School: Emory University, Robert T. Jones Scholar, University of

St. Andrews, Scotland, 2004-2005

Although I have worked at the Dekalb Child Advocacy Center for three years during my time as an undergraduate, this summer has been by far my most rewarding experience at the CAC. For the first time since I started here, I felt challenged by nearly every case assigned to me. By working on some of our most difficult cases, I was forced to argue with myself and, as a result, learned quite a bit about my own value system.

At the Dekalb CAC I spent the majority of my time working on child abuse and neglect cases. After receiving a file, I would typically call the Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS) caseworker to get an update on the case. From there, I would determine which parties to interview. Depending on the case, these parties could include teachers, camp counselors, therapists, wraparound service providers, day care staff, parents, doctors, or relatives. Additionally, I would always interview the child himself. Through these interviews, it became possible to formulate a recommendation for the court. After compiling all of the gathered information in a brief, I would provide a recommendation to the attorney and prepare for court. In court, I interviewed any children that were in attendance for the hearing and then presented my interview observations to the judge as a guardian ad litem testimony. The judge would typically ask for my opinion on how the case should proceed and always took my testimony as seriously as that of the attorneys. By speaking in court on a regular basis I feel very well prepared to confidently stand up in a law school class and recite the facts of a case.

Additionally, another intern and I worked on a research project exploring the differences between a guardian ad litem and a child advocate attorney in termination of parental rights (TPR) hearings. One of our attorneys will be presenting at a TPR conference in August, so we prepared several scenarios for her to put forward to the audience. Our research and subsequent paper will function as part of her presentation.

After working at the CAC for so long some of the cases became almost formulaic to me. Although each child should be treated as an individual, it is easy to recognize patterns in cases and to arrive at conclusions simply because those conclusions proved effective before. Presented with exceptional cases this summer, however, allowed me to develop new solutions to more challenging problems. Additionally, my experience with different state and private agencies and the relationships I developed with caseworkers over the years made it possible for me to consider more innovative ideas.

Some of the most difficult scenarios of the summer concerned custody modification hearings and determining where the best placement for the child would be. One of the more interesting permutations thrown in included considering whether a juvenile sex offender could be safely transitioned back into the home of the victim. Although he had not yet completed counseling, he was making progress in therapy, but was also beginning to act out at his current group home. It then became a question of what might be the best of two bad options and if it were possible to ensure the safety of the victim in the home. In another case I was asked to determine if it would be better for a child to live with his 20-year-old mother or 19-year-old father, neither of whom was making much progress on their case plans. With their separate attorneys refusing to cooperate with each other, I had to sit everyone down in an office and come up with a visitation schedule that both parents could agree on. On several occasions this summer, this one included, I felt almost like a family therapist -- allowing both parties to come to the table and air their grievances with me mediating.

Although potentially some of the most gut-wrenching cases, I actually felt the most rewarded when working on several TPR cases. I was lucky in that none of the TPR cases were heavily contested by a parent, so instead I was able to see several children set to be adopted into loving homes. One pre-adoptive mother actually blurted out during our interview how excited she was to finally raise a child on her own. Some of the other interns asked me how I could stomach being around abused and neglected children for so long, and it is because of cases like this one that I continue working in the juvenile court.