Money Matters: How Funding Affects Legal Representation Quality for Children and Parents

Child welfare legal advocates don’t enter this field for the money, but money matters. Adequate funding for dependency counsel drives the kind and quality of representation advocates can provide their clients. Join us to:

• Discuss findings and recommendations from our assessment: Effects of Funding Changes on Legal Representation Quality in California Dependency Cases.
• Explore how funding changes for child and parent counsel affect legal representation quality indicators, including consistent staffing, caseloads, workload per case, and time to meet clients in and out of court.
• Learn how to use the assessment when pursuing new federal resources through Title IV-E funding for dependency counsel and addressing challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Learn how to use the assessment to advocate for greater investments in child and parent counsel in your communities.

Featuring: Eva J. Klain, JD, ABA Center on Children and the Law Prudence Beidler Carr, ABA Center on Children and the Law Leslie Starr Heimov, Children's Law Center of California

Read the Assessment and Executive Summary