History of the Clubhouse Family Legal Support Project

The Clubhouse Family Legal Support Project (CFLSP) was established in 2000 as a two-year project funded by the Massachusetts Bar Foundation (MBF) and Equal Justice Works, formerly know as the National Association of Public Interest Law (NAPIL). The initial grant brought a family law practitioner with solid legal services experience representing low income clients to join the Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee (MHLAC) and Employment Options, Inc. (EOI) as full-time project attorney. For the past two years, the project attorney, working with the MHLAC legal team and the EOI clinical staff, has provided effective legal representation to low income parents with mental illness who are at risk of losing custody and all contact with their children. During this short period the CFLSP has demonstrated that the combination of lawyers with experience representing people with mental disabilities and rehabilitation programs focused on parenting needs can have a positive impact on family preservation for some of the most of vulnerable children and stigmatized parents in the state. The Project is now funded through the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health and the Massachusetts Bar Foundation. This funding will ensure that the project continues to assist parents with mental illness in getting custody or contact with their children.

Unmet Legal Need for Parents with Mental Illness

Parents diagnosed with mental illness are at high risk of losing custody of their children and all contact with them because these parents are often assumed to be unfit to parent. This assumption, grounded in stereotype, is unfounded. A person's ability to be a successful parent has less to do with the facts about perception of mental disability and more to do with parenting resources and support. The vast majority of children who have parents with mental illness can cope relatively well with adequate support.

Many parents lose contact with, and custody of their children without the benefit of counsel or judicial process. Lacking counsel, and under pressure from the Department of Social Services, or relatives, they relinquish rights that they never knew they had. Clubhouse members have identified loss of contact with children as the primary barrier to clients’ successful rehabilitation as well as a significant source of distress for the entire family. For these reasons, quality legal representation is a critical issue for many of these parents, and many of the clubhouses have not been able to obtain counsel when necessary.

Low-income mentally ill parents are consistently unable to obtain legal representation. Legal service agencies have been unable to provide representation because limited resources have forced these agencies to close their family law intake except for cases involving domestic violence. Reports from Volunteer Lawyer's Project (VLP) and other legal service programs confirm that family law cases involving mentally ill parents are especially difficult to refer to pro bono counsel.

Case Example

Mr. A. is a fifty-year-old father of five children. Mr. A has bipolar disorder, and has been a clubhouse member for several years. When Mr. A. and his wife divorced, he lost custody of his children. As a result of an abuse prevention order, which was based on the perceived instability of Mr. A. due to his mental illness, the client was granted supervised visitation with his children. For the next five years, Mr. A. saw his children in a supervised setting one time each month, with no visitation on the children’s birthdays or for holidays. As a result of this visitation arrangement, Mr. A. sought legal assistance from the CFLSP because he wanted to expand his limited contact with the children.

With the support of the Clubhouse staff people who have been supervising Mr. A.’s visits with his children, Mr. A’s visitation time has doubled and his telephone contact with his children has greatly increased. It has been extremely important for the children and Mr. A. to maintain a consistent relationship with one another and to allow for this relationship to grow. Mr. A. has stated that staying involved with his children is what gives him the strength to keep going.