Our new students start today!
Here's what we're working on this semester.
It’s the first day of the fall semester. Sixteen new law students will be joining us this year to represent clients and help make their lives a little better. It’s an exciting time.
I’ve been an attorney for kids in some capacity for fifteen years — first in my law school’s clinic, then (indirectly) as a Guardian ad Litem Program Attorney, and now at the Children & Youth Law Clinic. It’s hard for people to imagine what an attorney for kids might do. There are marginally funny videos online that suggest we haggle with parents over juice pouches and naps. Sometimes, I guess we do — when those are real problems. I’ve certainly had foster parents limit access to food, and I’ve had clients who couldn’t sleep because they had to catch a transportation van to school at 5:00 a.m. and weren’t allowed back into the foster home until after 7:00 p.m. Sleep is important.
Each semester, our students write transition memos for next class, describing the clients and their goals for their cases. I went through the summer memos and consolidated the goals into a list. Here’s what we’re working on this semester.
Family and Social Relationships
Goals: Be adopted, be reunified, close the case in guardianship; visit father, mother, uncle, siblings; stop visits with mother, father, siblings; regain custody of own child; keep custody of own child; prevent violence from an ex-partner.
When you get foster kids in a room and ask them what they would change about the system, “sibling visits” and “family contact” are always on the list. They want to be safe, not scattered.
The same is true for our clients. Maintaining family connections is almost always their highest priority goal. We navigate reunification case plans, motion to reopen guardianship orders to establish sibling visits (the older orders often lack explicit terms), negotiate with adoptive families, and motion for sibling visits under the new 39.4024 statute. Thank you to the legislature for creating that, but please clarify who has to drive.
Other clients want to stop contact and relationships that are unhealthy for them. We handle motions to terminate visits and change goals, petitions to terminate parental rights, petitions for domestic violence and Chapter 39 injunctions, and adoptions.
Education & Independence
Goals: Transition to independent living at 18; graduate high school, vocational school, or college; get a job and become financially independent; move into own apartment.
A significant amount of our time is spent helping older clients plan for turning 18. There is a lot of paperwork involved in become an adult, and some case managers just email it to the kids and expect them to fill it out. We go over it with them, line by line. Some foster parents are incredibly supportive, but others want kids out of their house the morning they turn 18. We’ve packed boxes into our cars as foster parents sat and watched.
Many foster youth are behind in school and can’t see themselves spending years catching up. We’ve spent months trying to locate school records or worked with the school system to get clients into credit recovery or accelerated programs.
We also have to deal with new adults in their lives who aren’t always helpful or kind. Just this year, we have negotiated leases, mediated landlord-tenant disputes, navigated wage theft and harassment at jobs, talked to insurance adjusters, and dealt with exploitive auto mechanics. Unscrupulous people don’t realize foster kids have way more experience than your average 18-year-old at recognizing when adult professionals are trying to take advantage of them.
Placement & Living Arrangements
Goals: Stay in or move to new foster home; move to family-like setting; stay at current program; get out of jail; discharge from crisis stabilization unit.
For clients under age 18, resolving placement issues is also high on their list. Some foster homes are good, others are not. Sometimes the problem is the foster parent, another child in the home (including the foster parent’s kids), or some adult in the foster parent’s life. Many of our older clients are in congregate care or an institution and just want to be with a family.
Before the creation of the 39.522 placement change procedures, we could only ask a judge to find a placement inappropriate under the judicial review section (with no remedy other than DCF having to promise to find a better place) or identify a potential placement and hope DCF will approve the home study. Now we have staffings, DCF review, and better court options. We work outside of court with whoever is funding or licensing the placement to try to improve it or shut it down when necessary. And we meet with clients’ friends and their families to find people who already know the kid and may be willing to take them in.
Support & Benefits
Goals: Obtain SSI, Section 8, Food Stamps, APD benefits; appeal SSI reduction, overpayment, termination; maintain EFC, PESS.
