School: Emory University School of Law

This summer has been a great experience. I have developed personally from working with others interested in child advocacy. This summer I learned so much about the less talked about deprivation side of juvenile law. Before working with the clinic, I did not realize the extensiveness of the deprivation side of juvenile law. My previous experiences with child law dealt exclusively with the delinquency side of juvenile law.

When I first began I was really nervous. I did not know what to expect on home visits with the children. I was not sure if I would ask the correct interview questions. I knew that some of these children had been through some pretty difficult things, and I did not want to bring up sensitive moments in their lives. But after training at the Child Advocacy Center, I felt confident in my ability to successfully interview these children. My supervising Investigator, Ericka McClam was great. She assured us that this process would get easier and she would be there to help us, if needed. During my first week there, she escorted me and my other team members on a couple of home visits. We each went as a group and then discussed our thoughts at the office. This was perhaps the most helpful exercise because we each wrote up individual notes about the interview and then shared them. This was useful because we compared our different notes and Ericka critiqued them. Soon after this, we were left on our own to conduct these interviews. There were certain stipulations to the home visits: we could not interview anyone under the age of 10 by ourselves and we could not handle any sexual abuse cases. The sexual abuse cases required a specialized forensic interview, which we were not qualified to give. The interviews became easier as the summer progressed. By the end of the summer, I sometimes had two to three home interviews per week. Sometimes, I would have to conduct telephone interviews. These were just as fun. Overall, I would have to say this was the most exciting part of the summer.

The other part of my summer was attending court with Child Advocate, Dorothy Murphy. This was a rewarding experience because I was able to see how my hard investigation panned out. While at court, I was able to see what happened to these children that I had learned so much about during my investigation. If one of the cases I was working on went to court on a day different than my assigned case, I was allowed to attend court. My role in court was to assist Mrs. Murphy with copying, typing, and court appearances. Sometimes, if the Investigator or Mrs. Murphy had not interviewed the child, I would have to do a brief interview. Of course this means that court could become very hectic at times. During the summer, two judges sat on the bench. These two judges had two very different styles. One judge primarily wanted to make sure that the needs of children were taken care of. He wanted to make sure that all possible resources were explored before terminating parental rights. He would often question the DFACS workers about their efforts to place the child back with the mother. This judge required a lot of evidence in order to terminate a parent's rights. Sadly, most of the time the parent's rights were terminated.

The other judge, on the other hand, required a greater abundance of information just to determine a child deprived. This judge threatened to give a four month old child that had a skull and wrist fracture back to the parents due to lack of evidence. The thought of this scared not only me but the child advocate and the SAAG. Eventually, the judge found the child deprived but gave DFACS a strict guideline to follow or else she would place the child back with the parents. This was perhaps the most difficult case I encountered. Overall, the court appearances taught me a great deal about the juvenile court process.

It was a pleasure to participate in this program. I would definitely do it all again, if I had the opportunity. I look forward to learning more about child law, this fall in the Barton Child Law and Policy Clinic.