From the MI Children's Law Discussion List:
Hello CLS,
I thought some of you would be interested in further news about our Detroit
Center for Family Advocacy. It opened for business in July and now has an
excellent staff of three lawyers, a social worker, a parent advocate and an
office manager/legal assistant. The central premise is that legal
services to family members, assisted by a social worker and a parent advocate,
could divert children who might otherwise have to enter foster care or hasten
the exit of other children from foster care to permanency. In our type
one cases, there is a finding of child abuse or neglect by the department and
they refer cases to us. By using legal tools, like personal protection
orders, guardianships, establishing parentage, custody orders, etc., the CFA
attempts to make the child safe within the nuclear or extended family without
resort to foster care. We are also serving a second type of case where
legal advocacy can help remove the obstacles to moving a child to adoption or
other permanency, thus allowing the child protection case to be closed.
Examples of that are helping a grandmother divorce a spouse she hasn't seen in
15 years so she can adopt, assisting the potential permanent caregiver with
guardianships or benefits; pursuing expungements, establishing paternity which
opens up lots of options for a child on the paternal side, etc.
We have developed a really good partnership with the Wayne County Department of
Human Services who are also interested in protecting and providing for children
within their family network as much as possible. We think this model
could save considerable public funds. Our hypothesis is that for every
dollar spent on these preventive legal services the system will save $10 in
foster care and related costs. We have a nice evaluation plan for the CFA
in cooperation with the Center for Children and Youth Justice of Seattle,
Washington and funded by Jon and Bobbe Bridge. Vivek Sankaran of our faculty is
the project director. We'll tell you more as we gain experience and get some
data.
In the meantime, I thought you might be interested in yesterday's news articles
from the two Detroit papers. For a "real person" feel, please check
out the video on the Detroit News site.
http://www.freep.com/article/20090930/NEWS06/909300352/1322/Lack-of-legal-help-keeping-many-parents--kids-apart
http://www.detnews.com/article/20090930/METRO01/909300347/1409/METRO/Center-helps-kids-stay-with-families
You can find more about the Detroit Center for Family Advocacy at our web site
too.
All the best,
Don
Child Advocacy Law Clinic
University of Michigan Law School
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1215
Ph: 734-763-5000
Fax: 734-647-4042
If you want peace, work for justice.
www.law.umich.edu/childrenandthelaw
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