ABA President-Elect Youth At Risk Initiative

About the Initiative

Our nation's future is in the hands of today's youth, our most important asset. During the next bar year (2006-07), the American Bar Association will focus its resources on at-risk teens and a number of the legal issues that affect them.

Focuses of this initiative of 2006-07 ABA President Karen Mathis will be teenagers (13-19), and include:

1. Better Hearing the Voices of Youth in Court. The final report of the Pew Commission on Foster Care noted a common failure of juvenile and family courts to assure that youth play a meaningful role in their judicial proceedings, as it is not uncommon to find their active in-court participation not promoted or discouraged. The same is true for proceedings arising from the divorce or separation of their parents. Lawyers should examine how meaningful involvement of teenagers in all hearings affecting them can be promoted, so that court proceedings become a positive participatory experience for vulnerable youth – in dependency, custody, family violence, and other cases. Juvenile defense lawyers can be invaluable in structuring novel ways that youth can communicate with judges while still protecting their rights, including protection from self-incrimination.

2. Reforming the Juvenile "Status Offender" Process. Many teens come before the courts because of behavior that would not otherwise subject them to judicial involvement if they were adults. Lawyers should examine how law, prosecutorial policy, and court practice address youth who are chronic runaways, persistent school truants, or continually out-of control at home. They should also examine how these interventions differ between boys and girls, since there has been a significant increase in the number of girls entering the juvenile justice system. Special attention also needs to be given to the problem of and solutions to chronic truancy.

3. Enhancing Teen Access to Safe and Appropriate Prevention and Treatment Services. Teens with emotional and behavioral problems must have better access to community-based mental health services and other programs that can help prevent their involvement with juvenile and criminal systems. Because girls are entering the juvenile justice system in greater numbers, some expanded services must be gender-specific. There are also family economic issues that must be addressed. Parents without means often turn to the government or the courts for help in placing a severely-troubled youth, often relinquishing custody of the youth to the state. Other families, of means, may pay large sums of money for placements of teens in private unregulated "therapeutic" residential facilities that may harm youth. Lawyers should examine how law, policy, and enhanced legal representation can help assure youth have better access to services and aid to prevent their unnecessary placement in facilities that may injure them.

4. Assisting Youth Who Are "Aging Out" of Foster Care. At age 18, many youth are forced out of their foster homes and the assistance of child welfare agencies may stop. Far more needs to be done to help 18 and 19 year olds get the support they need to establish themselves as productive and responsible adults. Lawyers should work to help them get needed support to establish themselves as productive and responsible adults through examining law reform, changes in juvenile and family court jurisdiction and practice, improved educational opportunities, and enhanced legal advocacy for them.

5. Better Supporting Teens Who Experience High Family Conflict, Domestic Violence in the Home, and Divorce. Many youth face emotional turmoil while living in turbulent families, especially those experiencing chronic domestic violence within their home. They may be part of a family in the midst of contentious parental divorce or separation. Older youth living in violent, chaotic homes, or caught in the midst of high conflict custody or visitation disputes, are more likely to get into serious trouble with the law. Lawyers should examine how laws and courts could better serve these teens.

6. Improving How the Law Addresses System "Cross-Over" Youth. Many teenagers spend at least part of their lives in foster care and, as they get older, it becomes more likely they'll have interactions with police and shift from the "dependency" to "delinquency" system. Other youth, when arrested, disclose histories suggesting it is more appropriate to deal with them as victims of abuse or neglect at home rather than as "offenders" in the delinquency system. Lawyers should examine how the law and legal profession, including the work of prosecutors and defense counsel, can best serve these dual-jurisdiction youth.

The Youth At Risk Planning Conference

Earlier this year, an interdisciplinary group of professionals and youth met at the Center for Children, Families and the Law at the Hofstra University School of Law to discuss the Youth At Risk Initiative and formulate recommendations. The text of these recommendations, with a draft ABA action plan, can be downloaded, below, as a .pdf document.

As part of the Youth at Risk Initiative, the ABA will issue a "Lawyer's Challenge for Youth," initiating a national service program that reaches at-risk teens. Together, we will produce "best practices" guidelines, become a clearinghouse for information on successful programs involving lawyer service projects, and spotlight those already working, collaborate with others, advocate for at-risk teens, and develop suggested changes in law, policy, and practice for bar associations, governments, courts, and the nation.

A number of entities in the ABA already work to address issues facing at-risk youth, and each will be involved in various aspects of the Initiative. Please re-visit this page regularly for updates on relevant work related to youth by the various ABA entities.

Tell Us What Lawyers and the Organized Bar Are Doing

In mid-April, the ABA will send an electronic survey to state and local bar associations around the country. We are eager to know what they are doing to serve the legal needs of at-risk youth. Two such programs—a Chicago-based violence prevention program and an Atlanta-based truancy intervention project—have already been profiled. We look forward to hearing from all state and local bars about their youth-related work, as well as from individual attorneys. If you have suggestions for the Youth At Risk initiative, or want to share with us what lawyers or bar groups are doing, please e-mail: ctrchildlaw@abanet.org

Division for Public Education
Center on Children and the Law