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Articles 1 - 21 of 21
Full-Text Articles in Juvenile Law
A Child’S Constitutional Right To Family Integrity And Counsel In Dependency Proceedings, Rachel Kennedy
A Child’S Constitutional Right To Family Integrity And Counsel In Dependency Proceedings, Rachel Kennedy
Emory Law Journal
Since the child welfare system’s inception, abuse and neglect laws have conflated poverty-related neglect with active parental violence and willful neglect. The ensuing state surveillance has disproportionately harmed poor children and children of color. Pursuant to the state’s expansive parens patriae authority, countless families are investigated, and thousands of children are separated from their caretakers each year—only to be returned within days or weeks after a finding that the reasons for removal were unsubstantiated. Other children risk drifting in foster care limbo until they experience the termination of parental rights—an adjudication so severe that some courts call it the “civil …
Child Welfare And Covid-19: An Unexpected Opportunity For Systemic Change, Jane M. Spinak
Child Welfare And Covid-19: An Unexpected Opportunity For Systemic Change, Jane M. Spinak
Faculty Scholarship
The COVID-19 pandemic has already wrecked greater havoc in poor neighborhoods of color, where pre-existing conditions exacerbate the disease’s spread. Crowded housing and homelessness, less access to health care and insurance, and underlying health conditions are all factors that worsen the chances of remaining healthy.Workers desperate for income continue to work without sufficient protective measures, moving in and out of these neighborhoods, putting themselves and their families at risk. During periods of greater disruption, tensions are heightened and violence more prevalent. Already some experts are warning of an onslaught of child maltreatment cases, citing earlier examples of spikes in foster …
Structure And Service Delivery Approach Of The Children’S Bureau’S Resource Centers And Implementation Centers, Tammy Richards, Michelle Graef, Kathy Deserly, Peter Watson, Mark Ells
Structure And Service Delivery Approach Of The Children’S Bureau’S Resource Centers And Implementation Centers, Tammy Richards, Michelle Graef, Kathy Deserly, Peter Watson, Mark Ells
Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications
The Children’s Bureau (CB) provides a system of training and technical assistance (T/TA) to build the capacity of state and tribal child welfare systems, with the goal of improving outcomes for children and families. During the time period of 2008-2014, this infrastructure included ten National Child Welfare Resource Centers (NRCs), five Child Welfare Implementation Centers (ICs), and a Training and Technical Assistance Coordination Center (TTACC). Individual ICs and NRCs differed in structure and content expertise, yet they served the same jurisdictions and at times provided services concurrently. To increase cohesion and consistency, the NRCs, ICs, TTACC, and CB worked together …
Filling The Gaps: Another Way To Tackle The Access To Justice Crisis, Karen Simmons
Filling The Gaps: Another Way To Tackle The Access To Justice Crisis, Karen Simmons
Wilf Impact Center for Public Interest Law
No abstract provided.
Child Protection Law As An Independent Variable, Josh Gupta-Kagan
Child Protection Law As An Independent Variable, Josh Gupta-Kagan
Faculty Publications
Child protection professionals work in a multidisciplinary system in which the law and the family court play central roles and which collects an increasing amount of data. Yet we know little about what impact the law has on whether a child is removed by child protective services, is deemed neglected by a family court, or reunifies with a parent. Do state‐to‐state variations in child protection laws, or changes by individual states to their laws, lead to different outcomes for children and families? The dramatic variations in child welfare practice from one state to another suggest that legal variations do matter. …
Promoting Community Child Protection: A Legislative Agenda, Leigh S. Goodmark
Promoting Community Child Protection: A Legislative Agenda, Leigh S. Goodmark
Leigh S. Goodmark
No abstract provided.
Using Preventive Legal Advocacy To Keep Children From Entering Foster Care, Vivek Sankaran
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 …
The Poverty Defense, Michele E. Gilman
The Poverty Defense, Michele E. Gilman
All Faculty Scholarship
Poverty is correlated with crime, but it is widely assumed that it should not be a defense. In the 1970s, Judge David Bazelon challenged this assumption, proposing a rotten social background defense, that is, how growing up under circumstances of severe deprivation can subsequently impact a criminal defendant's mental state and actions. Relatedly, other theorists have posited that poverty should be a defense to crime based on poverty's coercive aspects or because society forfeits its right to condemn when it tolerates significant economic inequality. Critics counter that a poverty defense should not be adopted because it is not only inconsistent …
"Indifferent [Towards] Indifference:" Post-Deshaney Accountability For Social Services Agencies When A Child Is Injured Or Killed Under Their Protective Watch, Carolina D. Watts
"Indifferent [Towards] Indifference:" Post-Deshaney Accountability For Social Services Agencies When A Child Is Injured Or Killed Under Their Protective Watch, Carolina D. Watts
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
Purpose Vs. Power: Parens Patriae And Agency Self-Interest, Daniel L. Hatcher
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 …
Don't Forget Dad: Addressing Women's Poverty By Rethinking Forced And Outdated Child Support Policies, Daniel L. Hatcher
Don't Forget Dad: Addressing Women's Poverty By Rethinking Forced And Outdated Child Support Policies, Daniel L. Hatcher
All Faculty Scholarship
In the dialogues regarding reducing poverty among women, especially mothers, the inextricably linked issues surrounding low-income men must be simultaneously considered. In social policy addressing women’s poverty, poor fathers have too often been considered primarily as an enemy to be pursued rather than a fellow victim of poverty’s wrath, and potential partner towards the cure. We want someone to blame, and many assume that poor single mothers are best served by always being encouraged — and even forced — to pursue the noncustodial fathers for financial support through adversarial means. Mothers applying for public assistance are forced to sue the …
Changing The Narrative Of Child Welfare, Matthew I. Fraidin
Changing The Narrative Of Child Welfare, Matthew I. Fraidin
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In child welfare, the difference we can make as lawyers for parents, children, and the state, and as judges, is to prevent children from entering foster care unnecessarily. And we can end a child’s stay in foster care as quickly as possible. To do that, we have to fight against a powerful narrative of child welfare and against the accepted “top-down” paradigm of legal services.
