I'm back!

How are things going in child welfare world?

It's been over a year since I wrote anything on the internet about the child welfare system. I spent that time focused on advocacy, and it was a bumpy ride. I challenged the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children’s application to non-offending parents and lost. I appealed the reliability of bare-bones assessments that children will benefit from residential treatment and didn’t even get an opinion. I fought back against the unexpected revocation of developmental disability services by the state and lost on that too. When the law failed us, we tried to help those clients in other ways, but it was repeatedly disappointing.

It wasn’t all bad, though. We had clients get reunified, get adopted, or age out and get a little peace and quiet. We helped younger kids stay with their families and helped adult clients keep their kids with them safely at home. We kept other clients away from dangerous people, both inside and outside of the system. I say “we” because I co-represented clients with amazing students who put their hearts into fighting for a person they just met. I was very proud of them and everything they accomplished.

But I missed writing. I’ve kept a child welfare blog for over a decade, but the maintenance of it became too much. I’ve switched to Substack to let someone else handle the overhead for a while. I have a few posts already in the works about foster care demographics, racial disparities, and significant differences in permanency rates across the state. I suspect we will have an exciting legislative session this year, so expect updates there, too.

I also want to talk more about what this job looks like. There are a lot of misconceptions about what representing foster children means, usually with assumptions that it is warm, fuzzy or frivolous. My kid clients are serious people with significant issues going on in their lives, and those issues have difficult and complicated legal causes and consequences. As much as I can, I want to share what it’s like to do this work.

My day job is a lawyer and a clinical instructor, so I can’t promise any set schedule. These posts will come when I feel frustrated or curious about something. I will try to be interesting and kind, but if I say something wrong, I welcome you to send me a message telling me to think harder. I have about five readers and I have missed you all.

If there’s anything you think I should write about, let me know.

-robert

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