Law Commons^™

Using Preventive Legal Advocacy To Keep Children From Entering Foster Care, Vivek Sankaran

Articles

Children may unnecessarily enter foster care because their parents are unable to resolve legal issues that affect their safety and well-being in their home.[...] Yet these kinds of legal needs for poor families are rarely met. On average, poor families experience at least one civil legal need per year, but only a small portion of those needs are satisfied. For about every six thousand people in poverty, there exists only one legal aid lawyer. So legal aid programs are forced to reject close to a million cases each year. This lack of legal services threatens the well-being of children[...] who …

Forgotten Fathers, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

Poor fathers like John are largely forgotten, written off as a subset of the unworthy poor. These fathers struggle with poverty – often with near hopelessness – within multiple systems in which they are either entangled or overlooked, such as child-support and welfare programs, family courts, the criminal justice system, housing programs, and the healthcare, education, and foster-care systems. For these impoverished fathers, the “end of men” is often not simply a question for purposes of discussion but a fact that is all too real. In the instances in which poor fathers are not forgotten, they are targeted as causes …

Purpose Vs. Power: Parens Patriae And Agency Self-Interest, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of human service agencies to serve vulnerable populations such as abused and neglected children derives from the common law doctrine of parens patriae, embodying the inherent role of the state as parent of the country. However, along with this foundational purpose, the parens patriae doctrine also provides power that is illusive to public knowledge and oversight. To maintain their cloak of power, the very agencies created to fulfill the parens patriae obligations — to protect the rights of children — have systematically battled the children’s efforts to claim those rights as their own. Also, the agencies have now …

Human Trafficking And Exploitation Of Children And Youth In The United States- Outcome Document, Katherine Kaufka Walts Jd

Center for the Human Rights of Children

The conference entitled, “Human Trafficking and Exploitation of Children and Youth in the United States,” was held at Loyola University Chicago on September 22-23, 2010, sponsored by the Center for the Human Rights of Children.

The purpose of the conference was to bring national, multi-sector and interdisciplinary experts and participants together to discuss the plight of children being trafficked to and within the United States. The goal of the conference was not only to present an overview of child trafficking in the United States, but also to provide an opportunity to initiate dialogue among a network of professionals and to …

Funny Money: How Federal Education Funding Hurts Poor And Minority Students, Cassandra Jones Havard

All Faculty Scholarship

Neither race nor class alone can predict educational achievement. However, in America, disparities in funding for education may be an impediment to educational opportunity for disadvantaged youth. At the crux of the Nation's achievement gap among minority children is the question of the how states should allocate federal education funds, and how local school districts should use those monies. Educators have long recognized that the socioeconomic circumstances of many public school students present great educational challenges. Since 1965, Congress has authorized the use of federal funds by local school districts to remedy the achievement gap.

Part I of this Article …

Evolutionary Theory And Kinship Foster Care: An Initial Test Of Two Hypotheses, David J. Herring, Jeffrey J. Shook, Sara Goodkind, Kevin H. Kim

Articles

Public child welfare systems increasingly rely on kin to serve as foster parents. This study tests two hypotheses concerning kinship foster care that have been formulated based on evolutionary theory and behavioral biology research. The first hypothesis is that on average foster children are likely to benefit from higher levels of parental investment and realize better outcomes if placed with kin rather than non-kin foster parents. The second hypothesis is that on average children in kinship foster care placements are likely to benefit from higher levels of parental investment and realize better outcomes if placed with some types of kin …

Foster Children Paying For Foster Care, Daniel L. Hatcher

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the legality and policy concerns of state foster care agencies using children's Social Security benefits as a state funding stream. The practice requires foster children who are disabled or have deceased or disabled parents to pay for their own care. Often with the assistance of private consultants under contingency fee contracts, agencies look for children who are eligible for Social Security benefits and interject themselves as the children's representative payees. Rather than using the benefits to serve the children's unmet needs, the agencies use their fiduciary power to access the children's benefits and apply the funds to …

Writing Wrongs In Welfare: Why Legislating Morality Will Not Solve The Crisis Of Poverty, Daniela Kraiem

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

An Interdisciplinary Seminar In Child Abuse And Neglect With A Focus On Child Protection Practice, Suellyn Scarnecchia

Articles

Given the myriad of professionals involved in protecting children from abuse and neglect, legal practice in the field of child protection requires an understanding of the various disciplines these professionals represent. Professor Scarnecchia argues that such an understanding is necessary in order for the attorney to serve as a zealous advocate for her client. In hopes of creating this understanding in students at the University of Michigan, an interdisciplinary seminar in child abuse and neglect has been created. Professor Scarnecchia details the substantive content of the seminar, discussing specific issues that arise in protecting children. She explains that by using …

Fathers, The Welfare System, And The Virtues And Perils Of Child-Support Enforcement, David L. Chambers

Articles

For half a century, Aid to Families with Dependent Children ("AFDC")' -the program of federally supported cash assistance to low-income families with children-has been oddly conceived. Congress has chosen to make assistance available almost solely to low-income single-parent families, not all low-income parents with children. At first many of the eligible single parents were women whose husbands had died. Over time, a growing majority were women who had been married to their children's father but who had separated or divorced. Today, to an ever increasing extent, they are women who were never married to the fathers of their children.2

Providing An Escape For Inner-City Children: Creating A Federal Remedy For Educational Ills Of Poor Urban Schools, Amy J. Schmitz

Faculty Publications

Children in impoverished, urban areas attend dangerous and decrepit schools, where they receive low quality education which fails to prepare them for meaningful participation in the community. Many states, however, provide no legislative or judicial remedy for these children, who desperately need vocational and educational skills to enable them to escape from the deprivation of their urban landscape. Meanwhile, federal officials speak

Commentary: Meeting The Financial Needs Of Children, David L. Chambers

Articles

Those who drafted the equitable distribution statutes adopted in New York and elsewhere wanted to help assure women and children an acceptable level of financial well-being after divorce. Marsha Garrison has shown that divorcing couples rarely possess enough resources to attain financial well-being even when they live together as a couple, let alone when they live in two separate households. She has also shown that, even in the cases of couples with substantial assets, the broad and general language of the equitable distribution statute did not lead (and could not have been expected to lead) to consistent distributions that assured …