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The Bar-Youth Empowerment Project

Project Staff

ABA Center on Children and the Law
ABA Center on Children and the Law aims to improve children's lives through advances in law, justice, knowledge, practice and public policy. In 1978, the American Bar Association's Young Lawyers Division created the ABA Center on Children and the Law. From modest origins as a small legal resource center focusing exclusively on child abuse and neglect issues, the Center has grown into a full-service technical assistance, training, and research program addressing a broad spectrum of law and court-related topics affecting children. These include child abuse and neglect, adoption, adolescent and infant/toddler health, foster and kinship care, education, juvenile status offenders, custody and support, guardianship, missing and exploited children, and children's exposure to domestic violence.

Bar-Youth Empowerment Project Staff:
Andrea Khoury, Project Director
Kristin Kelly, Staff Attorney
Jessica Kendall, Staff Attorney

ABA Youth at Risk Commission
In August 2006, ABA President Karen Mathis made it a priority of her term of office to find ways that the law and the legal community can better identify and support America's at-risk young people. To lead this initiative, she established the ABA Commission on Youth at Risk to undertake an effort to identify the challenges facing this population (particularly those in the 13 through 19 age range) that greatly elevate their "risk," and working to enhance laws, judicial intervention strategies, policies, practices, and programs intended to help prevent teens from becoming delinquent or engaging in criminal acts. Into its second year, the Commission focuses on, among other things, better ways to serve juvenile status offenders, meet the needs of youth aging out of foster care, and assure meaningful participation by youth in court proceedings.

ABA Youth at Risk Commission Staff Contact:
Howard Davidson, Director

National and State Advisory Boards

National Advisory Board
Dorothy Ansell, National Resource Center for Youth Services
Jeff Bleich, California State Bar
Justice Bobbe Bridge, Center for Children & Youth Justice
Frank Cervone, Support Center for Child Advocates
Robert F. Harris, Cook County Office of the Public Guardian
Leslie Heimov, Children's Law Center of Los Angeles
Jaclyn Jenkins, Youth Representative/Student, Hofstra Law School
Lacy Kendrick, Youth Representative/Student, Missouri State University
Cathy Krebs, ABA Litigation, Children's Rights Division
Miriam Krinsky, California Judicial Council
Justice Cindy Lederman, Miami-Dade County Juvenile Court
Nancy Miller, National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges
Andrea Moore, Florida Children's First
Erik Pitchal, Suffolk University Law School, Child Advocacy Program
Jenny Pokempner, Juvenile Law Center
Andrew Schepard, Hofstra Law School, Center for Children, Family & the Law
Misty Stenslie, Foster Care Alumni of America
Casey Trupin, Columbia Legal Services
Julia Villamizar, Youth Representative/Florida Youth Shine
Susan Weiss, Casey Family Programs

Florida Advisory Board
Maria Bates, Project Patchwork
Bob Bertisch, Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach
Mary Cagle, Director of Children's Legal Services, Department of Children and Families
Judge Nikki Ann Clark, 2nd Judicial Circuit Court Leon County
Alfreda Coward, One Voice Childrens Law Project and ABA
Michael Dale, NOVA Southeastern, Professor of Law
Bob Dillinger, Public Defender - Pinellas County
Gloria Fletcher, Private Practitioner
Judge David Gooding, Duval County Courthouse
Jay Howell, Private Practitioner, Jay Howell & Associates, P. A.
Rob Johnson, Brevard County Legal Aid
Sharon Langer, Dade County Legal Aid Society
Judge Cindy Lederman, Juvenile Justice Center
Andrea Moore, Florida Children's First
Chris Norwood, Lawyers for Children America
Bernard Perlmutter, University of Miami Law School
Leslie Powell, Legal Services of North Florida, Inc
Robin Rosenberg, Florida Children's First
Kent Spuhler, Florida Legal Services
Howard Talenfeld, Florida Children's First-private practice
Kele Williams, University of Miami Law School
Mary Wimsett, GAL
Tammy Workman, Florida Youth Shine/Florida's Children First

Project Partners and Sub-grantees

Florida Children’s First
Florida’s Children First, Inc. was founded in 2001 by attorneys from across Florida who were working on issues affecting Florida’s most vulnerable children. The founders came from private practice, law school clinics and legal aid organizations. They knew that if they combined their resources and worked together they could achieve greater reform in the systems that affect children. With assistance from the Florida Bar Foundation they formed Florida’s Children First as a non-profit legal services organization.

Center for Children and Youth Justice
Created in February 2006, the Center for Children & Youth Justice is a private, nonprofit organization with a mission unlike any other in the state: reforming the juvenile justice and child welfare systems. The Center’s focus is on fair and unbiased decision making, systems reform, education, public policy, research, and publications. The Center’s structure allows it to engage a diverse group of organizations and experts for the purpose of fostering innovation, forming partnerships, and developing collaborations among system professionals, advocates, policymakers, educators, judges, and families to tackle ambitious and challenging reforms of systems serving children and youth.

Project Collaborators

Casey Family Programs
Casey Family Programs was established by United Parcel Service founder Jim Casey, Casey Family Programs is a Seattle-based national operating foundation that has served children, youth, and families in the child welfare system since 1966. Casey Family Programs’ mission is to provide and improve—and ultimately to prevent the need for—foster care. It operates in two ways. It provides direct services, and it promotes advances in child-welfare practice and policy. Casey Family Programs collaborates with foster, kinship, and adoptive parents to provide safe, loving homes for youth in our direct care. It also collaborates with counties, states, and American Indian and Alaska Native tribes to improve services and outcomes for the more than 500,000 young people in out-of-home care across the U.S. Drawing on four decades of front-line work with families and alumni of foster care, it develop tools, practices, and policies to nurture all youth in care and to help parents strengthen families at risk of needing foster care.

Eckerd Family Foundation
The Eckerd Family Foundation became active in 1998, a continuation of the founder of Eckerd Drugs in Florida, Jack and Ruth Eckerd's, personal and profound commitment to young people and to philanthropy. The Eckerd Family Foundation's mission provides leadership and support for innovative educational, preventative, therapeutic and rehabilitative programs for children, youth and their families. The Foundation seeks to support the most promising and innovative ideas that provide vulnerable youth with not merely transitional services, but rather transformational opportunities helping them to reconnect with their futures. Just as importantly, all of the Foundation's investments are evaluated against clear goals and measured by results and performance outcomes.