How to Improve Legal Representation of Children in America's Child Welfare System

Abstract

From 2009 to 2016 the University of Michigan Law School served as the National Quality Improvement Center on the Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System (QIC-ChildRep). This article provides the final recommendations of this project. These recommendations have not yet been published in the academic literature. This article first summarizes the research findings of the QIC-ChildRep project. Then it sets out QIC-ChildRep recommendations for: 1) Training and supervision of lawyers; 2) State statutes and rules governing lawyers for children; 3) State organizational structure to support child representation; 4) Strategies for recruiting lawyers in this specialty; 5) Caseload size; 6) Multidisciplinary approaches to legal representation of children; and 7) Promotion of certification for lawyers as specialist in child welfare law.

Keywords: child welfare, QIC-ChildRep, child representation, legal representation, child welfare cases