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The Law And Policy Of Child Maltreatment, Frank Vandervort
The Law And Policy Of Child Maltreatment, Frank Vandervort
Book Chapters
Each year in the United States some four million children are reported to child protective services and hundreds of thousands of children are confirmed victims of maltreatment. This chapter provides a brief overview of the civil and criminal law’s response to child abuse and neglect. It summarizes the major federal statutes that provide funding to the states to support both civil and criminal law responses to maltreatment. It discusses the division of responsible for responding to child maltreatment between the federal and state governments (federalism). It also provides a summary of the constitutional framework for handling both civil and criminal …
Educational Equality For Children With Disabilities: The 2016 Term Cases, Samuel R. Bagenstos
Educational Equality For Children With Disabilities: The 2016 Term Cases, Samuel R. Bagenstos
Book Chapters
One of the most longstanding debates in educational policy pits the goal of equality against the goal of adequacy: Should we aim to guarantee that all children receive an equal education? Or simply that they all receive an adequate education? The debate is vexing in part because there are many ways to specify “equality” and “adequacy.” Are we talking about equality of inputs (which inputs?), equality of opportunity (to achieve what?), or equality of results (which results?)? Douglas Rae and his colleagues famously argued that there are no fewer than 108 structurally distinct conceptions of equality. And how do we …
Representing Parents In Child Welfare Cases, Vivek Sankaran
Representing Parents In Child Welfare Cases, Vivek Sankaran
Book Chapters
A parent's constitutional right to raise his or her child is one of the most venerated liberty interests safeguarded by the Constitution and the courts.2 The law presumes parents to be fit, and it establishes that they do not need to be model parents to retain custody of their children.3 If the state seeks to interfere with the parent-child relationship, the Constitution mandates that the state: (1) prove parental unfitness, a standard defined by state laws; and (2) follow certain procedures protecting the due process rights of parents. The constitutional framework for child welfare cases is premised on the belief …
The Indian Child Welfare Act., Frank Vandervort
The Indian Child Welfare Act., Frank Vandervort
Book Chapters
Few child welfare lawyers routinely confront the application of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA or "the Act"). When the statute applies, however, it is crucial that its provisions be strictly followed. There are at least three reasons why counsel should attempt to ensure that ICWA's provisions are carefully applied. First, ICWA's provisions are jurisdictional. Failure to abide by its requirements invalidates the proceeding from its inception. Indeed, any party or the court may invoke ICWA at any time in the proceeding, including for the first time on appeal. Second, unlike most federal child welfare legislation which provides funding streams …
Confidentiality Of Educational Records And Child Protective Proceedings, Frank E. Vandervort
Confidentiality Of Educational Records And Child Protective Proceedings, Frank E. Vandervort
Book Chapters
The Federal Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which provides funding for state educational programming, requires that student records be disclosed to a nonparent only with the written consent of the child’s parent, unless the disclosure falls within one of the several exceptions detailed in the statute. One of the exemptions provided for in the federal law permits a school to disclose information to “state or local officials or authorities to whom [that] information is allowed to be reported or disclosed pursuant to state statute,” if that official certifies in writing “that the information will not be disclosed to …
Rights Discourse And Neonatal Euthanasia, Carl Schneider
Rights Discourse And Neonatal Euthanasia, Carl Schneider
Book Chapters
At the heart of our difficulty in approaching neonatal euthanasia lie the intractable questions it raises: What is human life? When is death preferable to life? What do parents owe their children? What does society owe the suffering? Those moral questions could hardly be more perplexing, yet they are further complicated when they must be resolved not informally and case by case, but through generally applicable social rules. This is so for numerous reasons. For instance, the wide range of deeply held opinions about neonatal euthanasia makes rules hard to formulate, and the wide range of factual situations in which …
Child Protection Law, Suellyn Scarnecchia
Child Protection Law, Suellyn Scarnecchia
Book Chapters
The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution protect a parent's custodial rights. However, such rights are not absolute and may be terminated. There is no substantive due-process right to live together as a family. Doe v Oettle, 97 Mich App 183, 293 NW2d 760 (1980). Parents are not held to ideal standards in the care of their children but to minimum statutory standards. Fritts v Krugh, 354 Mich 97, 92 NW2d 604 (1958).
Stepparents, Biologic Parents, And The Law's Perception Of 'Family' After Divorce, David L. Chambers
Stepparents, Biologic Parents, And The Law's Perception Of 'Family' After Divorce, David L. Chambers
Book Chapters
The drama of divorce always contains at least two characters, a woman and a man, and often a third, a child born to the woman and the man. If you have read the other chapters of this book, you have rarely encountered any of the other persons who may be affected by a divorce, such as the children of either person from a prior marriage, or later spouses or partners of either party, or later born children of either party-all the persons who are or become stepchildren or stepparents. You have not encountered them because, in this country, with minor …