To continue shoring up the gap between the legal needs of Brooklyn residents and the legal services that are offered pro bono, the Brooklyn Bar Association’s Volunteer Lawyers Project recently started the mental guardianship program, which addresses an “unmet need.”
New York City’s only mental guardianship program was kicked off this month, and will offer free pro bono legal advice and assistance to clients filing for guardianship of mentally disabled adults, usually a family member or loved one.
Jeannie Costello, executive director of the Volunteer Lawyers Project (VLP), who is enthusiastic about resolving this "unmet need": “This is a very exciting new project, because this service is not offered by any other agency in New York. It’s really a great benefit to the residents of Brooklyn. It can make such a critical difference in a family’s well-being to get guardianship of someone who is legally an adult, but still needs someone to protect them.”
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Guardians in the Surrogate’s Court
New York City’s only mental guardianship program was kicked off this month, and will offer free pro bono legal advice and assistance to clients filing for guardianship of mentally disabled adults, usually a family member or loved one.
Jeannie Costello, executive director of the Volunteer Lawyers Project (VLP), who is enthusiastic about resolving this "unmet need": “This is a very exciting new project, because this service is not offered by any other agency in New York. It’s really a great benefit to the residents of Brooklyn. It can make such a critical difference in a family’s well-being to get guardianship of someone who is legally an adult, but still needs someone to protect them.”
Full Article and Source:
Guardians in the Surrogate’s Court
6 comments:
This sounds like a good thing - if not misused.
There are mentally ill people out on the street who barely survive but won't "come in". Families need this tool to protect them.
That said, this new program can easily morph into a quick and easy way to guardianize anybody. That's a real danger.
Those with nefarious purposes can make people seem mentally ill in order to accomplish their purpose.
The program is good but it needs to be supervised.
It is an unmet need - I just hope it's done with the good intentions intended now.
Sometimes mental institutions get kickbacks (for lack of a better word) for full capacity.
I wonder where durable PoA fits into this scenerio or if it does.
One bad apple spoils the bunch. I am afraid the good intent here will be misused against innocent people. I've become cynical.
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