KCBA Honors Kinship Care Volunteers
KCBA's Community Legal Services has recognized Christi Jackson and Karen Nakagawa as December's Volunteers of the Month for their work with the Kinship Care Solutions Project.
The Kinship Care Solutions Project represents low-income petitioners in non-parental custody actions where relatives and others seek legal custody of a child who is not their own. Often these are relatives such as grandparents, aunts/uncles or adult siblings who are caring for the child because of abuse, neglect or abandonment by the parent.
Jackson is an associate with The Law Offices of Sherri M. Anderson, PLLC, specializing in family law matters involving complex financial, jurisdictional and parenting issues. Nakagawa also practices in the area of family law focusing on adoptions and domestic relations litigation including dissolutions, child custody disputes, non-parental custody and modifications of child support and parenting plans. Both received their undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Washington.
Nakagawa initially became interested in the Kinship Care Solutions Project when Jackson approached her about sharing a pro-bono case. They previously worked together in the Children and Youth Advocacy Clinic during their third year of law school. "Volunteering for the Kinship Care Solutions Project allowed me to do the kind of work that I wanted to do when I started law school," said Jackson.
Jackson and Nakagawa represented a client in one of the more challenging non-parental custody cases accepted by the project this year. Their family law experience made a tremendous impact on the case.
They were drawn to the case because it involved issues of age, race, dependency and adoption. The client sought legal custody of her great-granddaughter, who had been placed with her under a dependency action. Conflict arose when the state decided to have the child adopted outside her family.
According to Nakagawa, "Without the King County Bar Association's assistance through the Kinship Care Solutions Project, the child was on a path toward being placed for adoption outside of the family. Such a result would have had a harsh and far-reaching effect on a loving network of relatives."
Jackson added that because the client was not a party to the dependency action, she was essentially "lost" in the legal system. "We spent a great deal of time discussing both the emotional and legal impact of various aspects of the case, including many events that occurred before Karen and I were involved."
After overcoming significant jurisdictional hurdles, Jackson and Nakagawa were able to work with the state to permit their client to obtain non-parental custody. All parties agreed that it was in the best interests of the child to be raised by her great-grandmother in the only home the child had known.
"I learned a great deal about working with a CASA/guardian ad litem and practice and procedure in Unified Family Court and about employing many different strategies to assist and prepare the client for the next steps and possible outcomes, skills that are very useful in my private practice," Jackson said.
KCBA congratulates Jackson and Nakagawa for being selected Volunteers of the Month and extends its thanks for their commitment to providing vital legal representation to those who otherwise could not afford it.
For more information about the Kinship Care Solutions Project, contact Judy Lin, staff attorney, at 206-267-7023.
