This summer I had the privilege of interning at the Office of the Child Advocate Attorney for Dekalb County. My primary responsibilities were to review upcoming cases, determine their status, interview the DFCS caseworkers for updates on parent progress or for any other information I felt I needed to make a sound decision, and then to interview the children in their placement environment. I would then make recommendations to the court, keeping the best interests of the children foremost in mind.

Although it may sound as if my job was routine based upon this brief description, it was actually anything but so. Each case is really unique, with its own set of players, issues, and struggles. This is why it is so important that there be enough child advocates in our court system so that each child's case can be handled individually, with adequate time and attention given to the details. Unfortunately, there is often not enough time and caring human resources in order to make this a reality.

Unlike most interns in this field and in the Barton Clinic program, I am not a law student. Rather, I am a graduate student in theology with a working background and interest in both government and children. Although I was familiar with how government processes work in general, I did not know much about how our government is set up to work on behalf of our children. I enjoyed getting the opportunity to become acquainted with court procedures and Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) processes and policies, not just because it pertained directly to my role as a child advocate intern, but also because of my natural concern as a citizen of this county and state. Not being headed for a career in the legal field, it is my hope that I brought a slightly different perspective to my internship. As a citizen and taxpayer, as well as a human being, I am certainly more aware of the issues facing child advocacy work. I am sympathetic to the low pay, extremely high caseloads, emotional turmoil, and lack of appreciation that my child advocate superiors experience. I am also sympathetic to the many DFCS workers who are struggling to make a difference despite the bad reputation of the department in general. I am impressed with the time and care some of the judges continue to take with each individual case. There are truly some wonderful things being done to make life better for our nation's children. Likewise, there are some wonderful people out there trying to make a positive difference in a child's life. It was very heartening to have been able to work with these people. I was also impressed with the many non-profit resources and community agencies I was introduced to during my internship that are available to assist children and families in crises.

As in any large bureaucratic organization or process, however, many flaws exist. As a former federal government employee, I am certainly aware that the needs always exceed the funds available. I understand the importance of cost-benefit analyses. I am also very familiar with the role politics play in funding decisions. When I entered into this internship, though, one of my aims was to learn as much as I could about the existing process, and then look at it from the point of view of a child advocate, not a bureaucrat, politician, or taxpayer. I genuinely wanted to learn about the issues and try to make things better for our world's most precious resource: our children. Therefore, my suggestions for improving the systems designed to protect our children are not concerned with what is cost-effective for the state or what might be too burdensome for the court, DFCS, or other child advocate employees. I am solely concentrated on what is best for the children in our care.

First, it was very disturbing to me to see how some kids are moved around foster homes so frequently, sometimes as many as three or four different homes. Frequent transitions apparently occur in many cases, despite the enactment of programs such as the "3 Strikes" and "First Placement, Best Placement." Furthermore, siblings are more often separated than not. Frequent transitions also occur with DFCS caseworkers, child advocate attorneys, interns, etc. It is not uncommon for a child to have several different DFCS caseworkers. The way DFCS is currently set up to operate, a child can have several different caseworkers depending upon what phase they are in; for example, intake, investigation, adoption, or foster care. Turnover within these different areas of DFCS is already high, so you have children seeing different caseworkers already. When you add to that the fact that a child will have an entirely new caseworker each time he/she is moved through the process (intake, foster care, adoption), a child may have as many as 10 or 12 caseworkers in the span of just two or three years.

It probably goes without saying how important it is for our client - the child - to have some amount of consistency in his/her life from the very organizations trying to protect him/her. Children need stability. Attachment begins in the first days of life and gets more difficult as a child gets older, especially without stable and consistent care. A child is more likely to open up to someone he or she trusts and has gotten to know over time, someone that knows them as a person and not just as a name in a file folder. Sometimes the caseworker and other court personnel are the only familiarity a child has through an unstable time. This is also better for the foster families, who express frustration at having to communicate with so many different caseworkers over time.

If the process is going to be so long, it should at least be made easier. The children we serve have already had their growth development (cognitive, social, and emotional) disrupted. By subjecting them to frequent transitions of foster homes and the personnel entrusted to act in their best interest, we only further disrupt growth and attachment processes. I am sure this is not a new issue. Yet, it is one that we can easily do something about by some reorganization of existing systems and compliance and adherence to federal laws and the state programs designed to enact them.

