Amy Vasquez, a solo practitioner in Burlington, has represented children and parents in child welfare matters for nearly 25 years. She is chair of the New Jersey State Bar Association (NJSBA) Child Welfare Law Section and co-chair of the Pro Bono Committee. She also serves on the NJSBA Board of Trustees. Vasquez was a recipient of the inaugural Haywood Burns Fellowship for Civil Rights from City University of New York School of Law Public Interest Law Association. While in law school, she worked at the Innocence Project in New York, where she located and preserved physical evidence. Her efforts helped exonerate and free three clients after decades of imprisonment. Vasquez continues to offer her assistance on a pro bono basis to the Innocence Project. Prior to law school, Vasquez was a substitute teacher in special education at a New York City public elementary school.
The Bar Report asked Vasquez for an update on her NJSBA activities. This interview was lightly edited for space and clarity.
What issues are the Child Welfare Law Section working on?
Child welfare proceedings are closed to the public and documents relating to these cases are confidential. As chair of the NJSBA Child Welfare Law Section, I strive to bring awareness of many issues in this area of law to the larger legal community.
The prevailing issue is racism in the child welfare system. According to a report released in early 2020, it is estimated that one in every 100 children in the United States will experience termination of parental rights by the age of 18. In this same report, it was found that Black children in New Jersey were at least four times more likely than white children to experience termination of parental rights.
At the NJSBA Annual Meeting last year, the section sponsored a presentation on the history of New Jersey’s child welfare law. Learning about this history gives greater insight into the racist roots in the field and how we can move toward racial equity at a faster pace. Last year we also published our first publication “In re Sarah,” a periodic newsletter named in recognition of the first case on record in the U.S. prosecuting child abuse. This year we are about to launch a four-part continuing legal education series on racial equity issues related to psychological evaluations. An ongoing project we have been working on is to advocate for modernization of legal language, such as changing the term “surrender,” when a parent consents to termination of parental rights for the purposes of adoption.
How has the pandemic affected children served by the state’s child welfare system?
The pandemic has been tough on everyone, but for the hundreds of children in foster care it meant not only changing to remote schooling but also a change in services and in contact with their parents. When state offices closed, supervision for in-person parenting time was ended for many families in the system. Parent and child bonding, which is a key element in these cases, was put on pause for many families. Federal and state law imposes timelines for New Jersey’s Child Protection and Permanency agency to provide reasonable efforts to reunify children with parents, and those timelines were not universally extended due to the hardships posed by the pandemic. Time will tell if special consideration of the COVID-19 hardships were made on a case-by-case basis for all of the affected children.
The Pro Bono Committee has been involved in legal clinics to assist landlords and tenants affected by the pandemic. What else is the committee working on?
Each year the Pro Bono Committee has been deeply committed to recognizing attorneys who have performed outstanding work on a pro bono basis. We host an inspiring program and award individuals, organizations and law firms, as well as acknowledge lifetime achievements in pro bono work. These annual programs not only memorialize this great work, but they also inspire others to take on pro bono cases. We encourage nominations for 2022.
Aside from our yearly awards event, we promote pro bono work, especially in the area of housing and immigration this year. We are also advocating for the NJSBA Right to Counsel Report recommendations to be implemented, including ending the Madden provision assignments in favor of a system that emphasizes effective representation for cases involving fundamental rights over the random selection system put in place decades ago as a stopgap measure.
Your efforts to ensure all New Jersey courthouses are equipped with automated external defibrillators, and that they are easily accessible, has been personally meaningful to you. Can you explain what led you to embark on this mission and what the results have been?
This issue means a great deal to me. A little over 10 years ago, my husband, attorney Peter N. Fiorentino Jr., who was 42, went into cardiac arrest at a courthouse in New Jersey. He never regained consciousness and died four days later. It was reported to me that Peter was without oxygen for over eight minutes. Although a defibrillator was used by the sheriff’s officers to resuscitate him, the defibrillator was not located on the same floor as my husband. Timing is everything. It is my wish that every state courthouse has accessible defibrillators on every floor where the public has access. Courthouses are where people are under a lot of stress. Making defibrillators accessible to the public will save lives. I am grateful to the NJSBA and President Domenick Carmagnola for writing a letter to the Administrative Office of the Courts to make this request in the best interests of our membership, the legal community and our clients.