The Child Welfare System Accountability Program focuses on enforcing constitutional, federal, and state statutory requirements for providing adequate child welfare services in the State of Nebraska, and using legal advocacy to support needed policy reform initiatives. The CWSAP seeks to create change through strategies that will lead to broad-based, comprehensive systemic reform, such as class action litigation, as well as incremental approaches like supporting private practitioners in raising systemic issues in their individual cases. Our goal is to create a model child welfare system in Nebraska.

The goal of the Foster Care Reform Legal Resource Center is to engage child welfare attorneys in Appleseed’s reform efforts by helping them enforce constitutional and statutory rights and connect the legal and policy issues they see daily with system-level change in Nebraska’s foster care system.

By and large practitioners are unable to take on the systemic issues they see daily in their practices; their resources must be and should be directed to addressing the immediate needs of their clients. Nevertheless, the same issues arise in case after case and affect client after client, child after child. Through the Foster Care Reform Legal Resource Center, Nebraska Appleseed - with its ten-year history of targeting reform at its roots - can assist “on-the-ground” child welfare practitioners (guardians ad litem and counsel representing biological or foster parents) in addressing these issues.

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The Foster Care Reform Legal Resource Center can assist juvenile court practitioners with the following:

• Legal research on constitutional or statutory issues implicating targeted systemic issues in the system
• Information on child welfare reform that is occurring across the state and nationally, including case law and legislative developments
• Co-counseling, intervention, and development of amicus briefs in selected cases involving systemic policy issues
• Nebraska child welfare listserv featuring regular updates and the opportunity to dialogue with other juvenile lawyers across the state on issues faced in your practice
• Resources including sample pleadings and briefs
• Collaborative trainings

Important Note: The mission of Nebraska Appleseed is to address policies and systemic issues facing low-income Nebraskans. Therefore, the Foster Care Reform Legal Resource Center is only able to provide assistance on cases that involve systemic issues in the child welfare system that are within our expertise and resources to address. For example, we are unfortunately unable to help with everyday issues and basic procedural questions. Whereas, we may be able to provide research and information related to the rights of non-English speaking families in the child welfare system.

The purpose of the Nebraska Child Welfare Listserv is to provide a forum for information and dialogue among member attorneys to influence legal precedent in the juvenile courts in a positive way. As a member of the Nebraska Child Welfare Listserv, you will receive our regularly released Foster Care Update which includes case law updates, legislative happenings, and announcements relevant to the child welfare community. We encourage list members to use the list to communicate with one another about issues and challenges that arise in their juvenile court practices.

Note: Due to the confidential nature of legal discussions, the listserv is restricted to guardians ad litem and counsel representing biological or foster parents only.

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