Nomination of Gerard Wallace for the 2014 Eisner Prize By AARP NY

Transcription

1 Nomination of Gerard Wallace for the 2014 Eisner Prize By AARP NY Gerard Wallace, Esq. is the director of the NYS Kinship Navigator. He is the recipient of the 2009 Generation United Grandfamilies Award for Outstanding Service to Kinship Families, the 2010 Janet Sainer Award from the Brookdale Foundation for Service to Kinship Families, and the 2011 Maggie Kuhn Award from Presbyterian Senior Services for outstanding services to elderly New Yorkers, as well as many other certificates and recognitions. In April 2014, he was appointed "public service professor" at the University of Albany School of Social Welfare (SUNY Albany). He has been previously nominated for the Eisner Prize by AARP NY. Below is an updated summary of his achievements. Kinship Advocacy Mr. Wallace entered Albany Law School at the age of forty-four, and graduated Magna Cum Laude in While there, he received a Government Law Center Fellowship, which he used to research and publish a monograph, "The Dilemma of Kinship Care: Grandparents as Guardians, Custodians, and Caregivers - Options for Reform". After graduation, instead of working for a large law firm, he decided to focus on advocacy and representation for kinship caregivers and within a year was appointed director of Hunter College's Grandparent Caregiver Law Center in New York City. While at Hunter College, he operated a policy/advocacy program centered on grandparents rights and the needs of kinship families. He authored a series of articles for the NYS Bar Elder Law Section Journal, the Sadin Law Institute, as well as other publications. He also authored an amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the grandparent visitation case, Troxel v. Granville. Of the approximately twentyfour amicii briefs filed, his was one of six featured in the Supreme Court Digest. In 2001, he recognized the need for grassroots advocacy and co-founded the De Facto Committee of Grandparents for Children's Rights, which later became the National Committee of Grandparents Rights and is now the National Kinship Alliance for Children. Of all participating organizations at the four GrandRallies in Washington D. C., the Committee provided the most caregivers at the capitol rallies. Mr. Wallace served as their legislative counsel until 2010, and in as interim director. In 2001, Mr. Wallace decided that effective advocacy for rights and services for kinship families would be better served by locating his office in the state capitol. Hunter College permitted him to work in Albany where he developed strong connections to state government that have resulted in numerous policy, statutory, and regulatory changes. While at Hunter's Grandparent Caregiver Law Center, he hosted the first statewide kinship conference at Albany Law School. In 2004, Mr. Wallace became a consultant to AARP NY and worked with their lobbyists and with the National Committee to advocate for kinship families. He developed a proposal for funding a statewide Kinship Navigator that was enacted in He has been director of the program since its inception. He also worked tirelessly to fund local kinship programs, expanding from the original 8 in 2004 to a high of 21 in 2010, eventually covering 32 counties.

2 Starting in 2005, with AARP NY assistance and funding from the NY Life Foundation, he helped organize and lead three KinCare Summits (2005, 2008, 2011). A fourth Summit was held in 2013, with funding provided by his Kinship Navigator program via a grant from the federal Children's Bureau. Mr. Wallace is the principal author of all four Summit reports. Over 40 of the recommendations have been enacted, regulated, or implemented, including the yearly renewal of funding for the Kinship Navigator and for local kinship services. Statutory Amendments and New Laws 2000: Based upon his law school monograph, NYS's "Standby Guardianship" statute which permitted parents and guardians to name a standby who could act when they became debilitated, incapacitated, or died was amended to include legal custodians and caregivers. 2003: Amendment of the Family Court Act to insure that "all grandparents" were notified of removals of children and that they and other relatives were informed about their "options" and the consequence of not intervening. Along with the National Committee and other organizations this requirement was brought to the attention of Senator Clinton and was part of her "Kinship Caregiver Support" bill. Later becoming part of the 2008 Fostering Connections Act and Increasing Adoptions Act. 2003: The same NYS law also defined a two year period when a child resides in a grandparent's home as providing automatic standing in custody disputes with absent parents. 2005: A Family Court Act petitioning procedure for relatives to seek to become foster parents when post-removal they learned that a related child was in foster care. 2006: A parental power of attorney, negotiated with the Governor's office and with the assistance of AARP NY, and passed after two prior vetoes. 2008: A provision in the Family Court Act and Domestic Relations Law declaring that school districts must enroll children whose non-parent caregivers have orders of custody or guardianship, and that health insurance providers must also cover such children on the health insurance of their caregivers. 2009: Enactment of new legal status - permanent guardianship, and 2010 inclusion of permanent guardians in new kinship guardianship program. 2010: A provision in the Social Services Law mandating that local departments of social services inform caregivers about child-only grants. 2014: Adoption of a Resolution declaring September as Kinship Care Month. Administrative and Regulatory Changes 2005 and 2007: An Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA) Informational Letter (to county commissioners (INF) that outlines the requirements for kinship families to obtain a "child-only" public assistance grant, that expressly stated in boldfaced type that custody or guardianship was not needed. 2008: A OTDA INF advising that children and caregivers who claimed the threat of emotional or physical harm by parents did not have to provide the whereabouts of parents who they feared. 2009: OTDA ADM (administrative directive) eliminating the reduction of child-only grant payments where children's parents were in arrears to OTDA.

