Required Clinic Component: Child Advocacy Clinic: Child Welfare, Education & Juvenile Justice, either during the winter-spring (2 winter clinical credits + 4-5 spring clinical credits) or spring (4-5 spring clinical credits). Students who enroll in either of the two clinic offerings (winter-spring or spring) will be enrolled in this required clinical course by the Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs.

Additional Co-/Pre-Requisites: None.

By Permission: No.

Add/Drop Deadline: October 31, 2021, for winter-spring clinical students, and November 29, 2021, for spring clinical students.

LLM Students: International students on F-1 student visas are required to have Curricular Practical Training (CPT) authorization; LL.M. students are not eligible for CPT.

Child Advocacy Clinic: Child Welfare, Education & Juvenile Justice is designed to educate students about a range of social change strategies and to encourage critical thinking about the pros and cons of different approaches. It addresses a variety of substantive areas impacting the lives of children, with a focus on child welfare (abuse and neglect, foster care, and adoption), education, and juvenile justice. The Clinic is relevant not only for students with a particular interest in children’s issues, but also for those more generally interested in social change.

This course is open only to students who have not taken the Child Advocacy Clinic: System-Involved Youth (held in the fall semester).

All clinic students participate in both the classroom seminar and a clinical fieldwork component. The clinic offers two fieldwork options: (1) winter-spring and (2) spring.

During the seminar, students bring into the classroom their varied fieldwork experiences, presenting on both specific projects and cases in which they are engaged, and also their placement organization’s larger vision for improving conditions for children with unmet education needs and/or those children involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Students reflect on each other’s experiences, consider which strategies in the field are working and why, and evaluate the benefits and limitations of different approaches. Students will learn about and thoughtfully consider the unique legal issues affecting this population of youth through reflections, readings and class discussions.

Regular classroom attendance and active participation in discussion is required. Grading will be based on a combination of each student’s clinical fieldwork, seminar presentation and related packet, contributions to class discussion throughout the term, and written assignments.

Once enrolled in the Clinic, the Child Advocacy Program (CAP) will provide students with a list of fieldwork placement sites and their potential projects. Students will give CAP information about their background and interests and rank their placement preferences. CAP will then match students with a placement based on their preferences, the organizations’ needs, and CAP’s mission to provide students with a broad spectrum of experiences. Visit the Child Advocacy Clinic website for more about the Clinic, including answers to frequently asked questions.

This course is part of the Child Advocacy Program (CAP). Please see the CAP website for information about other related courses.