Law Commons^™

Kidsvoice: A Multidisciplinary Approach To Child Advocacy, Scott Hollander, Jonathan Budd

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

There is growing recognition that effective child advocacy requires a broad range of knowledge that often goes well beyond the legal needs of the child. This Essay details the multidisciplinary approach to child advocacy that KidsVoice, a Pittsburgh legal services organization representing almost 5000 dependent children each year, has implemented to better develop uniquely tailored recommendations regarding which placement and services might create better possibilities of success for each child and family.

Why Children Still Need A Lawyer, Marcia Robinson Lowry, Sara Bartosz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Every day approximately 500,000 children across the United States wake up in foster care, most in foster family homes, though many others in group homes and institutions. These children entered the state foster care system as innocent victims of abuse or neglect occurring in their birth homes. As wards of the state, they depend completely on the government to provide for their essential safety and wellbeing and to reconnect them with a permanent family, hopefully their own.

Though state child welfare agencies possess fundamental legal obligations under the United States Constitution and federal and state statutes to provide adequate care …

Looking Ahead: A Personal Vision Of The Future Of Child Welfare Law, Donald N. Duquette

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The participants in the Thirtieth Anniversary Celebration of the Child Advocacy Law Clinic were all challenged to envision the future of child welfare and to address these questions: What should the law and legal institutions governing children's rights and child and family welfare look like in thirty more years? What steps are necessary to achieve those goals? After setting out the historical and optimistic circumstance in which the Child Advocacy Law Clinic was founded, this Article responds to the organizing questions by presenting the author's vision of the future of child welfare law and practice. When families fail children, what …