Olivia Pickard of Volunteers of Legal Service supports Intro 902
Olivia Pickard, staff attorney with the Incarcerated Mothers Law Project at Volunteers of Legal Service, supports Intro 902. She describes postpartum clients separated from newborns and asked to sign away parental authority without counsel.
You can begin already.
Good morning, Chairs Farias and Brooks Powers, and thank you, Council Members, for the opportunity to speak.
My name is Olivia Pickard.
I am a staff attorney on the Vols Incarcerated Mothers Law Project.
Vols supports New Yorkers with comprehensive free legal advice, education, and representation.
For over 40 years, Vols has partnered with community-based organizations to provide free civil legal services to New Yorkers who otherwise would not have access to that.
For more than 30 years, Vols Incarcerated Mothers Law Projects has helped individuals in New York's women's prisons and jails, including the Rose M.
Singer Center on Rikers Island, with their family non-law needs.
Through this work, Vols IMLP has provided legal support and advocacy to numerous pregnant and postpartum individuals in New York's prisons and jails.
Our pregnant and postpartum clients in jail or prison are at a uniquely vulnerable stage of their life, both medically and legally.
Parents often come to us with severe anxieties about the state of their parental rights.
This is especially true for postpartum clients who may be separated from their newborn child soon after giving birth and do not know what to do next to strengthen or to preserve their parental rights.
Many individuals in custody have experienced foster care themselves and are
are terrified of CPS, DSS, or ACS involvement.
In one case, a Vols IMLP client was separated from her newborn child immediately after birth by New York County DSS.
She was asked to sign parental authority away hours after giving birth without ever having spoken to a lawyer.
But perhaps the most visible issue is the toll on mental health of being pregnant, giving birth, and being postpartum while in state custody.
Being pregnant or postpartum while in prison or jail can exacerbate existing mental health issues and often require specific and targeted mental health interventions.
Our pregnant and postpartum clients have expressed feeling dehumanized and traumatized by their experience of birth while in custody during a time where they already feel at risk of losing hope.
Therefore, Volz IMLP strongly supports Councilmember Lee's proposed local law to amend the administrative code regarding mental health protocols for pregnant and postpartum individuals in the custody of DOC.
Thank you.