The Partnership was founded in 2005 by a 2003 statute and was focused on coordinating state services around bettering children’s mental health, serving as a resource to the state agencies, and establishing social, emotional learning standards. It is now a state task force with experts from many different fields and representatives from each major child-serving entity in the state. It is unique in that it does not sit within a state agency, but instead operates externally with a nonprofit that acts as a fiscal partner. They aim to impact legislation around children’s mental health and pilot projects to test innovation.
Looking for ways to better children’s mental health requires Amanda and the Partnership to focus on many issues: juvenile justice, housing, security, food insecurity, education, child welfare involvement, racism, and much more. If a child’s family is facing stressors such as an eviction, this of course impacts the child’s mental health as well as the adults’. We can better understand mental health for children by looking at their families and the broader circumstances of their lives. Amanda's goal is for the Partnership to also address the mental health needs of parents and thus have a greater impact on their children’s lives.
There are times that mental health issues may be mistaken for behavior issues, which may trigger discipline rather than treatment, and that is especially true for children of color. This can lead to Black or brown youth being expelled from school rather than getting the support they need. Education lawyers may get involved in these individual cases, but it is rarer to have a mental health lawyer involved.
Racism can also have an impact on a child’s mental health. A child who experiences racism is a victim of an adverse traumatic experience, of course. But when a child witnesses racism in their communities, that also has an impact. A child may witness extreme trauma due to systemic racism and then be expected to go to school the next day. We often fail to see that behavior, learning, and general wellness are all at risk. Racism also negatively impacts white children because they are unconsciously (and sometimes consciously) being taught that they are better than others, which clashes with what they may learn as they grow older and what they see going on in the news. Systems need to recognize this, and lawyers need to recognize this to best represent children.
Amanda is excited to see trends of more trauma-informed lawyering, but it is still rarer than it should be. It is critical, Amanda explains, to understand the impact and experiences of trauma and see how it directly impacts children and how children present themselves to the systems that lawyers and other advocates are trying to help them navigate.
"If I had one piece of advice for students thinking about [working on mental health issues], it would be to always pursue internships—they shape your future and your perspective." Amanda always had an internship going on during her graduate program to see what was happening in the real world, and these internships took her through education, child welfare, and traditional family law—and all of this informed her current job and how she sees the broader systems. She then saw the medical-legal partnership model and how doctors and lawyers join forces to meet clients' needs to help, for example, a child suffering from asthma because they live in a house with mold that the landlord will not address. Now a national movement, medical-legal partnerships are in many places across the country, but Amanda noticed that they were rarely focused on mental health. Inspired, she designed a proposal and won an Equal Justice Works fellowship to create the first medical-legal partnership focused on children’s mental health in Illinois. The model worked, and the project continued even after the end of the original two-year fellowship when funding followed.
After four years in the mental health medical-legal partnership, Amanda turned to work on the policy side of these issues. She wanted to link the different parts of the systems and create bigger ripples of change. She had planned to work in direct representation for a longer period of time but had a youth client who was killed at 16-years-old due to gang involvement. This was a transformative experience for Amanda that made her realize she wanted to pursue the policy change she had always thought about. For her client, she had wanted to find a pathway forward for him that didn’t mean he had to be part of a gang to live in his neighborhood. She was not successful, and his loss had a significant impact on Amanda's mental health, leading to loss of sleep and mental fog. Recognizing these reactions as secondary trauma, this was a wake-up call for her to make her move over to policy.
Amanda is always bravely willing to be open and comfortable sharing her own personal experiences like the loss of her client. It is part of her belief and example as a leader in the mental health space with lived experience. People with lived experiences with these issues do not often reach the leadership positions she is in. She cherishes her opportunity to be an example. In addition to what she saw with her client, Amanda's experience in her own family with mental health challenges gave her insights to how the systems worked and how different aspects of the system should better come together.
Amanda is full of hope and fervor for other fearless lawyers to advocate, to join systems, and to break down silos between systems for children. It is critical to engage with people in every agency that works with your clients and think about how these systems can work together. Everyone can be fearless to change the system, not just lawyers.