LIFT's Legal Education Program complements our court-based work by bringing legal education and information into New York City’s neighborhoods, with an emphasis on non-English speaking communities. The overarching goal of our community education program is to keep families and young people out of the court system when possible and accelerate the resolution of their matters when they do seek judicial relief – we help families arrive in Court prepared and equipped to communicate the relevant information that will help their cases progress expeditiously. By empowering families with necessary information before they get to Court, LIFT also helps to facilitate the efficiency of the court system, thereby preserving valuable public resources.

Currently, the community based Legal Education Program has two prongs: (1) with the support from the Brookdale Foundation, LIFT will conduct six workshops for relative caregivers who have been granted, or are seeking, custody of their relative children in Family Court; and (2) in conjunction with our new Family Legal Center, LIFT conducts at least 10 workshops annually on child support and visitation in-house at our offices.

LIFT’s Legal Education Program has offered community based workshops on a wide-range of family law issues since our launch. These workshops, offered at the request of other organizations, were conducted free of charge by our Director of Community Programs. In seeking to target the program, so that we could implement best practices in community education and help ensure the best outcomes for workshop participants, LIFT determined that the majority of organizations requesting community workshops were those serving relatives, usually grandparents, who had become Family Court-involved since taking custody of their grandchildren. Thus, with the support of the Brookdale Foundation, LIFT launched the Relatives as Parents Program (RaPP).

RaPP will conduct a minimum of six legal education workshops annually to relative caregivers based upon a unique and responsive curriculum which we have developed. The workshops are designed to help low-income relatives who are caring for children acquire the knowledge and power they need to navigate Family Court. The workshops are enhanced by LIFT’s direct experiences in Family Court: we explain family law topics in understandable terms, but we also remember the basics – for instance, warning participants that their food, including baby’s bottles, will be confiscated before they go through metal detectors, or reminding them to bring pens, paper, and documents that help move a case along. While our starting point is legal – either helping people stay out of court or find justice when they go there – our ultimate goal is to leave relative caregivers with more efficacy to strengthen themselves in their communities. As such, all workshop participants receive an important “take away” resource in the form of a portfolio of responsive information about their rights and responsibilities as relative caregivers, as well as where to secure resources in their communities.

The partnerships we establish with the agencies that host our educational workshops have been especially helpful in ensuring the quality of LIFT referrals: what we learn about the services of these host agencies combined with information they give us about other helping organizations in their own networks is factored into the recommendations we make to families. In addition, our hosting partners are sources of new resources for use at LIFT’s EI Sites, the acquisition of which greatly enhances our ability to offer responsive services in the courts.

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