Standing up for low-income New York families facing the courts

Since its founding by a group of lawyers in 2001 to provide better representation for low-income New York City families in family court, the Center for Family Representation has served, according to its website, nearly 12,000 families – almost all of them Black or brown – and has reduced the cost of the foster system by more than $50 million for the city. With a budget of more than $15 million and a staff of about 160, the organization employs not just lawyers but social workers and parent advocates (who've dealt with the system themselves) to help families come up with solutions to challenges, ideally before those families must intersect with the city's family, criminal, immigration or housing courts. The agency's primary goal is to minimize the city separating children from parents, thus keeping families together.

Last year, the center named as its executive director Tehra Coles, who had previously been the agency's litigation supervisor for policy and government affairs, representing parents in family separation proceedings. New York Nonprofit Media spoke with Coles, who works mostly remotely from Albany, about the responsibilities and challenges of her job, the ways that the agency helps families with tough scenarios and what she thinks are the work’s biggest strengths, joys and challenges.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Thank you for talking to us today. If we were chatting at a party, how would you describe your job?

We're a public defenders office, so we represent people who are poor when they're accused of neglecting or abusing their children. We're able to provide both legal and other support that impacts families' ability to stay together. We have a youth practice where we represent young people in juvenile delinquency matters as well. But our core purpose is to support families and to keep or get the [court] system out of their lives.

We have a staff of about 160. In a couple of weeks, we're  bringing on one of the biggest, if not the biggest, class [of new hires] – I think around 25. We represent more than 1,000 families at any given time between our offices in Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island, which we are moving into this year. Since we started keeping data, 94% of our clients are Black and brown and must be unable to hire their own attorney to qualify for our help.

We served about 2,250 families over the past year, with about 56% of our clients being able to avoid the foster system altogether. We've also reduced the median length of our clients' kids' stays in the foster system to about 6.4 months, compared to 11.5 months citywide.

Do you have a waitlist for your services?

No, but it takes constant work to make sure that the cases for our staff remain manageable, including continuing to recruit people.

Of course no two cases are the same, but can you lay out a somewhat typical case – maybe a composite example?

We have an early defense practice, meaning that we can provide support for clients early on, before a petition is filed in court. So most often, a teacher or a doctor or another individual whose job requires them to call in [what they see as potentially problematic situations] calls the Statewide Central Register for Child (SCR) Abuse and Maltreatment. Then, in New York City, the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) goes out and investigates. Maybe a student hasn't shown up at school, so a teacher will call the SCR because they're concerned that the child is being neglected. A caseworker may go out. We make sure communities know that when an ACS caseworker knocks on their door, they can call us – or other groups such as Brooklyn Defenders, Neighborhood Defender Services or Bronx Defender Services. The families then get an opportunity to meet with a social worker who can meet with the caseworker. We want parents to know that they don't have to just open their door and allow a caseworker to come in and look through their cabinets.

But in the case of not showing up at school, the parent might tell us that it's because of a conflict with their own work schedule. So we can help them troubleshoot and identify what they need to address. Often, there's no real issue, just a misunderstanding, so we're making sure that the city doesn't violate the family's due process rights. We can go to conferences with the parent. The goal is to avoid a petition being filed in court and to avoid any family separation. But if a petition is filed, then we have the opportunity to meet the parent in court and have an attorney or a social worker assigned to them.

We also have parent advocates, which are parents who've been through the system themselves, sometimes with their kids getting removed. We ask our clients to decide what goal they want. Usually it's for the city to go away. And as with any lawyers, our goal is to get our clients what they want. 

We also go to the appellate division to challenge decisions we don't agree with. In doing all these things, we try to provide the same level of service that a person of means would expect.

So to go back to the parent who can't get their kids to school...

It comes down to having a conversation with them to help them troubleshoot. We ask them what they need. It could be looking for childcare support or negotiating who's dropping off and picking up the child at school. Or maybe the school is too far away. Parents troubleshoot all the time without the city getting involved.

Your website points out that most cases that are flagged for an investigation are not overt physical or sexual abuse but categorized under "neglect," which could be as minor and solvable as the example you just gave of a kid not getting to school. But how do you respond to the argument that the city has a responsibility to separate children from parental behavior that might be truly abusive?

First, no one cares more about Black and brown children than the communities they are ripped from every day. No one takes it home and thinks about it, carries more pain, than those communities. So the idea that the city or anyone else outside feels more really isn't fair, and isn't reflective of the change that the people at the forefront are calling for. They're asking for safety, to put supports in place that are really going to stop the pain and generational damage that is caused by unnecessary family separation. Most of these cases [against families] are related to poverty, not to the horror stories [of child abuse or extreme neglect] that we see in the news. So I push back on the idea that the system has some sort of higher interest or calling to protect these communities. I disagree with that strongly.

Do you always defer to the clients' wishes, or are there situations where you might gently suggest something like a temporary separation because it seems necessary?

We're lawyers, so we have ethical obligations with respect to how we can and cannot advocate. There would never be a criminal court lawyer who would say, "Please send my client to jail."

