'One Child, One Lawyer' Program Draws Volunteers
Meredith Hobbs
Fulton County Daily Report
10-03-2005

In Georgia's Fulton and DeKalb counties, nearly 3,000 abused and neglected children need lawyers, but the counties employ only nine child advocates to aid them.

The Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation is recruiting lawyers from private practice to help fill the gap. On Sept. 23 the group trained about 50 attorneys for its One Child, One Lawyer program.

The need for the attorneys was established by a February court decision in a federal class action suit, Kenny A. v. Perdue, brought on behalf of foster children in Fulton and DeKalb.

The suit was filed in June 2002 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia by national public-interest law firm Children's Rights and local litigators at Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore.

Given that Fulton will have to pay for the hire of any new child advocates, it may not have been surprising that Karen Handel, who chairs the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, showed her support for One Child, One Lawyer by kicking off the daylong training session.

But she had a more personal connection to the situation, she told the lawyers assembled at McKenna Long & Aldridge's offices.

Handel told of a family similar to those of the foster children the volunteers would be serving -- a family with an alcoholic mother and an overwhelmed father in which the oldest girl had to take care of her little brother and sister.

"That girl was me," said Handel, whose county, like DeKalb, is working on a settlement with the plaintiffs.

While the counties work out settlements, the Atlanta Bar Association's volunteer branch is recruiting child advocates. Representing a child in a deprivation case is more involved than a lot of pro bono work, said Lila Newberry Bradley, who was hired in February by AVLF to launch the One Child, One Lawyer program.

When the Division of Family and Children Services takes a child out of a home for abuse or neglect and places him or her in foster care, the agency must appear in juvenile court within three days to justify the move. This appearance starts a 12- to 15-month process during which DFCS works with the child's parent to improve circumstances so the child can be returned home or, if that does not seem possible, placed in permanent custody elsewhere, often with a relative.

The volunteer lawyers will be assigned only one child at a time because of the lengthy duration of the cases, said Bradley.

"It's a significant commitment. To balance that out, we provide significant case support," she said.

That support will be needed, as most of the volunteer lawyers come from the city's big firms and are more likely to be tax lawyers or corporate attorneys than family lawyers.

Bradley said volunteer child advocates will be assigned the less complicated cases. "They will primarily take the younger children where there is no evidence of significant physical abuse -- no broken bones, brain damage or sexual abuse," she said. These are cases where testimony from doctors or other experts is not as likely to be required, she explained.

"Once children reach adolescence, the majority have special education and mental-health needs that require more time and expertise on the part of the lawyer," Bradley said.

Juvenile court is unfamiliar territory for lawyers accustomed to more adversarial litigation. Sometimes the child's advocate will become aligned with DFCS and its lawyer as to what's best for the child. At other times, the child's advocate may disagree with DFCS and become aligned with the parents' lawyer, Bradley said. "And there are times when he or she is advocating for something neither the parent or DFCS is advocating for," she said.

The Atlanta Bar Association's president, Elizabeth A. Price, has embraced the One Child, One Lawyer program as her biggest initiative of the year. Price has said she would like to see 100 lawyers from the Atlanta Bar representing foster children by the time her term ends next June.

Bradley called that an "ambitious but attainable goal." Between Sept. 23's training and one last June, about 70 lawyers have been trained. But Bradley pointed out that not all will volunteer, because of the time demands. "I'm not going to pressure anyone to volunteer because I want to make sure that the people who do are committed to the kids they're representing," she said.

At this point Fulton and DeKalb have not yet agreed to hire more child advocates as a result of the Kenny A. suit, since settlement negotiations are pending, said Corey F. Hirokawa, an attorney working on the case for Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore.

Even if they do, Bradley said, "I do not see this program going away."

"We will continue to have abused and neglected children as long as we have poverty and drugs and poor support for parents in our society," she said. And that means plenty of work for volunteer child advocates.

The next training for One Child, One Lawyer will be in January. Check www.avlf.org for more information on the program or contact Bradley at lnbradley@avlf.org to volunteer.

Summary of February 7, 2005 Order Dismissing Motions for Summary Judgement in Kenny A. v. Perdue

Children's Rights in Kenny A. v Perdue

ChildWelfare.net