Think back to being in junior high school. Now imagine being kicked out of school for getting into a fight or running away from home because you don’t feel safe or stealing your mom’s anti-depressants because taking them makes you feel better than if you didn’t. Then imagine being arrested for any one of these things. Where would you get help and advice? Your parents? A public defender? A juvenile court judge?
Even if your juvenile offender matter is resolved, there’s a good chance you will still find yourself out of school, without a safe place to live, or feeling depressed and hopeless. Although you may have had a hand in getting into the situation you’re in, the cards quickly stack up against you in getting back on track.
Many of the thousands of youth arrested in Washington each year face similar challenges. These challenging circumstances are exacerbated by the fact that juvenile offenders are more likely than their peers to have learning disabilities or significant mental health or substance abuse issues. These youth also often experience life and family circumstances that are out of their control and that cause disruption, stress and emotional turmoil that manifest themselves in different ways, including school failure, depression, drug and alcohol use and, ultimately, juvenile court involvement.
Unfortunately, while these children may be punished for their conduct, the fundamental causes of their behavior often go unaddressed. Many of these children need civil legal advocacy that is unavailable from their public defenders or through juvenile court, and lack the resources within their own families to advocate for help.
In response to seeing these youth cycle in and out of the juvenile justice system, the Defender Association, Columbia Legal Services and the Washington Defender Association collaborated to open the first TeamChild office in Seattle back in 1995. As a nonprofit civil legal aid organization, TeamChild focuses on helping youth secure community support to address needs that are at the root of their delinquent behavior.
TeamChild provides legal representation and advocacy on issues related to school, access to healthcare and housing stability. Because youth have a harder time referring themselves for legal help, TeamChild counts on public defenders, juvenile court staff and social service providers to refer youths to the program. Staff attorneys at TeamChild then meet individually with a youth to identify his or her goals and the legal barriers to achieving them.
TeamChild’s legal representation on behalf of youth utilizes a broad range of advocacy tools and strategies, including the creation and facilitation of community-based support teams, formal representation in administrative hearings and court proceedings, and negotiations with agencies responsible for providing support for youth.
TeamChild’s advocacy approach is youth-driven, holistic and proactive.1 Staff attorneys are uniquely positioned to provide advocacy and representation for youth, especially those who need help navigating multiple systems. For example, youth leaving detention or treatment need help reconnecting with school, housing and healthcare, especially when they experience denials of enrollment, delays in placement or refusals to provide medically necessary services. Juvenile court judges have long valued the work of TeamChild because putting supports in place also creates viable alternatives to incarceration and helps youth successfully complete probation.
Take for example the recent case of a 14-year-old who was arrested and expelled on an emergency basis from his school program for an incident involving drug paraphernalia that he obtained from his mother’s home. The juvenile court judge kept the youth in detention after finding that his mother’s home was unsafe and, having been expelled, that he would be unsupervised during the day.
TeamChild’s staff attorney worked with the youth’s public defender to reunify him with his grandparents, who had won third-party custody of him, so he could be released into a safe living situation. Next, TeamChild negotiated the youth’s return to his special education program with an improved behavior intervention plan in place to address behaviors in school.
Finally, TeamChild advocated for the youth to obtain Family Reconciliation Services to support his transition into his grandparents’ home. With all this support in place, this youth successfully completed all of his requirements for probation, attends school regularly and has joined the local Scouts group.
Since its inception, TeamChild has undergone yearly, independent evaluations. These studies have shown that representation by a TeamChild attorney can have a significant, positive impact on a child’s life (e.g., enhanced educational, mental health and social services) and reduce the likelihood of a return to the juvenile justice system.
An evaluation commissioned by the Governor’s Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee found that a year after receiving services, TeamChild’s clients were half as likely as a comparison group of youth to have juvenile court contacts. The Washington Institute for Public Policy found that TeamChild’s work saves taxpayers nearly $4,000 for each child receiving full services.
The need for civil legal advocacy for youth in Washington is far from being met, however. More than 35,000 youth were arrested last year in Washington.2 Although these numbers reflect a national trend over the past 10 years in declining juvenile arrests,3 the consequences are much harsher for young people: longer periods of incarceration, complete exclusion from school, public notification of offenses and other collateral consequences for juvenile convictions.
TeamChild is the only organization in the state that exclusively works with youth to provide this holistic civil legal advocacy. You can help support TeamChild’s work in a number of ways, including taking a case pro bono, getting involved in youth law issues through the WSBA Juvenile Law Section, volunteering, educating others about the challenges faced by youth, attending a youth law training or donating to the organization. Visit www.teamchild.org or call 206-322-2444 to learn more about TeamChild and any of these opportunities to get involved.
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Annie Lee is the executive director of TeamChild.
1 Effective representation of youth requires specialized training in client communication and knowledge of adolescent development in addition to substantive knowledge. See also American Bar Association, Standards for Representation of Children.
2 Washington State Juvenile Justice Report 2005, Governor’s Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee, at 132.
3 In Washington, the juvenile arrest rate has gone down 19.8% since 2001. Id. at 141.
Major Issues Affecting Today’s Youth
Interested in substantive legal issues affecting youth?
Youth law encompasses a wide range of legal issues.
In the area of education:
- Youth with disabilities have rights to specialized instruction and related services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
- Youth also have a number of basic rights to due process in school discipline. Interesting issues being discussed at the local and national level include the impact of zero-tolerance policies, the disproportionate number of youth of color who are suspended or expelled from school and the role that discipline has on feeding the juvenile justice system — also referred to as the school-to-prison pipeline.
- High-stakes testing (WASL) and the No Child Left Behind Act also have an impact on widening the achievement gap for children of color.
Issues related to access to healthcare, both private and publicly funded, include the rights of poor children to medically necessary Medicaid and EPSDT services, HIPPA and privacy issues, and the laws around the age of consent for treatment. There are a number of issues for youth in the area of child welfare and foster care, including:
- The right to counsel in dependency proceedings;
- The ability of children to maintain sibling visitation;
- The right to and adequacy of transition services for youth aging out of foster care;
- Entitlement to benefits during and after being in foster care, including recent legislation expanding the right of foster children to Medicaid benefits after turning 18;
- The need for stability in educational placements and support for improved achievement through high school and post-secondary education;
- Newly enacted legislation establishing a process for a child to request reinstatement of parental rights; and
- The rights of foster children to a higher standard of care from the state (see Braam v. State of Washington settlement, 2004).
Youth also may be subject to juvenile court jurisdiction for certain categories of status offenses. The Becca Laws (RCW ch. 13.32A and 28A.225) cover truancy, At Risk Youth and Child in Need of Services proceedings. The use of statutory and inherent contempt and detention of status offenders in secure crisis residential centers are two issues of interest in this state.
- The use of alternative disposition (sentencing) options;
- Collateral consequences of juvenile convictions;
- Sealing of juvenile offender records;
- Notification and registration statutes for sex offenders and violent offenders;
- The use of specialized courts for offenders with substance abuse and mental health issues;
- The pros and cons of information sharing, including the dissemination of juvenile records on the Internet;
- Developments in adolescent brain development research and their implications on culpability and rehabilitation;
- The high incidence of mental illness and substance abuse in the juvenile offender population and the lack of community-based treatment options;
- The increasing use of evidence-based interventions as part of juvenile court reform;
- Automatic and discretionary transfer of teens to adult court for serious offenses; and
- Over-representation of children of color at all stages of the juvenile justice system, particularly in the population of incarcerated children.
