| MCLE Credit: | 3.0 (Ethics: 0.0) |
| Live-Interactive Credit: | 0.0 |
| GAL for Children CE Credit: | 3.0 |
| Designation Credit: | 3.0 Divorce and Family Law Practice |
| Price: | $189 (Includes a downloadable audio version.) |
| Viewable Through: | 07/31/2026 |
A pre-recorded streaming VIDEO replay of the July 2025 webcast, Representing Parents in Child Dependency Cases: Advancing the Case.
Advocating for a parent’s rights and the preservation of a child’s family is among the highest callings for an attorney. A parent is entitled to the same zealous representation owed to any client accused by the state of wrongdoing. Parents face the loss of the care, custody, and companionship of their children. Children face the permanent loss of their family.
These are vital cases: important constitutional rights are at stake for both parent and child. Family separation impacts a child for life—even if the child is subsequently adopted. Virginia’s rates of both reunification and adoption are low; zealous representation of parents has been proven to improve child permanency, whether a child returns home, goes to relative custody, or is adopted.
The role of parent’s counsel is to zealously advocate for the important rights at stake—despite the systemic array of roadblocks that make such cases the most difficult in Virginia’s legal system. This course provides attorneys with tools to effectively represent the interests of a parent and the child’s family.
Fallon Speaker, Executive Director, National Youth Justice Network / Washington, DC
Fallon Speaker is a feminist, social justice transformer, and movement lawyer. She previously served as the Director of the Youth Justice Program at the Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC) in Virginia, where she led a team of attorneys, organizers, and social workers and served as a member of the Executive Leadership Team. Prior to her work at LAJC, she served in academia as Director of The Jeanette Lipman Family Law Clinic at The University of Richmond School of Law and Director of the Mainzer Family Defense Clinic at Cardozo School of Law.
From 2013–2019, Ms. Speaker served as a Public Defender at The Bronx Defenders, where she utilized a holistic interdisciplinary defense skillset to represent community members impacted by surveillance via the family regulation and criminal legal system, and intersectional areas such as substance use, mental health, housing, and immigration. During her time at The Bronx Defenders, she became very active in policy, lobbying, community organizing, reproductive justice intersectionality, and movement lawyering. Since then, she has utilized policy and community organizing to play an integral role in local and national coalition building, lobbying for family regulation system reform, centering the rights of incarcerated youth and parents, and improving legal outcomes for people with disabilities.
Ms. Speaker recently co-founded the Virginia Family Preservation Project and serves on the Virginia Bar Association’s Commission on the Needs of Children. She centers her work-life balance by striving to live a well life. As a part of her physical wellness, she enjoys boxing, yoga, hiking, running and outdoor activities with her dogs. She also owns and operates an Organic and Natural Skincare business, By Justine, LLC.
Valerie L’Herrou, Deputy Director, Center for Family Advocacy, Virginia Poverty Law Center / Richmond
Valerie L’Herrou focuses on family law and child welfare policy. She has represented parents in child dependency matters, including winning an appeal of a termination of parental rights case in the Virginia Court of Appeals. Her main focus is advocating for improvements in laws and policies in Virginia’s child dependency system, to push for policies that preserve families and provide them with support and meaningful justice. She currently serves as Virginia State Coordinator for the National Association of Counsel for Children, and on the Supreme Court of Virginia’s Advisory Workgroup to Develop Standards of Qualification and Performance of Counsel for Parents and Guardians in Child Dependency Cases, on the Virginia Bar Association’s Commission on the Needs of Children, and on the Virginia Foster Care Policy Network. She is a co-founding member of the Virginia Family Preservation Project.
Anna Daniszewski, Staff Attorney for Family Defense, Center for Family Advocacy, Virginia Poverty Law Center / Richmond
Anna Daniszewski is a co-founding member of the Virginia Family Preservation Project and advocates for parents and families through legal representation, community organizing, and policy and systems change. She served on Virginia’s 2023 SD8 – SJR 241 Workgroup Studying Legal Representation in Child Dependency Cases and currently serves on the Virginia Department of Social Services’ Family First Workgroup. She graduated from New York University School of Law and earned a master’s degree from Central European University. She trained in NYU’s Family Defense Clinic and with the family defense practices at the Brooklyn Defender Services and Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem.
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