3 2009: An Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) ADM mandating the distribution of publications explaining "options" to caregivers when children were removed from their parents. 2011: An OCFS ADM directing counties to collect data on "direct" custody, which are placements with relatives who do not become foster parents. 2012: An OTDA ADM advising local departments of social services that the Kinship Navigator was a resource for caregivers regarding child-only grants. 2012: An OCFS LCM (Letter to Commissioners) advising that kinship guardianship payments were to be "excluded" in determining eligibility for child care subsidies. In 2014, along with AARP NY and kinship supporters, he successfully advocated for a 200% increase in state funding for kinship services and for the adoption of September as Kinship Care Month by the NYS Legislature. He is currently seeking to enact legislation that would expand the two year period of residency to include children living with relatives, that would expressly declare that relatives do not need custody or guardianship to enroll children in school, and that would expand the assignment of counsels program to include assignment to relatives who must defend their guardianship in family court proceedings. State Agency Collaborations As an attorney, Mr. Wallace has written numerous articles on kinship law and conducted over thirty legal trainings which included a series of continuing education manuals. In , he was director of the Grandparent Support Project at Albany Law School's Government Law Center, where his work focused on educational supports for attorneys, including informational materials, trainings, and seminars. As Navigator director, he has collaborated with the OCFS on publication of its "options" booklets and Mr. Wallace meets regularly with the OCFS state commissioner. Recent collaborations include a statewide webinar for child welfare workers about kinship families, an effort to revise OCFS data collection to more accurately reflect kinship families involved with child welfare agencies, and a collaboration to amend the intake forms for all kinship service providers to capture data on children's trauma/loss and Adverse Childhood Experiences. Mr. Wallace meets regularly with OTDA and with the Office for the Aging, as well as other state agencies and working groups. Presentations/Trainings Mr. Wallace speaks frequently on kinship issues, especially kinship law. He has spoken at the GrandRallies in D. C., at numerous conferences, mostly in New York State, but also in Virginia, Florida, Vermont, Utah, London, and elsewhere. He also has been interviewed by various media outlets, including MSNBC and WHMT, and published a 2004 op-ed in the Washington Post in support of the Kinship Caregiver Support Act. In 2005, with the National Committee he helped organize and spoke at the first international kinship conference in NYC. He continues to travel across NYS to build support for kinship services and has an established a network of programs and legal organizations that collaborate with him and the Navigator.

4 Nationally, aside from the National Committee, Mr. Wallace works with the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) and is a member of their policy commission and their kinship advisory committee. As director of the National Committee, he co-sponsored with the CWLA a 2011 National Kinship Summit in D. C. and later was the principal author of the summit report. Upcoming, in September at CWLA's 2014 National Kinship Conference he will co-host a super session on kinship navigators and will be a contributing editor for a subsequent CWLA publication describing the Children's Bureau navigator programs. He has presented at over 400 conferences, forums, professional organizations, media, caregiver events, etc. A sample list is available upon request. Kinship Services Since 2006, as the Kinship Navigator's director, he directed the only statewide kinship program, providing information and referrals via its toll free warm line, extensive resources and legal fact sheets at its websites, and advocacy, including consultation with attorneys for callers, leadership of the NYS KinCare Coalition, and building state and local agency connections to improve services and supports for kinship families. See The Kinship Navigator has assisted over 16,000 caregivers and its web site has logged over 325,000 visitors. Additionally, while at Hunter College Mr. Wallace provided legal information to over 2,000 caregivers, and via his public performances he estimates that he's spoken to more than 7,000 caregivers. In 2012, the Kinship Navigator received one of seven national kinship navigator grants from the Children's Bureau. The project includes strong collaboration with target county department of social services, subcontracts with kinship services that have sustained programs during state budget cuts, development of an online database for use by kinship service providers, creation of a "Kinship Corps" of trained caregiver advocates, and a strong evaluation by the University at Albany School of Social Welfare. Publications As part of the Children's Bureau project, he co-authored a peer reviewed publication, "Diversion and Kinship Care: A Collaborative Approach Between Child Welfare Services and NYS Kinship Navigator", which discusses how to collaborate with local child welfare agencies and addresses the "diversion" of children from foster care to informal kinship care. He is an contributing author to the award winning Cornell Cooperative Extension "Parenting a Second Time Around" workgroup series for kinship caregivers, to the Ski-Hi Institute's Project Heritage's "Grandparents Raising Grandchildren with Special Needs", and the Osborne Association's "Stronger Together" series for families with incarcerated parents. Here is partial listing of his publications: Wallace, G. & Lee, E. (2013). Diversion and Kinship Care: A Collaborative Approach Between Child Welfare Services and NYS's Kinship Navigator, Journal of Family Social Work, 16:5, "Kinship Navigators: The New Child Welfare System," Common Ground, New England child

5 welfare professionals newsletter NYS KinCare Summit Reports, editor, 2005, 2008, 2011, and CWLA National Kinship Summit Report, editor, Grandparents: From Kinship Caregivers to Global Advocates for Children, Capital Commons Quarterly, "Foster Care - With Love." June 9 th 2004 op-ed column in Washington Post. Regular columns in Sadin Law Institute, Senior Rights Report, Grand Magazine, and New York State Bar Elder Law Attorney, "Grandparents' Rights Since Troxel v. Granville." Westlaw Elder Law Advisor, Summer "Grandparent Caregivers: Emerging Issues in Elder Law and Social Work Practice," Journal of Gerontological Social Work, vol. 34(3) "Grandparent Caregivers: A New Family Paradigm," New York State Bar Elder Law Attorney, Summer "The Dilemma of Kinship Care: Grandparents as Guardians, Custodians, and Caregivers - Options for Reform", Complete list available upon request. ***