Would you let your kid go unrepresented?

Tuesday, 26 February 2008 19:00

"As a parent," writes Jim Theofelis, "I cannot imagine allowing my child or adolescent to be in any courtroom without benefit of legal representation. Can you?"

Theofelis, who runs an agency that works with foster children and other youth, writes in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about a bill to create a pilot program in Washington state that would give kids greater access to legal advocates in court (HB 3048/SB 6896). The bill would give children over 11 in two counties access to attorneys in dependency and child abuse proceedings and then attempt to compare the results to outcomes for kids in other counties. It's modest in the extreme, limiting caseloads to 80 and measuring access to services rather than bad legal outcomes, but it's an important step in the right direction.

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The PROTECT Lobby

Our Mission

The National Association to Protect Children is a national, pro-child, anti-crime membership association. We are founded on the belief that our first and most sacred obligation as parents, citizens, and members of the human species is the protection of children from harm.

PROTECT is a bipartisan pro-child, anti-crime lobby whose sole focus is making the protection of children a top political and policy priority at the national, state and local level.

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