School: Emory University School of Law

This summer has been an interesting experience in several aspects. I have been presented with the challenges of learning an area of law, and dealing with them in real life circumstances. Furthermore, my eyes have been opened to the broader themes and problems in the juvenile justice system and child advocacy at large.

As a law student, I was assigned to work with both an investigator and a child advocate attorney. Both positions involve some legal aspects to them. Working for the investigator involved activities such as being familiar with the foster parents' "bill of rights" and the proper way to draft and serve subpoenas. One of the interesting legalities of the juvenile justice system is that the child has a right to be present at any of the deprivation hearings. Many people are not aware of this, or if they are they do not want to enforce this right because it involves more work on an already overloaded schedule. One DFCS case manager brought up an interesting point in the case of a runaway that it may not be in the child's best interest to come to court. This may have been looking for an excuse to not bring the child to court, but it has interesting connotations concerning the axis upon which a child's rights and his or her best interests meet or diverge. As someone involved with the legal process, it is the responsibility of the people in the system to enforce the child's rights, but what does it do to the child advocate attorney's job of representing the child's best interests? I do not think that this was a case in which this was a problem, but it is an interesting hypothetical question to look out for in the future. I believe that it will usually be in the child's best interest to come to court and be allowed to sit in on the proceedings. There were many times when I was at court and the child was present, but was never brought into the court room. Having visited many children over the summer, I have noticed a trend in one aspect of their attitude. The children almost all exhibit a sense of learned helplessness. They tend to feel that they have no control over their present or future. Court is a mysterious process and they usually do not understand what is going on. I think a better effort to explain to children in foster care why they are going through this experience and find a way for them to be more involved in the process of going through the system. When the children feel that they have no control over their lives, then they might take the attitude that it does not matter what they do, or whether they try in school or stay out of gangs, and many other things. Giving them an understanding of what is going on, and some kind of sense of control might make the difference in helping them succeed in other aspects of their lives.

Interestingly enough, working with the attorney provided court time and an understanding of what the attorneys do in the courtroom and an overview of the process, but did not involve much hands on legal work. A legal background was useful in understanding court procedures, but came in handy more in serving subpoenas to people who did not want to accept them, explaining legal processes to foster parents or children who did not understand what kind of hearing was coming up, or enforcing rights of children.

Other than poverty, two of the greatest social problems contributing to the increase of deprivation cases are teen pregnancy and drugs. One of the cases passing through the office involved a pregnant 14 year old girl who had been born when her mother was 14. When children are having children, they are much more likely to drop out of school, become dependent on others for money and support, and encounter an increased number of stressors which can lead to abuse, depression and drug use in the future. One of the best ways to fight this problem is with sex education. Right now sex education in schools seems unlikely due to the current political atmosphere. Unfortunately, the policy of teaching abstinence in schools is not realistic if trying to encourage positive results. People will have sex if they so desire, but teaching ways in which one can protect him or her self against disease and pregnancy might result in safer sex and hopefully fewer children in foster care and unsafe family conditions.

The problem with drugs is trickier. This is a problem that goes far beyond the confines of juvenile advocacy and reaches areas such as law enforcement, schools, pharmaceutical industries, healthcare and many more. Everyone is trying to address this problem in their own way, but the fact that the effects of drug use are so far reaching indicates that it will take communication and cooperation amongst the many different industries and populations in the United States. Drug use exists in all economic tiers, but the poor bear the brunt of drug use and the destruction its brings. Crystal methamphetamine is a clear example of this phenomenon. The poor use drugs that are far more destructive on their bodies, lives, and family. The seemingly easy answer to this is to create harsher penalties for drugs possession, use and distribution. However, this could create more problems than it solves. When you imprison people for using drugs, this exposes them to more people who use or sell drugs, or are involved with many worse things. Prison and juvenile detention often turn out worse criminals than they take in because they have now lived in harsher conditions and have more contacts. Furthermore, you have children now in foster care, which makes the children less prone to finish school and more likely to be troubled in ways that could create a cycle with drug use. Conspiracy laws about drug use can also be devastating on communities and cast an overly broad net when looking for people to lock up for drug related offenses. Possible other approaches to take to the problem include early educational programs such as Head Start that are shown to keep kids in school longer and reduce rates of drug use later on. Another possible approach is to be more careful with over the counter drugs such as Sudafed that are known to be key ingredients in drugs like crystal meth. However, these are simply small steps that can be taken, and there needs to be a much stronger emphasis on rehabilitation rather than punishment for drug use.

Efficiency is one of the juvenile court's greatest problems. It is easy to forget that most everyone is there for the same purpose, because there seems to be an adversarial feeling amongst the different parties at times. There was a feeling of frustration towards the Department of Child and Family Services amongst people at the Child Advocacy Center because of case managers not returning phone calls, or being unwilling to accept information about runaways, or lying about whether they were managing certain cases and other things. Everyone at DFCS is busy, as are people in all aspects of the juvenile court and advocacy, but the lack of prompt communication and willingness to help each other out ends up hurting the children more than anyone else. Another efficiency issue is computer skills. This will probably be solved with a new generation that will be coming into the field, but lack of computer skills wastes a lot of time. Slow typing is something that simply takes practice and a willingness to learn, but practical skills such as using Microsoft word or excel, or taking paper documents and transferring them to PDF files could be very useful. A lot of time (and pages) are lost faxing documents and having to go to DFCS to pick up documents. Electronic copies of psychological evaluations and assessments and case plans can be e-mailed in a matter of seconds and could save a lot of time and frustration for many parties. CPRS is a step in the right direction, but it is rarely updated and therefore often of little use. However, when it is up to date it is very useful.