School: University of Colorado School of Law

Confucius said "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." This summer, I had the opportunity to move beyond classroom lectures and beyond observations to actual understanding. Working at Atlanta Legal Aid Society (ALAS) in the Mental Health and Disability Rights Unit presented me with incredible opportunities to learn, to make a difference, and to understand the needs of children with disabilities.

Before going to law school, my last two jobs involved working with foster children who were emancipating from foster care to independent living. It was a difficult job, and I was used to being around a great deal of cynicism. From the very first day of training, I felt a different kind of energy from the presenters and fellow interns. While there is frustration and sadness about the shortcomings of the child welfare system, what I discovered is that there are many passionate and dedicated people working to improve the system. I learned a great deal in just four short days and was ready to start my internship.

My placement was with the Mental Health and Disability Rights Unit, which is at the Decatur office of ALAS. The unit is small, with just two attorneys and two paralegals. The unit basically works with people who are disabled and indigent on any disability rights issue. Their traditional work is trying to get individuals out of institutions such as nursing homes and psychiatric hospitals. With regards to children, their work has mostly focused on getting children moved from institutional placements to community placements or on getting children with disabilities the medical or mental health services they need.

My first day at ALAS, my supervisor and I went to a meeting of foster care providers. I had already spent the week before in training learning lots of new acronyms like SAAG (Special Assistant Attorney General) and DFCS (Division of Family and Children Servcies). I spent the entire two hours furiously jotting down acronyms and asking the people around me what they meant. I spent the next two weeks trying to understand what the meeting was about and making an acronym dictionary that ended up being nearly 10 pages long. I thought I might never understand. Then, we started working on a case where I had to use all the acronyms, and it made sense!

I spent most of the summer working on one case, which involved several interesting legal issues and gave me the opportunity to work with a very inspirational young man and his foster family. The first issue the case involved was aging out of foster care and rights associated with that transition. I spent a lot of time talking to DFCS workers, reading the Social Services Manual, reading Barton Clinic materials, and researching federal foster care requirements and case law. Initially, our work involved a great deal of advocacy. I spent a lot of time writing letters and on the phone trying to advocate for adequate transition services for this young man. Ultimately, our work in this area resulted in negotiating an agreement with DFCS, which I had the opportunity to lead under the supervision of two attorneys at our office.

The second issue involved Medicaid programs and eligibility for the programs. It took a long time to understand what Medicaid programs are available, which programs would best meet the needs of this young man, and how to get the Medicaid services. Again, I spent a lot of time doing legal research and reading policy manuals. As part of our work on this case, I drafted a complaint in anticipation of litigation. While the complaint has not been filed, it was a great experience to work on and will hopefully help other children in similar situations in the future.

This case involved learning about a great number of systems, programs, and laws. I did legal research, wrote legal pleadings, met with the family, did some investigative work, wrote demand letters, and attended meetings to work out settlements. I had to learn about Medicaid law, state administrative hearings, state and federal foster care regulations, and even Constitutional issues.

In addition, I worked on two other cases of young foster children being kept at institutional placements when foster or adoptive placements were available. These two cases were considerably more frustrating, as the agency I was working with did not represent the children as guardian-ad-litems, so our involvement could only be advisory. I attended meetings for the children, did legal research, and drafted letters, but was not successful in getting the children moved to a less restrictive setting. It is frustrating how long processes can take for children. The adults in their lives are so busy and have so many conflicting duties that children often wait for a long time to get the attention they deserve.

The final project that I worked on involved getting a team of people together to work on a litigation campaign to establish the rights of children with developmental disabilities to certain medically necessary services. This was a really interesting project and hard to get off the ground. The issues in this area are so complex, and require an understanding of services available to children with disabilities, and then an understanding of Constitutional issues about standing and ripeness to bring the claims. We worked with providers to educate them about the rights of children and how legal services might be able to help. This project is still in its beginning stages, but I am hopeful that some of the research that I did and the connections that I made will help the group reach its goal.

In addition to the main cases I was involved with, I had a variety of other opportunities. I helped draft responses to interrogatories in a case and reviewed documents produced for discovery. During the last two weeks of work, I drafted an answer, counterclaims, and an office memorandum. Our unit went on a staff retreat, and I had a lot of opportunities to talk with my supervisor and co-workers about career opportunities and paths, and about other legal issues and cases. All of my co-workers were very accessible, and I was able to ask questions and work on any case that was interesting.

The unit I worked on is not child focused, and actually does not often work on children's issues. However, everyone I worked with was excited about learning more about the foster care system and helped me understand the larger systems, like Medicaid, that the children were involved in. It helped immensely to make connections with social workers from the beginning. They both helped refer cases to us of children with disabilities and helped answer my questions about how the systems all work (or don't work) together. The Mental Health and Disability Rights Unit is small, and I often had to do research rather than getting an answer to a question right away. However, those limitations ended up being advantageous, as I learned more from having to do the research and from having access to all of my co-workers.

There is a saying that once you find something you love to do, you will never have to work a day in your life again. I truly feel like I did not work a day this summer. While there were some tedious tasks like discovery document review, almost everything I did was interesting and taught me something new. I met incredible children and young adults who have survived immense hardship. I had access to extremely intelligent and helpful supervisors and staff attorneys. I felt like everything that I did really made a difference and contributed in some positive way towards the mission of ALAS and towards improving the lives of our clients. And, perhaps most importantly, in just ten weeks, I really understand some of the issues children with disabilities face, and I understand the role that lawyers can play in helping children live their lives to their utmost potential.