In this essay, Professor Fraidin suggests that we can achieve our goals of limiting entries to foster care and speeding exits from it by looking for the strengths of the people involved in our cases, …
Integrating Education Advocacy Into Child Welfare Practice: Working Models, Jennifer N. Rosen Valverde, Cara Chambers, Megan Blamble Dho, Regina Schaefer
Integrating Education Advocacy Into Child Welfare Practice: Working Models, Jennifer N. Rosen Valverde, Cara Chambers, Megan Blamble Dho, Regina Schaefer
American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law
No abstract provided.
Collateral Children: Consequence And Illegality At The Intersection Of Foster Care And Child Support, Daniel L. Hatcher
Collateral Children: Consequence And Illegality At The Intersection Of Foster Care And Child Support, Daniel L. Hatcher
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article is the third in a series addressing the conflict between state revenue maximization strategies and the missions of state agencies serving low-income children. The Article examines the policy of foster care cost recovery through child support enforcement. When children are removed from poor families and placed in foster care, federal law requires child welfare agencies to initiate child support obligations against the parents. Resulting payments do not benefit the children but are converted into a government funding stream to reimburse the costs of foster care. This cost recovery effort often subordinates the child welfare system’s primary goals of …
Legal Strategies To Address Child Support Obligations For Nonresident Fathers In The Child Welfare System, Daniel L. Hatcher
Legal Strategies To Address Child Support Obligations For Nonresident Fathers In The Child Welfare System, Daniel L. Hatcher
All Faculty Scholarship
The legal and practical issues surrounding child support obligations have enormous impact on families in the child welfare system. Unfortunately, these issues are often ignored, overlooked, or misunderstood. A much-needed effort to engage nonresident fathers in the child welfare system is underway, but those efforts will often be derailed if child support is not properly addressed. This article sheds light on the legal and policy concerns regarding child support enforcement in child protection cases and provides legal strategies for advocates to address those concerns. While primarily aimed at advocates for nonresident fathers, this article should also benefit advocates for custodial …
Evolutionary Theory And Kinship Foster Care: An Initial Test Of Two Hypotheses, David J. Herring, Jeffrey J. Shook, Sara Goodkind, Kevin H. Kim
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 …
Kinship Foster Care: Implications Of Behavioral Biology Research, David J. Herring
Kinship Foster Care: Implications Of Behavioral Biology Research, David J. Herring
Articles
Public child welfare systems rely heavily on kin to serve as foster parents, requiring public actors to consider and choose among different types of available kin (e.g. maternal grandmothers, paternal grandfathers, matrilateral aunts). Behavioral biology researchers have been exploring kinship relationships and the expected level of investment in child care for different types of kin. This paper explains the relevance to kinship foster care of behavioral biology research on kinship relationships and expected levels of parental investment. This research allows for the development of a rank listing of second-degree kin in terms of their likely level of investment in a …
Foster Children Paying For Foster Care, Daniel L. Hatcher
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 …
Promoting Community Child Protection: A Legislative Agenda, Leigh S. Goodmark
Promoting Community Child Protection: A Legislative Agenda, Leigh S. Goodmark
Book Gallery
No abstract provided.
God Bless The Child: Poor Children, Parens Patriae, And A State Obligation To Provide Assistance, Kay P. Kindred
God Bless The Child: Poor Children, Parens Patriae, And A State Obligation To Provide Assistance, Kay P. Kindred
Scholarly Works
In this Article, I argue that poor parents who are willing, but economically unable, to provide proper care for their children are entitled to some minimum level of state assistance grounded in the constitutional right to family integrity. The right to family integrity, when coupled with the state's power as parens patride, creates an affirmative obligation on the state to provide income assistance to impoverished families when necessary to protect the welfare of the children and maintain the family intact.
Court-Ordered Foster Family Care Reform: A Case Study, Michael B. Mushlin
Court-Ordered Foster Family Care Reform: A Case Study, Michael B. Mushlin
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
The authors examine the implications of G. L. v. Zumwalt, a case that resulted in a far-reaching consent decree that mandates specific reforms in policy and practice to be implemented by a public social welfare agency in its delivery of services to foster children and their families.