Law & Justice Center focused on Primary Caregiver Diversion programs. FDP’s goal for our 2024-2025 projects is to offer students a range of experiences through which they can build a diverse skill set, from client-facing work to research and writing to community organizing, while substantively learning about a crucial yet often overlooked area of law.
Supervision: Students in FDP provide legal services under the supervision of attorneys from the East Bay Family Defenders, a project of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children.
Time Commitment: Time commitment will vary depending on demand and a student’s chosen/assigned project(s). As a baseline, our goal is for students to commit to 30 hours per semester, or 2-3 hours per week.
For more information, please contact the student leaders at familydefense@berkeley.edu.