There are also other "little" things that can be done to make things easier on children. I say "little" because these are things that to me would be simple to do - it really just requires common sense. First, keep DFCS open on weekends. Apparently this may have been the case at one time, but it is no longer so. If a child is picked up Friday evening on a deprivation complaint, the case is usually in court for a detentional hearing by Monday morning. However, no one (DFCS or child advocate personnel) has seen the child or read the police report prior to coming to court. An agency as large as DFCS ought to put caseworkers on duty 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. A weekend complaint can then be investigated thoroughly, the child interviewed, and sound recommendations made to the judge in court on Monday morning.

Another simple suggestion is to make all files on cases electronically accessible while in the courtroom or out in the field. As a child advocate intern, I relied on DFCS caseworkers more than any other resource except the child him/herself. Only the DFCS caseworker could supply me with updated placement information, or inform me of the progress of a mother toward completing her goals necessary for a safe return of her children. There were many times when I did not get this information in time to see a child before a court hearing or to recommend whether or not a child should be allowed to return to her or his mother because I had no idea whether or not she had taken all the steps necessary in order to get her children back. If DFCS workers and child advocate attorneys had laptops with them in the field that allowed them to access case information, it would allow the exchange of needed information to happen much more easily and quickly than it does currently. I realize this would be an expensive venture to undertake, but it would increase productivity substantially.

On a similar note, the process for shuffling around the paper case files that is used in some of the courtrooms needs to be updated. I spent many precious work hours looking for case files, which I needed in order to start investigating a case. Our files could be in one of a dozen places: an intern's mailbox (we had 23 interns this summer); the courtroom; with the judge's secretary; with the clerk of the court; with records people downstairs, or in one of many slots in the child advocate's office. From what I understand, processes vary from courtroom to courtroom and county to county. An efficient process should be in place in all courtrooms across the state.

A third "simple" suggestion is increased communication. First, attorneys (and DFCS workers) need to communicate with each other when inside the courtroom. There is often quite a bit of courtroom "down" time that could be put to good use. Because we often have trouble contacting DFCS caseworkers, this would be a good time for the child advocate attorneys to talk with those caseworkers who don't seem to return phone calls. I have also noticed that the child advocate interns and attorneys sometimes had information that the DFCS attorney and caseworker did not have - information from the child or foster family that would be important in assessing the case. While this information sometimes came out when making presentations before the judge, often it did not.

Obviously, like any other intern in the Barton program, I believe more money needs to be appropriated for child advocates. If we had more people working in the field, we could better keep track of those children that seem to "fall through the cracks" of the court and DFCS systems. I heard many horror stories this summer, as I'm sure other interns did, of children that have been neglected and forgotten by the system that is supposed to work to save them. Many of these children ended up dead. There need to be more child advocates in our court system - people dedicated to making sure that not one of these children ever "fall through the cracks" of a system designed to protect them. While additional child advocates should and would see each child on a regular basis, they could also broaden their scope to include assessments of the parent with whom the child will one day be returning to live. Currently, interns in my office are directed to never interview a parent. We are only to inquire about a parent's progress through DFCS. As stated earlier, this causes huge problems because DFCS workers are hard to reach (and some will not return phone calls at all), and we often have no idea of a parent's progress until the court hearing. I think it is impossible to make a good decision on whether or not a child is safe to return home when we have no knowledge of what such a home environment might now be like. I can't know what is in the best interest of a child, in some instances, unless I know for myself what the home environment will now be like. By relying on DFCS for that information, we are no longer the child advocates - DFCS caseworkers are. I was continually amazed throughout my internship at just how much "power" a DFCS caseworker has. I believe the DFCS worker is the single most important player in the courtroom because they are the ones who hold all the information. In most cases I saw this summer, the judge simply accepted the opinions and recommendations of the caseworker verbatim, and there were even times when this was done despite having information from the child advocate that the proposed DFCS course of action may not necessarily be the best one.

As hopefully this paper illustrates, I have learned a lot during my internship with the Dekalb County Juvenile Court. One issue I continue to struggle with is my opinion regarding removing children from the home. I have always believed that the best thing for a child was to remove them from any home, parent, or situation, where they are being abused, especially physically and sexually. I believe that parental rights should be terminated early so that children can be adopted quicker, since it becomes harder to adopt children the older they get. My philosophy seems to match that of some judges, but other judges challenged me about my beliefs, so I continue to keep an open mind regarding that issue. Some judges are of the opinion that the most traumatic thing that can happen to a child is to be removed from the home environment, no matter how bad that environment may be. As stated earlier, I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Although my career upon obtaining my graduate degree may have nothing to do with the legal world, I know I have benefited immensely from this program. I know that I want to become a foster parent someday, when my circumstances allow me to. I also want to continue as a volunteer child advocate, as my time and class schedule permits. Perhaps most of all, I am a better informed citizen, and that will make me a better child advocate and an all around better person.