Legal Aid expert quoted in Sun article on foster care

An article in today’s Baltimore Sun about the state’s decision not to renew a foster care provider’s license to place foster care children–for allegedly  falsifying minutes of board meetings and failing to pay its foster parents and staff on time–quoted Maryland Legal Aid’s Joan Little, chief attorney of the Child Advocacy Unit in Baltimore.

Little said the state should move with “deliberate haste” to re-license the affected foster parents with new providers.

“She said the situation may create headaches for the parents, who may find that other providers have different requirements or pay different monthly stipend rates than Contemporary Family Services,” the article said.

“‘You might run the risk of someone being ruled out because maybe a background check gets done differently,’ Little said.

“Little said the situation is an opportunity for the state to evaluate the way it licenses foster care providers,” the article continued. “She would like to see the state devote more staff and resources to foster care so potential problems can be addressed quickly and seamlessly.”

To read the article, click here (behind a pay wall).

Legal Aid child advocacy expert in The Sun

A Maryland Legal Aid expert on foster children was quoted in a Baltimore Sun article, “Court-appointed volunteers advocate for foster children.”

“Joan F. Little, chief attorney in the Baltimore City child advocacy unit for Maryland Legal Aid, said CASAs can lead to better outcomes and help children exit the system more quickly,” the article said.  ‘It really adds extra value to a child’s life,’ she said.”

 

Legal Aid featured on Insight on Disability

Two Maryland Legal Aid lawyers were guests Sunday on WCBM-AM’s Insight on Disability talk radio show hosted by Mike Gerlach. The topic: Children with disabilities in the foster care system. Assistant Director of Advocacy for Children’s Rights Janet Hartge and Northeastern Maryland office staff attorney Nicole Jassie talked about their clients in foster care. “For children with severe disabilities, it’s easier for foster parents when the children are young,” Hartge said. “As they age, it gets more difficult for the parents. For example, they may not be able to lift them any more once they get to 70 or 80 pounds.

To download and listen to the show, click here. The interview starts around minute 18.

Federal appeals court refuses to toss Md. foster care plan

A federal appeals court has refused to throw out an agreement to improve Baltimore’s foster care system. Last week, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court’s decisions in the 27-year-old case.

Baltimore foster children, at that time represented by Maryland Legal Aid, filed a class-action lawsuit in 1984 alleging abuse and neglect. A consent decree spelling out an improvement plan was entered in 1988 and modified in 2009 to address ongoing problems. (Due to Congressional restrictions banning class-action lawsuits by federally funded legal services programs, Legal Aid dropped out of the case.)

The Maryland attorney general’s office claimed a subsequent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in an unrelated case eliminated the legal bases for the consent decrees, but U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz and the appeals court disagreed.

 

Mitchell Mirviss, a lawyer with the Baltimore law firm Venable LLP who represents the children pro bono, described the appeals court ruling as “a watershed decision” he hopes will focus resources required by federal law on foster children.

Foster child’s best interest is “transcedent,” top court rules

The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that the rights of a child are “transcendent” in termination of parental rights cases, ending confusion among judges about whether the rights of the child or the parent are paramount, the Daily Record reported.

The state’s highest court ruled that a lower court erroneously focused on the mother’s parental rights rather than those of her daughter, “who was flourishing in the care of foster parents who want to adopt her,” the article said.

“This case really restated in a resounding way that the standard is the best interest of the child and the court should not be looking through the lens of the parents,” said Joan Little, chief attorney of Legal Aid Bureau Inc.’s child advocacy unit in Baltimore. Little argued the case, In re: Ta’Niya C., before the Court of Appeals.

To read the article, click here.

Foster teen gets wish granted

A 17-year-old Legal Aid client  in foster care got her wish yesterday–the surprise present of a laptop computer for the aspiring visual artist and photographer to do her school work on. Adrienne St. Paul, who enters her senior year in high school this fall, is the first recipient of a computer from F.O.S.T.E.R.–Friends of Special Teaching and Educational Resources, a Frederick group collecting new laptop computers and digital cameras for children in foster care, the Frederick News-Post reported today.

“Ten weeks ago, St. Paul’s Legal Aid lawyer, Kathleen Hughes, told [Master Rick] Sandy the high school student needed a computer to do schoolwork,” the article said. “Working on library computers wasn’t always possible. Sandy called Hughes to the bench and ordered the formation of a committee to find funding for laptops.”

“We’re making history here today,” Sandy said to applause , and a few tears [in his courtroom yesterday], about the gathering, which was sprinkled with [judges], lawyers and social workings all in on the surprise.”

To read the article, click here.

Top court weighs child v. parent interests

The Maryland Court of Appeals heard arguments earlier this month whether a troubled mother can keep her parental rights in light of her seven-year-old daughter’s flourishing relationship with her foster parents, who want to adopt her, the Daily Record reported . The girl is represented by Maryland Legal Aid.

Joan Little, chief attorney of Legal Aid’s Child Advocacy Unit in Baltimore, argued that the girl’s loving foster parents can’t adopt her because the courts preserved the mother’s parental rights–despite her record of neglect.

The girl has been “sentenced to a life in foster-care limbo” because the lower courts placed the mother’s rights above her daughter’s interests, Little said, adding that “the issue is the best interest of the child, not the best interest of the parent.”

To read the article, click here.

Troubled Pr. George’s families need follow-up

A Washington Post article about problems in the child welfare system in Prince George’s County quoted a staff attorney in Maryland Legal Aid’s Metropolitan Maryland (Riverdale) office. “The child welfare system in Prince George’s County isn’t doing enough to ensure that troubled families receive the services that might help a parent regain custody of a child or avoid the removal of the child in the first place, advocates and officials say,” the article said.

“Our families require more supportive services than merely a written referral mailed to the last known address,” said Ann Marie Foley Binsner, executive director of the nonprofit Court Appointed Special Advocates, or CASA, in Prince George’s. “They require a knock at the door and a supportive person they can turn to when they need help. And that doesn’t happen frequently enough.”

Without that help, all but the most determined parents can be put off, said Megan Berger, a lawyer for Legal Aid, which represents several hundred foster children in Prince George’s. “All these different systems can be sort of daunting to navigate.”

To read the article, click here.

Multi-service center for poor to expand in Howard

A center for helping low-income residents of Howard County will expand this summer, the Howard County Times reported yesterday. The North Laurel-Savage Multi-Service Center, which provides a wide range of human service programs, will nearly double the number of clients served when it relocates in July. Maryland Legal Aid is one of the programs that helped about 1,900 families and individuals at the center last year.  “The idea is ‘one-stop shopping’ to streamline services to reduce the number of contacts and visits to various service providers,” said Denise McCain, Legal Aid’s director of program development and compliance.  “The average client has more than one issue and generally needs a multitude of services.” To read the article, click here.

“Children make mistakes”–and they shouldn’t be permanently expelled from school

The Baltimore Sun ran a letter from Maryland Legal Aid’s Cornelia Bright Gordon about Baltimore City school’s permanent expulsion policy.  “Children make mistakes,” wrote Bright Gordon, co-chief attorney of Legal Aid’s Baltimore office. “Which of them shall we throw away without benefit of any public education that might be their life-line for future success? No person attains adulthood without regrettable conduct.

“Our societal plan is to teach a child correct behavior, to help him/her learn from mistakes, and become a valuable, contributing member of our community upon adulthood,” she continued.

“Maryland law provides a free public education to all children ages five to 20. Certainly the law authorizes the individual counties to create discipline policies. But it anticipates a specific time period of removal from the child’s current school, and not an indefinite exclusion from all school whatsoever.”

To read the entire letter, click here.