Child Advocacy Award

In 1990, the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division (YLD) in conjunction with the Center on Children and the Law established the Child Advocacy Award to honor lawyers for distinguished service on behalf of children. The award recognizes the contributions to the legal profession by child advocates who have actively labored on behalf of children. The award celebrates the often unheralded service that child advocates bring to children and the legal profession.

2007-2008 Winners

Each year two lawyers are honored for their distinguished service on behalf of children. Award recipients are selected based on the individual's personal achievement and commitment to child advocacy. This year’s recipients are:

Young Lawyer Category: Gloria M. Bruzzano, Managing Attorney, Special Education Unit, Office of the General Counsel, NYC Department of Education, New York, NY

Lawyer Category: Steve Hiltz, Directing Attorney of the Children’s Attorneys Project (CAP) of Clark County Legal Services, Las Vegas, Nevada

Gloria M. Bruzzano Gloria Bruzzano

Gloria M. Bruzzano, on the right, with Judge Kaye

Gloria currently serves as a managing attorney to two Committees on Special Education for the NYC Department of Education. She is responsible for litigating fair hearings on behalf of the district and training individuals responsible for creating individualized education plans for children. Prior to her position with the DOE, Gloria directed the Child Protection Project at Sanctuary for Families, the largest nonprofit in the United States, servicing domestic violence victims and their children. In this role she worked with over fifty families providing legal representation and assistance in obtaining counseling, housing and other clinical needs. She has also been an attorney for the New York City Administration for Children's Services (ACS). During Gloria’s time there she handled over two hundred child abuse and neglect cases as a front line attorney and a compliance attorney at ACS headquarters.

Gloria has also served on the New York City Mayor's Child Abuse Task Force, the ACS Commercially and Sexually Exploited Children Work Group, The ACS Domestic Violence Committee, the Bronx Family Court Domestic Violence Committee, The Lawyer's Committee Against Domestic Violence and The Day of the Child Mentoring Program. Additionally, over the year's she has trained lawyers and social workers on best practices in working with domestic violence survivors and children and has worked with court personnel on best practices in dealing with child welfare cases. Gloria has also served as Children and the Law Committee Chair of the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division and Liaison to the ABA Center for Children and the Law. During her time as chair of the Children and the Law Committee.

Gloria continues to lobby at both state and national levels on behalf of sexually exploited children and has raised funds and traveled to children in need abroad. She would like to thank her family, mentors, friends and partner for their continued support and encouragement.

Steve Hiltz

For the last eight years Steve has been the Directing Attorney of the Children’s Attorneys Project (CAP) of Clark County Legal Services in Las Vegas, Nevada. Steve helped to create this new project, which is charged with providing independent legal representation to children in foster care. Prior to its formation, no child in the foster care system in Nevada had an attorney. Starting with Steve, the project now has eight attorneys and an additional 200 pro bono attorneys. When Steve set up this project he insisted on a client driven or traditional attorney approach as opposed to a GAL model. This was a somewhat controversial issue and in his winning arguments, Steve often used the ABA guidelines for representation of children in foster care.

Steve has always insisted upon quality, proactive representation and is very proud of the difference his office has made in the lives of so many of these dependent children. In addition Steve was instrumental in having passed three new laws: giving children in foster care the right to a basic “commitment “ hearing before they could be placed in a locked psychiatric hospital for more than five days; a statute stating that it is to be presumed that siblings are to be placed together and what needs to occur if they are not; and giving the dependency court the power to join governmental agencies as parties to the case and therefore, subject to court order when their cooperation is needed and not forthcoming.

After graduating from St. Johns Law School in New York, Steve began his career with brief stint at the Securities and Exchange Commission. He then found his true calling when he joined the Juvenile Rights Division of the Legal Aid Society in New York City. Both as a staff attorney and then as a supervisor, Steve led the fight in providing alleged delinquents quality representation in a tumultuous period due to recent US Supreme Court decisions stating that these children had the same constitutional rights (except for jury trials) as adults. After many years Steve moved to Nevada and continues to carry out the good fight on behalf of dependent children.

Past Recipients

PAMELA B. BANKERT, Lawson, Weitzen & Bankert, Brewster, MA

ANDREW BLOCK, The Just Children Program of the Legal Aid Justice Center, Charlottesville, VA

GAIL CHANG BOHR, Children's Law Center of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN

HONORABLE FREDERICA BRENNEMAN, State Judge Trial Referee, Hartford, CT

FRANK P. CERVONE, Support Center for Child Advocates, Philadelphia, PA

DAVID COLE, Dallas Count District Attorney’s Office, Dallas, TX

PETER DAUGHERTY, Butler, Wooten, Overby, Cheely, Pearson & Fryhofer, Columbus, GA

ANTHONY DE MARCO, Suffolk University Law School, Boston, MA

ABIGAIL ENGLISH, National Center for Youth Law, Chapel Hill, NC

KENNETH ENGRIGHT, Hawaii Attorney General’s Office, Honolulu, HI

ANA ESPANA, San Diego County Dept. of the Public Defender, San Diego, CA

MICHAEL FINLEY, Youth Law Center, Washington, DC

REBECCA GUDEMAN, Public Counsel Law Center, Los Angeles, CA

SCOTT HOLLANDER, KidsVoice, Pittsburgh, PA

MICHELE JOHNSON, Tennessee Justice Center, Nashville, TN

MARIE KENYON, Catholic Legal Assistance Ministry, St. Louis, MO

MOLLY LANGER, Guardian Ad Litem Program, Tampa, FL

KATHERINE LOCKER, Legal Aid Society, New York, NY

PEGGY MAINOR, Baltimore Child Abuse Center, Baltimore, MD

PHILLIP (JAY) MCCARTHY, Hufford, Hortsman, Monginni, Parnell & McCarty, P.C., Flagstaff, AZ

MARTIN N. OLSEN, Olsen and Olsen, Salt Lake City, UT

AMY M. PELLMAN, The Alliance for Children’s Rights, Los Angeles, CA

ERIK PITCHAL, Children's Rights, New York, NY

KIMBERELY SHELLMAN, Fulton County Children's Advocacy Center, Roswell, GA

SHARI SHINK, Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center, Denver, CO

HONORABLE KRISTIN SWEENEY, Juvenile Court Judge, Cuyahoga County, Cleveland, OH

MARVIN VENTRELL, National Association of Counsel for Children, Denver, CO

SARAH J. VESECKY, Children's Law Center, Los Angeles, CA

LEECIA WELCH, National Center for Youth Law, Oakland, CA

ROBERT WOLF, Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen, Philadelphia, PA

CECILIA ZALKIND, Association for Children of New Jersey, Newark, NJ

CHRISTINA ZAWISZA, Children First Project, Legal Services of Greater Miami, Miami, FL