Enjoy our first newsletter of the Family Justice Initiative (FJI)! This quarterly newsletter will highlight FJI resources that you can use in your work.
What Does it Mean to Provide High-Quality Legal Representation for Parents and Children?
by Cathy Krebs and Kathleen Creamer
The Family Justice Initiative (FJI) has one overarching goal: “To ensure every child and every parent has high-quality legal representation when child welfare courts make life-changing decisions about their families.” To define “high-quality legal representation”, FJI has worked with child and parent lawyers from around the country to develop a list of the fundamental attributes of high-quality legal representation for children and parents; these attributes are the cornerstone of FJI’s work. The attributes go beyond the assumed basics of representation such as competency and knowledge of the law, rules of procedure, negotiation and trial skills.
The attributes of high-quality legal representation for children and parents include two sections, one for individual representation and one for systemic attributes. The individual representation section includes focuses on legal representation, out of court advocacy, cultural humility, scope of representation and special considerations for children’s lawyers. The system attributes include sections on caseloads and compensation, interdisciplinary model, diversity and inclusion, timing of appointment, support and oversight, and accountability/use of data.
Of special note is that these attributes, which are based in large part on focus groups with both parents and children’s lawyers, demonstrate that the elements of high-quality legal representation for parents and children are the same. Both parent and child lawyers need reasonable caseloads, both benefit from multi-disciplinary legal team, and both need to provide in and out of court advocacy. Children and parents should expect their lawyers to treat them with respect, with a focus on building relationships and with cultural humility. The attributes are instrumental in outlining some of the critical information that lawyers should understand, for example brain development and trauma, to best engage with their clients. As more attorneys become familiar with the attributes we hope to build consistency around the country on what high-quality legal representation means.
These attributes can also be helpful in accessing and guiding the use of IV-E funding to augment states funding for legal representation because they provide concrete guidance on how to invest the IVE resources to make improvements in the quality of legal representation. As happened in California, for example, the attributes can serve as a framework for practice improvements and be included agreements required to access federal funding.
While the attributes include a focus on the importance of a high quality multi-disciplinary team to provide legal representation, the attributes provide guidance for individual lawyers as well. Though multi-disciplinary teams are ideal, the attributes are written to instruct individual lawyers on all aspects of how they can provide high-quality legal representation.
You can find all of the attributes here along with a 2017 Survey of Parents’ and Children’s Attorney Compensation and Supports.
FJI also has advocacy guides to support your work, including:
- Out-of-Court Advocacy Guide – Family Justice Initiative
- In-Court Advocacy Guide
- How-to Guides for the Systemic Attributes
The authors thank the FJI Executive Team for their input on this article.