Appleseed in Action
Foster Care Reform Legal Resource Center - 01/09/2007
As we all welcome the New Year and work hard to keep our resolutions, Nebraska Appleseed is pleased to announce we’re keeping one: the launching of our new “Foster Care Reform Legal Resource Center.”
This past year, Nebraska set a new record of over 7,800 children in its child welfare system, one of the highest per capita in the country. Since 2003, the number of child abuse or neglect cases has increased by an amazing 49 per cent. The numbers continue to go up- but these children are forced to live in an underfunded, understaffed, and unresponsive foster care system. Unfortunately, Nebraska is, every day, failing to provide legally required safety, protection and basic health care services to thousands of abused and neglected children, and is forcing far too many to languish in foster care for long periods of time without the opportunity for a permanent, loving home.
As the Omaha World Herald editorialized on Christmas Eve, calling again for faster reform: “This issue involves not abstractions but real children. Real children who face real consequences from the broken bits of the child welfare system.”
Fortunately, there are many Nebraskans who want to help. One group is the “on the ground” legal practitioners who daily labor in Nebraska’s juvenile and county courts, as guardians ad litem and counsel representing foster or biological parents. While Appleseed’s federal class action lawsuit, Carson P. v. Heineman, remains key to reforming the agency in charge of the foster care system, Nebraska Appleseed views these hundreds of lawyers, the very heart and soul of the legal system’s response to the thousands of needs within the foster care system, as an untapped force for change.
The goal of the “Foster Care Reform Legal Resource Center” is to engage these child welfare practitioners in system reform. Appleseed hopes this new initiative will ignite a wildfire across the state, helping lawyers to work together to create opportunity for children lost in Nebraska’s dysfunctional foster care system. Through the legal resource center, Appleseed staff will assist child welfare attorneys by providing resources such as legal research on systemic issues, information on system-wide problems, and updates on reform initiatives across the state. Appleseed staff will also collaborate with practitioners to help create more positive precedent in the courts, and tie cases and issues together for stronger impact. Appleseed staff will also work closely with the Nebraska Supreme Court’s “Through the Eyes of the Child Initiative” working to implement standards and training.
Appleseed staff is off and running with a new listserv for child welfare attorneys as part of the “Foster Care Reform Legal Resource Center.” The purpose of the listserv is to provide an active forum for information and dialogue among practitioners working to create more positive legal precedent and policy reform across the state.
This initiative is led by Sarah Helvey, a Nebraska native recently returned from Madison, Wisconsin where she was the co-founder and managing attorney of Community Justice Inc., a non-profit focused on children and family law.
We hope you will join with us in 2007 and resolve to see that all Nebraska children have a safe, loving, and permanent home, and the fullest possible opportunity for a happy and successful life!
To learn more about the “Foster Care Reform Legal Resource Center,” please visit www.neappleseed.org/lrc
To learn more about Carson P. v. Heineman, Appleseed’s class action law suit on behalf of Nebraska foster children demanding meaningful reform of the system (including enforceable standards, accountability, and significantly increased, cost-effective funding), please visit: www.neappleseed.org/litigation
To make a donation online please visit: http://www.neappleseed.org/contribute/
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