To a large extent in child welfare direct practice, policy can often be burdensome and counter-productive. As social activists, we like to think of ourselves as foot soldiers fighting the many shadow forces of society's ills that threaten the well being of children. The orders we receive often do not make sense, and if only those making decisions could see what we see on the ground level, many of those decisions would not be made. Just recently for example, the Health Information Privacy Protection Act was ordered to be enforced in all Health and Human Resource departments. Department staff, even case workers who double as intake officers charged with the responsibility of inputting health information, can no longer access that information at will, even in the course of their job, under state law. However, with caseloads averaging over a hundred cases per month, handling any single case in a timely manner requires multiple professionals freely accessing information at any given moment. While the intent of the law is laudable, for social workers like me in the Department of Juvenile Justice, its implementation was downright laughable. As such, cynicism might lead one to conclude policy-makers are out of touch with the realities of the child welfare system and more concerned with making policy than making a difference.

Fortunately, such reactions are unwarranted. With the Emory Summer Child Advocacy Program, I was privy to the pressures of public policy-making as an intern under the supervision of the Honorable Karen Baynes at the Carl Vinson Institute of Government. The ardor with which Judge Baynes examined and handled issues facing children in the juvenile justice system rivaled the most passionate of social workers. She not only allowed but offered insight and guidance on my summer research project, which was a critique of the juvenile justice system's handling of foster care children in delinquency proceedings.

I conducted a quasi-experimental study on the differences in delinquency sentencing between deprived and non-deprived juveniles. The project grew out of a concern that children with maltreatment in their histories, like those in the foster care system, are vulnerable to the workings of the juvenile justice system. The literature suggests that abused and neglected children may suffer from a myriad of psychological disorders, from depression to PTSD. Those disorders can be exacerbated by incarceration or punishments like boot camp. Worse, some studies have suggested foster care children are disproportionately represented in detention centers.

I was granted permission from the Clarke County Juvenile Court to review their records of deprived and delinquent juveniles in their jurisdiction. The results of a statistical analysis reveal that deprived children in Clarke County are not dissimilar from non-deprived children in the rates at which they were detained or otherwise sentenced. However, a within group analysis of the deprived group showed there are distinct differences in the sentencing patterns of children in familial foster care and non-familial foster care. The latter is less likely to be adjudicated delinquent and more likely to be referred to the court for a property crime. The former is more likely to be referred to the court for a "crime against persons" offense. These are only a short list of our findings on the nature of deprived children's vulnerability to the system.

I hope to use this information as the basis for an expanded study reviewing the outcomes of court proceedings of juveniles across the state. The information could be used by judges and child advocates in determining appropriate sentencing for "delinquents" that have been abused or neglected. As such, this summer epitomized how policy work can be an asset in the child welfare struggle.