HOW LAWYERS HELP YOUTH’S PERSPECTIVES TO BE HEARD

The child welfare system and juvenile dependency courts serve families who are struggling with a variety of entrenched societal issues including poverty, mental health challenges or substance abuse. The twin aims of the juvenile dependency court are to protect children while attempting to preserve the family. When the family cannot be reunified, the court must find a home that will offer stability and care while the youth awaits adoption or guardianship.

To navigate the complicated legal framework, children and youth from newborn to 21 years old are provided courtappointed attorneys in California. Children’s attorneys advocate for their clients’ protection, safety, and physical and emotional well-being while defending the rights guaranteed to them by law. Recent studies have found that children with effective counsel were reunified with their biological parents at almost twice the rate of unrepresented children and were one-third less likely to change placements. The message is clear: Legal representation matters.

When youth are represented by a nonprofit law firm model, such as we have here in San Diego, they benefit from having an interdisciplinary team of attorneys and social work investigators serving their legal needs. The Children’s Legal Services of San Diego team is trained to build rapport with children who have suffered severe abuse and neglect in their homes and to minimize the trauma they endure through the foster care system by ensuring their viewpoints are heard. Attorneys hold attorney-client privilege and are able to build trust, learn what the clients have been through and what they would like their future to be. Our attorneys work to understand the youth’s cultural roots and family connections in order to preserve important ties.

For many years, children were not brought to court under the belief that shielding them from court proceedings was in their best interests.

Thankfully, those beliefs are changing. As former foster youth have grown up and spoken up about their experiences, they have taken up the rallying cry of “no decision about us, without us.” Physical presence in court proceedings keeps the youth’s perspective front and center and ensures they get a say in the decisions made about their lives. When the youth’s perspective is heard directly — whether it be on the issue of sibling or cultural bonds, relative placement, school choice, or parent and family visitation — these priorities are more often honored.

When children are removed from their parents, the law affords them many rights, such as a right to participate in court hearings, to live in the least restrictive living environment and to be placed with siblings. These rights are only theoretical, however, if we don’t have homes available for children and youth in need of care.

We need to increase the number of San Diegans who are willing to open their hearts and homes to children and youth in need of safe, loving and supportive homes. When a youth must be removed from an unsafe home, there must be a “safer” home available. In San Diego, this is currently a huge challenge. The child welfare system simply cannot adequately meet the community’s needs without enough available nurturing homes to care for youth on a temporary or permanent basis. This need is particularly acute for families willing to take in sets of siblings (to avoid the youth being split up from their beloved brothers and sisters). There is also a dire need for families who are willing to care for teens so they won’t languish in a congregate care facility (group home setting). We cannot allow youth to be institutionalized because of an insufficient availability of family homes.

San Diego also needs to increase capacity within our communities of color so that important cultural ties can be maintained and strengthened. Ideally, youth would have available resource families in their own neighborhoods willing to take them in, lift them up and support them while their parents get the help they need to safely reunite together as a family.

Recent changes to the law have loosened regulations that for years prevented some relatives and community members from qualifying as resource parents. If you have previously run into regulatory speed bumps, please reapply.

The need for resource parents is critical and we urge all San Diegans to please step forward to help care for the children and youth in our community. To do so, go to sdcares4kids.com.

When the foster youth’s perspective is heard directly during court proceedings — whether it be on the issue of sibling or cultural bonds, relative placement, school choice, parent and family visitation, and more — these priorities are more often honored.