[NYAPRS Enews] Urge NYS Lawmakers to End Discrimination vs Parents w Psych Disabilities!

[Harvey Rosenthal]

NYAPRS Note: Over the past several years, NYAPRS has strongly supported several actions to help preserve or restore families where there is a parent with a psychiatric disability. In 2007, we successfully helped win a $850,000 allocation from the NYS Legislature to launch two separate initiatives, one through the Commission on Quality of Care and Advocacy for People with Disabilities aimed at helping to boost parents’ rights protections and one through the Office of Mental Health aimed at improving services and supports for those parents and their families. 

The CQCAPD projects were awarded last year to Legal Services of Central New York (http://www.lscny.org/ppdla.htm) and one to the Urban Justice Center (http://www.urbanjustice.org/ujc/projects/mental.html) and happily were renewed by the state legislature for another year as a part of this year’s state budget agreement. We’re told that the OMH one is about to be released for bid by the Comptroller’s office.

The second action requires your help! Please call today in support of legislation that would remove discriminatory language presenting psychiatric and developmental disability as potential criteria for parental custody removal!

 

Help Protect the Rights of Families with Psychiatric Disabilities: Drop Social Services Law 384-B(4)(C)

Call Your Legislators on Thursday, April 16 In Your Home District Office

 <http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pubs/images/phone.gif> See full size image

Call Your State Legislator and Leave the Following Message: 

 “I’m a registered voter from your district calling to urge you to support and co-sponsor S.2835/A.6668 in order to put and end to discrimination against parents with psychiatric and developmental disabilities”

Find their phone numbers at www.senate.state.ny.us <http://www.senate.state.ny.us/>  or http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/

 

BACKGROUND

Did You Know That In New York Parent’s With A Psychiatric Or Developmental Disability Can Have Their Parental Custody Terminated Based On Their Disability?

 

Without This Legislation:

§  Children will continue to be traumatized by unnecessary separation from their parents

§  Civil liberties will continue to be violated based on a psychiatric diagnosis alone

§  Courts can perpetuate the stigma of psychiatric and developmental disabilities

 

 

The Mental Health Association in New York State (MHANYS) is working with New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services (NYAPRS), Families Together in New York State (FTNYS), New York Association on Independent Living (NYILG), Coalition for Homeless and the support of many statewide and regional organizations to change New York’s child custody law to eliminate provisions that discriminate against parents with psychiatric and developmental disabilities.  

 

New York State Social Services Law (SSL), subdivision 4 of §384-b includes four grounds for permanently terminating parental rights. Those grounds are:

1.                   abandonment [384-b4(b)] 

2.                   permanent neglect [384-b4(d)]

3.           severe and repeated abuse [384-b4(e)]

4.           The parents are presently and for the foreseeable future unable, by reason of mental illness or mental retardation, to provide proper and adequate care for a child who has been in the care of an authorized agency for a period of one year. [384-b(4)(c)]

 

384-b(4)(c)….. 

·         Results in unnecessary separation trauma for children and disrupts critical mother-child bonding in cases involving infants;

·         Is discriminatory;

·         Can cause parents to lose rights based on a condition and not on behavior;

·         Includes procedural provisions that are vague, subjective and easily misapplied, thus undermining the required standard of proof of clear and convincing evidence;

·         Allows for the termination of parental rights (TPR) in a manner that is a drastic, permanent measure, severing forever a parent’s right to be a part of his or her child’s life;

·         Was written prior to changes in mental health treatment promoting recovery, and; 

·         Is destructive public policy because parents are afraid to seek treatment for fear of losing their children and children are removed from families where there is no abuse or neglect.  

  

Historically, parents with psychiatric disabilities and developmental disabilities have faced enormous societal biases concerning their fitness to maintain parental relationships. These biases continue to pervade the legal process.   Stigmatizing attitudes and beliefs are at the root of discriminatory policies.  We, as a state, cannot hope to eliminate these attitudes when the foundational structure of our laws perpetuates this manner of viewing people with disabilities. We are urging the New York State Legislature to remove this and other discriminatory provisions in our laws.

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