My first week as an intern was pretty uneventful. I had been assigned to Christopher Yokom and he was in court on Tuesday, my first official day. I honestly did not have a good idea about what was going on. Mr. Yokom did his best to explain it to me but of course the explanations were brief because we were in court. I was able to read some of the case files while the cases were being heard. I learned that there are three main types of hearings, probable cause, adjudication, and review.

The judicial process seems to be a bit hectic because although the child advocate and the judge remain in the same courtrooms the Special Assistant to the Attorney General lawyers, the parents attorneys, and the Department of Family and Child Services case managers were constantly changing courts in order to follow their cases. Additionally, there were so many cases in one day that there was no way to talk to all of the children and get an in depth communication about what the children really wanted and needed. All the child advocate attorneys seem to be very passionate about assisting their clients and it is really a crime that they cannot spend more time on individual cases. Their case load is so packed that it is not humanly possible to spend the necessary time on each child's case.

While in court I noticed that the parent's attorneys are also dealing with a large caseload and it seems as if they do not really know their clients as well as they should. Sometimes it seemed as though the parent's attorneys had not even reviewed the cases before court. I have developed an interest in possibly being a parent's advocate when I graduate. A lot of these parents have no idea as to what the court is expecting them to do in order to get their children back and their attorneys are not always helpful.

There are a great number of parents who have lost their children because of substance abuse. Even more disturbing is that a lot of these parents refuse to come to court and fight for their children. There are too many grandparents raising their grandchildren. Unfortunately, some of these children have behavioral and emotional problems and become a handful for their grandmothers. I was even more bothered to see how many mothers just continue to have children even after DFACS has removed their other children. I know that sterilization has been posed as a solution but it is a very sensitive issue and a lot of personal freedoms and constitutional rights would be bound up in any litigation or legislation along these lines; but, there has to be a better way to keep these mothers from having 5, 6, 8, 9 children and then abandoning them to the state.

I did some research for Chris Yokom. He has a 2 year old client who has been with her foster parents almost since birth. Of course the foster parents want to adopt but recently the maternal relatives have shown up. They had previously been unreachable but now they want to fight for custody. There is a possibility that the maternal relatives are only after the money that the state could provide. The foster parents are very upset and Chris asked me to research the rights of foster parents versus the rights of relatives. So far it seems that foster parents really have no rights to the child and they must abide by whatever DFACS decides. DFACS generally favors the biological relatives unless they are completely unfit. I seriously question whether or not this policy is always in the best interests of the child.

I also spent a great deal of time attempting to locate some case workers in order to follow up on the status of the children in their care. Case workers are just about the hardest people to track down. They spend a great deal of time in court, are out at various placements, and their voice mailboxes are always full. Thus far this has been the must frustrating part of my job and it can take me days and even a week or more to get the case worker on the phone. Another source of frustration has been the frequency with which case workers are rotated off of cases or have left the department. Often times it will seem like the child that they were supposed to be watching over is now left in limbo because no one is following closely enough.

By the fourth week I began to work more closely with the newest Child Advocate Melinda Shephard. She does not generally ask me to prepare her cases by writing notes about where the case has been and what is supposed to come out of the upcoming hearing. However, when she is in court, she trusts me to do a great deal of things in order to assist her. I have interviewed children to find out what they would like to have happen. I have spoken with parents and caseworkers to gather more updated information about the case. At least twice a week I go to the records room and retrieve petitions or get copies of old information about the case.

I went out to visit 4 children at the Carrie Steele Pitts group home and I was pleasantly surprised by the facilities. The children really seemed to be well cared for and the director of the group home really took the time to explain the children's situation and what was being done for them. DFACS has been more than helpful to her in meeting the needs of the children so it makes me wonder what the problem with DFACS is when it comes to the children that are in the court system.

I have spent a great deal of time working with the CASA volunteers these past two weeks. I don't think that I am fully decided on whether or not they are useful. I think that the idea is wonderful. It allows people to get involved who are not a part of the court system and it can free up some of the time that DFACS case managers might spend on a case. The last couple of times that the child advocate needed a report from them they did not have it. They also did not inform the child advocate that they were not prepared. I know that they are definitely short on volunteers and that this can cause some significant problems. I just wonder about the communication network.

Another concern that I have with CASA is the way that they are treated by the parent's attorneys. A lot of the time, the CASA report is not favorable to the parent and there can be a great deal of animosity directed at the volunteer. I wonder if they are trained to expect this because they seem to hold up well on the stand when they are being questioned by the attorneys.

I have also filled out a lot of visitation referral forms for parents to be able to visit their children. There has to be a better way to do this. There are not enough transporters and I have heard too many stories in court about how they parents were not able to visit because the children could not get to the center. How incredibly sad!! If you are only able to visit your child once a month and they somehow miss that, a month is an interminable amount of time for a child to have to wait to see their parents. I don't understand why visitation is not a priority when reunification is the goal 80% of the time.

I spent a great deal of time in court with both attorneys. It is interesting to see how different judges handle situations based on what they believe to be the best interest of the child. There was one case where the mother was living in Atlanta but when things did not work out with the father she moved back to Detroit. The paternal grandmother volunteered to keep the child until the mother got settled, basically for the whole summer. When the mother returned to pick up her child the grandmother had filed a petition for deprivation and was awarded temporary legal custody. Because the mother had been going back and forth the judge found that the child was deprived and required the mother to return to court with more proof in 3 months that she was financially stable and had suitable housing. I disagreed with the decision because I felt that it would be more disruptive to the child who would have to be removed from school in three months time. I also felt that the grandmother had clearly taken advantage of the mother's situation. In court, the grandmother stood up and announced that she did not want the child but the judge said that the proceedings must continue once begun. In another situation with a different judge, the parental rights had been terminated and the child was adopted. Apparently though the adoptive family and the biological family knew each other and the child had contact with her biological family. When the adoptive mother passed, the biological sister stepped in and took the child home with her. The adoptive sister and the biological sister ended up in court because the biological sister wanted to retain custody. The judge could have dismissed the case and awarded custody to the adoptive family because the biological sister had no rights to the child. However, he allowed them to go to mediation and they worked out an arrangement that awarded custody to the adoptive sister but allowed visitation to the biological family.

Both of these cases demonstrated to me that there is not really a clear cut definition of best interest of the child. I am not really sure how that definition could be worked out but it seems as though that should be a priority for the judges who are deciding daily what that means.