Philadelphia Partnership to Preserve Families

Children’s Rights and the Defender Association of Philadelphia (Defender) are working together to preserve families and uphold children’s constitutional right to family integrity. The goal is to ensure that Philadelphia family courts and child welfare agencies are providing families with all the legally required support to keep families together and prevent children from being unnecessarily separated from their families and placed in the foster system. 

Across Philadelphia, children are at risk of separation due to poverty-related challenges like housing insecurity, food instability, and lack of access to mental health care. This is despite federal and Pennsylvania laws requiring the Department of Human Services (DHS) and Community Umbrella Agencies (CUAs) to make consistent, timely efforts to keep families intact. Required efforts include providing stable housing and access to substance use treatment and mental health care, addressing racial biases, and prioritizing kinship placements. The courts must hold agencies accountable for meeting these standards.

Research shows that when children are separated from their families, even very briefly, they endure emotional trauma that can have lifelong mental and physical health consequences. Once in custody, they are deprived of existing support systems, denied adequate care, and face increased risks of abuse. These harms fall disproportionately on Black and brown children, who are more likely to suffer unnecessary removals and prolonged separation. 

Philadelphia has made progress recently in reducing unnecessary, poverty-based separations and in placing more children with kin rather than strangers. But more work still must be done.

To develop a strategy to address these challenges, Children’s Rights spent over a year meeting with Defender attorneys and social workers, and consulted with child welfare professionals and experts with lived experience from across the country.

Working with social workers and DHS in court and between court appearances, Children’s Rights will provide the Defender with additional tools to advocate for supports like housing and mental health care that help keep families together. When necessary, we will provide the courts with the information they need to order the agencies to take appropriate action to keep families together, developing strong evidentiary records that support swift court orders for child welfare agencies. This includes expert testimony on the trauma of family separation, social work practices that promote family unity, and evaluations from professionals experienced in mitigating harm to children.

Philadelphia’s foster system is disproportionately large compared to the rest of the state. Only 42% of children are reunited with their families after entering state custody—a substantial decline from prior years and below the reunification rates for similar urban counties.

The partnership between Children’s Rights and the Defender was created to address these ongoing deficiencies and hold Philadelphia accountable for giving its families the support they need when they need it to stay together.