Legal Aid Society ' s Foster Children ' s Project
( L-R ) Cassandra Ward , Kristen Flynn , Anna Veguez , Kirsten Herndon , Amy Genet , Sarah Cohen , Aisha Nash , Elaine Martens and Lindsay Watkins .
Twenty years ago , the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County created the Foster Children ’ s Project to provide children in foster care with their own attorney . At the time in Florida , this was a fairly radical idea . Children in Florida ’ s foster care system did not get attorneys . Legal Aid created a project that gave every child under the age of 12 ( and all siblings ) their own attorney to help them navigate the foster care system . Twenty years later , the Project is heralded as a national model on how to represent foster children , being recognized as this year ’ s Outstanding Children ’ s Law Office by the National Association of Counsel for Children .
The Foster Children ' s Project intentionally created a culture where every child ' s case has a sense of urgency and a focus on innovation . The Project was the subject of a landmark study by the University of Chicago that showed their model of representation was capable of getting kids out of foster care quicker than kids who were not represented . The fact that they have been able to maintain these results over twenty years , through housing crises and meth epidemics and all the problems that plague the child welfare system is nothing short of remarkable . The study , and the Project itself , is held up nationwide as an example of something that works for foster kids , even being cited by the Federal Government when it made the decision to start paying state ’ s for providing representation to foster children for the first time .
Funded by the Children ’ s Services Council consistently for twenty years , Legal Aid ’ s Foster Children ’ s Project continues to advocate for Palm Beach County ’ s foster kids with the same mission they ’ ve had for twenty years : to get every child a home as safely and quickly as possible .
PBCBA BAR BULLETIN 11