Another large part of our time is spent trying to apply for, maintain, or challenge the wrongful termination of various public benefits. If you have a job, you can spend your money on whatever you want. Public benefits, though, are typically designated for a single purpose, which means you have to apply for food (SNAP), housing (EFC, Section 8), transportation (bus pass, STS), medical (Medicaid, APD HCBS Waiver), and education supports (tuition waiver, PESS) separately. You then spend the equivalent of a full time job trying to meet all the conflicting requirements of the programs. If you’re denied or terminated, you have to figure out the process for challenging that. Sometimes its a meeting, sometimes its a formal hearing, sometimes it’s quick, and sometimes it takes years of work. I don’t know how anyone who needs these programs actually navigates them on their own.
Health and Personal Development
Goals: See an orthodontist, therapist, psychiatrist; get on birth control, get prenatal care; have more independence; get a cell phone, tablet, laptop; get a passport, go to Disney World, visit family out of state; get a piercing.
The medical goals in this group can be the most frustrating. Seeing a doctor involves calling, explaining why you need to be seen, confirming insurance, scheduling a time, doing any necessary prep work (like “don’t eat after midnight”), remembering the appointment date, getting to the appointment on time, navigating the medical office, openly sharing your issues with the doctor and having them believe you, listening and understanding the recommendations, booking a follow-up, telling the doctor which pharmacy to send your prescriptions to, going to the pharmacy and doing all the steps needed to get them, paying any co-pays, and then actually doing the treatment at home as directed.
Foster kids don’t have one person who is responsible for walking them through all that. It goes wrong in new ways every single time.
The independence goals are equally frustrating. For the most part, placements get to decide the rules. But the agency and DCF also set terms in child placement agreements, which are contracts with the provider. These terms can limit kids’ access to electronics, extracurriculars, contact with friends, set curfews, and just about anything else. The kids don’t typically have input into these agreements and there’s no clear process to update them and ensure they’re fair.
Lastly, the piercing goal is relatively straightforward. Kids in Florida must have consent from a parent or legal guardian to get a piercing. If the child is under age 16, the parent or guardian must be physically present when it’s done. Judges aren’t on the list, so there’s no motion for a piercing. We work with the agency or the parents to sign the consent forms when appropriate, and we warn the kids of the risks of having a friend do it in their bathroom. The biggest fights I’ve seen involved families from different cultures disagreeing on whether to pierce a baby’s ears. Those were all-out wars.
Legal Actions
Goals: Prosecute theft case; comply with probation terms; expunge criminal record; seek naturalization; clear driving record; change name or gender marker; make legal arrangements for children while in military; find alternatives to probate guardianship; participate in court hearings.
While we’re doing all those other things, we also make sure any ancillary legal issues are being resolved. We help crime victims work with the police and prosecutors, and we help our clients who were convicted stay in compliance with their probation terms so they can successfully move past that part of their lives.
We work with kids who want to change their names. Some of them were adopted and returned to DCF and want to reclaim their birth name. Others had an abusive parent and want to use the other parent’s name. Some are trans or have cultural or religious reasons for wanting to use a different name than the one given to them. Name changes in Florida require a court order and some paperwork with Vital Statistics, but many of our clients were born out of state and even out of the country. That can add a lot of interesting complications.
Relatedly, we handle straightforward immigration matters — special immigrant juvenile visas, green cards, naturalization, and the like. Even simple immigration cases can be lifechanging.
Rarely, but more common since the Regis Little Act, our clients are subject to guardianships. Our ability to do things on their behalf is legally limited in those cases, but we maintain the relationship and file challenges to the guardianship terms when appropriate. There have been recent high-profile cases of guardian abuse in Florida, so we don’t abandon them just because a guardian has been appointed.
Most of our students don’t have a full idea of what “representing kids” means until they start to do it. Most of our clients have multiple advocacy goals at any time, and a complex case may have something from every category above. It’s a full-time job that I’m excited to introduce new students to every year. Here’s to a great semester!