But to reiterate my question...

Without getting into specifics, our advice is always going to be geared toward what the clients' goals are and the best way to achieve it. Our clients are entitled to the same sort of confidentiality and advocacy that any person of means would expect when they have an attorney representing them.

Can you talk about your own professional journey and how it led you to CFRNY?

I went to Albany Law School and knew early on in my career that I wanted to be a public defender. At the time, I thought that would mean only working in criminal court. But while I was studying for the bar, I found out that an office I'd had an offer from had lost funding, so I went to work at the New York State Defenders Association and learned the public defense system as a whole. Then I got a job as a public defender in family court in Albany County. I'd represent people who came in on violations of child support orders and other things. And after a year, I went to Manhattan to work in CFR's Manhattan office as a staff attorney. I was drawn by CFR's interdisciplinary model after I saw what it was like serving people only as an attorney. There was so much more to [people's situations] than what was happening directly in court—so to know that and not have the capacity to [deal with it] was really hard. I wanted to do this work in a more holistic way to help communities I felt attached to. Being able to work alongside social workers and parent advocates on every case blew my mind. So I left CFRNY briefly in 2021 and came back as the executive director in 2023.

Why did you leave briefly?

I was ready to try something new. I'd been the litigation supervisor for policy and government affairs at CFRNY, but then I went to work at Civil Rights Corps (CRC), a national nonprofit that does impact litigation, and did some work getting money of the bail system. But I missed the work at CFRNY, where a search for their third executive director in their history had been happening for a while. So I reached out and eventually got the job. 

What are challenges you've faced in the role since you came in last year?

We just finished our negotiations around our new city contracts and we're going to open our new office on Staten Island. Those have been big things we've done over my first year.

But I mean more like personal challenges, like what aspects of leadership did you find you needed to work on?

I think probably just the communication piece. We have a staff that works across several different offices, so we have a pretty flexible remote working policy, and so since we're going through this period of change, just trying to identify the best way to communicate to keep everyone updated.

But I mean personally—what have you learned, or realized you had to learn to do better, since coming on?

I think sometimes that less is more, that meaningful communication is better than frequent. Bringing people alongside and giving people a meaningful opportunity to be heard. You can't just check that box. It's not enough to ask once—sometimes you have to follow up again. I've had to learn to trust my own instincts. I started here as a staff attorney where I wasn't even allowed to be on the record by myself. So now, I think about what I wish I'd been able to do when I was a staff attorney. 

Can you give an example of what you're talking about?

We had a collective bargaining process. We made sure to have routine check-ins with the larger group [of our staff] so they didn't feel left out completely, even though only a small group of us were making the final decisions about what was going to be in the contract. 

Okay. What do you think is the strongest personal skill you've brought to the role?

I think the vision and my commitment to it has been a really big asset for me coming into this role. I've always been good at being direct and providing feedback in a clear, timely way. I'm very introverted in my life outside work. 

And again, where do you feel like you need to do more work in terms of leadership skills?

There's a lot of parts to our organization—we have a staff of more than 150. There's always going to be room for improvement when it comes to hiring, finance, development. That kind of communication is not the same as making sure that a staff member understands why we are promoting all these people. I think just communicating my vision and the organization's direction to our staff as a whole—that's been a priority of mine, communicating that to a broader audience beyond just my direct reports.

What is a typical day like for you?

I live in Albany with a husband and a five- and a nine-year-old. My earliest meeting is often before 8:30am. I try to get into the city at least once a week. We don't have a minimum required days in the office—it's tied to need. 

So in general you work from home four days a week?

It varies. I've been working remotely since 2018 in some shape or form. I found that the best way to approach remote work was to mirror if I were in person. So get up and get dressed and get my kids to school, then I'm working until 1pm, which is lunchtime. Lunch is one of the first things to go if I don't set a timer. I'll get up and make a salad or take a walk, to have a break. And then I try to have a 6pm stop. But if it's a day I'm going into the city, I'll get a 5:15am or 5:55am train out of Albany to make a meeting by 8:30am or 9am.

What aspect of your job brings you the most joy?

Knowing that I am working for the communities that I care about a lot. Whenever we hear about a court petition not being filed, or a family being reunited—[I take joy in] knowing that I'm helping to make those outcomes happen.

What's the most frustrating aspect?

I started as a staff attorney [having direct contact with other attorneys and clients]. Now not a lot of my day is working directly—it's more making sure that the circumstances are in place so the work can continue. So sometimes it's frustrating to be not as directly connected to our work as I used to be. I try to attend staff meetings and attorney work groups [to stay close to the work]. 

Assuming you'll stay at CFRNY over the next three to five years, what are your goals and dreams for the agency?

One is to become even more connected with the communities we represent. So as we expand into Staten Island, we're looking to expand our early defense work so we can connect with communities during [city agency] investigations. Or doing pre-investigation Know Your Rights presentations. Or connecting to community based organizations so that they would know to reach out to us if one their clients had a knock at the door. Doing things like that helps you build trust.