The American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division is proud to announce the winners of the 2009 Child Advocacy Award.

The honorees are:

Young Lawyer Recipient: H. J. David Ambroz, Executive Director, Los Angeles City College Foundation.

Distinguished Lawyer Recipient: Barbara J. Elias-Perciful, Director, Texas Lawyers for Children

The biographies of these awardees will be posted on the YLD's website in the coming weeks. For more information on this award and the honorees, please visit here.

Announcing New Federal Legislation

On October 7, 2008 the President signed into law the Fostering Connections to Success and Adoptions Act of 2008 (H.R. 6893). This new law will help connect foster children with their relatives, promote permanent families through relative guardianship, and improve education and health care. The following resources provide summaries of this new law:

• Questions and Answers: New Help for Children Raised by Grandparents and Other Relatives
• Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008
• Detailed Summary of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoption Act
• Short Summary of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoption Act
• Kinship Provisions of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoption Act

Featured Publications

Children, Law, and Disasters: What We Learned from Katrina and the Hurricanes of 2005

This book, a collaboration between the American Bar Association and the University of Houston Law Center, examines the intersection of children, law and disasters like Hurricane Katrina. It looks at the experiences of children during the disasters and the first response to the events in order to demonstrate how we can do a better job for children. It acknowledges the considerable stress on systems such as juvenile justice, foster care, and education before the disasters and what needs to happen in a post-Katrina world.

The book stresses the opportunity to examine and engage the problems that were exposed by disasters like Katrina and create effective policies for children in these all important systems. It also takes a longer view about the implications of an agenda focused on children's needs for public policy in general. It provides the government, as well as organizations and individuals who advocate for children, a much-needed tool to develop policies and plans for the future.