National Report Card on Legal Representation of Children Released

First Star has released its 128-page report entitled National Report Card on Legal Representation of Children. See it here.

First Star advocates for “three key issues to yield tangible long-term benefits for child victims:

1. Open courts and open records to promote and enforce agency accountability,
2. University-based, multidisciplinary training and certification for all professionals working to benefit abused and neglected children, and
3. A child’s right to professional, client-directed legal counsel.”

The report states “While 36 states and the District of Columbia require that a lawyer be appointed to a child in dependency and foster care proceedings, only 17 states require that the lawyer be “client directed,” represent the child’s “expressed” wishes, and require that the child be heard. Children in abuse and neglect hearings often do not receive the kind of legal representation that allows the child equal access to justice and to have his or her own voice heard in a court of law.”

Page 9 gives the criteria used to grade each state and DC.

Page 10 lists the grades by states. Pages 11 through 13 explain the results in charts. The rest of the report explains the grading of each state in depth.

We have taken the data from Page 10 and placed the grades by state in descending order A to F. The last column describes the type of legal representation that the child receives.

Previous versions of this report were issued in 2007 and 2009.

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