Project Spotlight: Youth Engagement Project
This project helps legal professionals engage older youth in foster care in court and promote permanency and positive outcomes.
New Report Alert: Title IV-E Foster Care Claiming for Legal Representation for Parents and Children
The Center on Children and the Law has compiled a summary of foster claiming by state from FFY 2020 to FFY 2023.
New Report Alert: Learn about State Utilization of Title IV-E Funding To Support High-Quality Legal Representation
During the summer of 2024, national organizations partnered to better understand how this opportunity is being leveraged. A voluntary survey was shared broadly with state Court Improvement Programs, child welfare agencies, and legal advocates. We sought to understand how many states have tapped into this resource, their strategies for success, and the challenges they have faced. This report captures the results of that survey and identifies some themes and trends.
Let's Celebrate Unified Families All Year Long!
As part of the ABA Center on Children and the Law's focus on family unity, we celebrate not just the families who have been able to reunify, but also the importance of preventing removals and separations whenever possible and keeping families intact through advocacy, supports and services. Celebrating family unification means honoring parents and their communities of support who fight tirelessly every day to keep their families intact. Family Unification Heroes will be honored on an ongoing basis, to reflect the daily courage, strength and commitment of families to stay together.
What Draws to Child Welfare Practice: Questions to Inform Attorney Retention and Recruitment Strategies
This discussion guide provides strategies and questions to aid attorney retention and recruitment in the child welfare law field.
ABA Summary of ACF Final Rule: Foster Care Legal Representation
On May 10th, 2024 the Administration for Children, Youth and Families (ACYF) published the final rule for Foster Care Legal Representation. Read the Center on Children and the Law's summary of that final rule.
Prepetition Legal Representation Resources
Resources for legal advocates who represent families, typically parents, in the early stages of a child welfare case before a child is removed from the home and often before an abuse or neglect petition is filed.
Effects of Attorney Funding on Representation Quality for Children and Parents
This new assessment looks at the impact of funding changes on quality legal representation of children and parents in California child welfare cases.
The End TPR Initiative
The End TPR initiative serves as a centralized resource for communication and collaboration among impacted families, attorneys, social workers, and advocates across jurisdictions who are focused on examining and challenging the concept of involuntarily terminating parental rights (TPR) under law.
Shifting Federal Guidance on Mandatory Child Support Orders
Learn about recent federal government guidance encouraging states to reform state laws, regulations and practices largely to cease these child support collections.
