ADVOKIDS

To educate every participant in the foster care system about:
1. The rights and needs of children in care,
2. How that participant can be an advocate for a foster child,
3. How that participant can encourage the child welfare system to make better decisions about the fates of children in foster care, including decisions about their safety, security, stability and need for timely permanency, and
4. The effects of those decisions on each child's long-term physical and emotional well-being.

To advocate for the system to actually serve the needs and best interests of foster children and to avoid decisions that inflict further, unnecessary trauma on already traumatized children.

Education:

1. Individuals: Free telephone hotline for anyone concerned about the well-being of a child in foster care. Attorney or social worker staff helps caller understand options available for accessing the juvenile court to make sure that the concern is heard by the judge and/or suggests strategies the caller can use to hold the system accountable for bad decisions that hurt children.

2. Participants in the Child Welfare System: Train foster child advocates, including caregivers, relatives, Court Appointed Special Advocates, social workers, mental health professionals, foster family agencies, and other interested persons, on what the law requires, the neuroscience that underlies and informs the needs of children in the system, especially infants and toddlers, and how these individuals can use that law to make the system work better for foster children. Train attorneys on basic juvenile dependency law, speciality areas of juvenile dependency law including the neuroscience of child development and trauma-informed practices, and duties and obligations of attorneys appointed to represent children in dependency proceedings.

Advocacy:

1. File or participate in the drafting and filing by other child welfare organizations, amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs in cases where the issue before the appellate court is one that directly affects the rights or interests of abused and neglected children.
2. Collaborate with other child welfare organizations, state and county agencies, legislators, and child advocates to enact and enforce state and local policies that nurture and protect foster children.
3. Seek judicial solutions for entrenched county agency failures and refusals to comply with the law in ways that hurt children.

The demand for our services is increasing rapidly. Our staff is stretched to the limit. The professional staff includes two very experienced child welfare attorneys, a very experienced former county social worker, a part-time attorney, and occasional volunteer attorneys. This staff possesses the necessary knowledge and skills to carry out the mission but will, at some point, be unable to meet the ever increasing demand for services. This will require addition funding in order for us to be able to hire and retain professionals with the requisite knowledge and training.

In the last 10 years:
1. Grown from a part-time, all volunteer staff to a full-fledged service organization.
2. Consulted with over 3500 individuals about their concerns for a foster child.
3. Conducted over 100 trainings on various aspects of child welfare law, child development, and infant mental health.
4. Presented at statewide and national conferences sponsored by other organizations including the National Association of Counsel for Children, the California State Foster Parent Association, and a the North American Counsel on Adoptable Children.

In the past three years. we have filed or joined amicus briefs in eight different cases involving important child welfare issues in both state and federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court.

There are over 60,000 children in California's foster care system--a system that is underfunded, understaffed, and often loses sight of what is in the best interests of the child. We are not done so long as there are children in foster care whose needs are not being met and whose interests are not being protected.