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Family Law

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2017

Youth voice

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“Letting Kids Be Kids”: Youth Voice And Activism To Reform Foster Care And Promote “Normalcy”, Bernard P. Perlmutter Jan 2017

“Letting Kids Be Kids”: Youth Voice And Activism To Reform Foster Care And Promote “Normalcy”, Bernard P. Perlmutter

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In this chapter, I examine stories that foster care youth tell to legislatures, courts, policymakers, and the public to influence policy decisions. The stories told by these children are analogized to victim truth testimony, analyzed as a therapeutic, procedural, and developmental process, and examined as a catalyst for systemic accountability and change. Youth stories take different forms and appear in different media: testimony in legislatures, courts, research surveys or studies; opinion editorials and interviews in newspapers or blog posts; digital stories on YouTube; and artistic expression. Lawyers often serve as conduits for youth storytelling, translating their clients’ stories to the …