Representing Parents in Child Dependency Cases—Tools for Effective Advocacy

A pre-recorded streaming VIDEO replay of the August 2024 webcast, Representing Parents in Child Dependency Cases—Tools for Effective Advocacy.

As parent’s counsel, you are advocating for a parent’s rights and the preservation of a child’s family. As in criminal cases, a government agency and its resources are arrayed against you and your client. But unlike the criminal legal system, the dependency system is not set up to protect the affected individuals against the government—even though important constitutional rights are at stake, the people most harmed are often marginalized and unable to afford counsel, and the risk of harm is high with a possibility of permanent family separation. 

This course provides attorneys with tools to effectively counter abuse and neglect allegations, help reduce the length of time children are removed from their homes, and ensure that service plans and orders are tailored to the needs of the family. We explore the harms of family separation, how to ensure the agency meets its duty to provide “reasonable efforts” to reunite the family, the benefits of motion practice and written advocacy, tools for procuring discovery, effective communication with your clients, and how to shift the narrative and present evidence to reunify the family.

• Gain tools to improve case outcomes for families in child dependency hearings.
• Learn how to navigate the many roadblocks to obtaining discovery in spite of the many roadblocks in this area.
• Explore how zealous advocacy can help to preserve families in one of the most important legal practice areas.

Faculty

Fallon Speaker, Director, Youth Justice Program, Legal Aid Justice Center / Richmond

Fallon Speaker is a feminist, social justice transformer, and movement lawyer. Prior to joining 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, she 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. She recently co-founded the Virginia Family Preservation Project and serves on the Virginia Bar Association’s Commission on the Needs of Children.

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 has served on the Virginia State Bar Access to Legal Services Committee, the Virginia Child Support Guidelines Review Panel, and currently serves as Virginia State Coordinator for the National Association of Counsel for Children, and on the Virginia Supreme Court Access to Justice Commission, Self-represented Litigants Committee and the Virginia Bar Association’s Commission on the Needs of Children, and is a confounding 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 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.