Advocates for Children’s Services – Durham, North Carolina
As an intern with a LANC project team, being able to work on statewide issues in a specialized area of law has been both challenging and rewarding. Although I have prior experience working on issues related to youth rights and education, litigation and representation of youth clients in education matters is unfamiliar territory for me. The opportunity to meet parents, youth, and their legal and community advocates has been empowering and highlights the importance of the work that ACS and LANC attorneys, staff, and volunteers do. In these ways, I have enjoyed my internship experience, which has reinforced my commitment towards pursuing a public interest career after graduation.
Through the Advocates for Children’s Services project, I have shadowed attorneys and our social worker as they represent clients in education hearings. These opportunities allowed me to meet with clients, their parents, and see how school administrators and education laws protect and inhibit access to free and appropriate public education. One of the benefits of working on a statewide project is that clients and advocacy opportunities are not limited to the more urban counties like Durham and Wake. For example, I went several times to Warren County and saw stark differences in the availability and access to resources, and how directly influential the administrators, law enforcement, and court systems were in shaping the lives of residents. In contrast, Wake and Durham counties serve many more students, who have access to more programs and alternative placements for students. The school districts are also represented by large private firms, unlike the Warren County schools, where it seems that an attorney in the district attorney’s office also represents the school district on education matters in a private capacity. The interplay of communal relationships and resources is important in how ACS attorneys can effectively represent clients and collaborate with clients and their parents on their desired outcomes.
Developing this perspective has been important as I represented a client. Although the client resides in Wake County, seeing how relationships between administrators, students, families, law enforcement, and mental and behavioral health service organizations form is important in providing legal advice and developing legal strategy to better serve the clients. A relationship between a child and his or her school is likely long-lasting and may precede and continue our involvement as attorneys. The consequences of a student not receiving appropriate education based on academic or behavioral needs, and the environment in which a student with a disability should be educated in, are significant if not addressed or insufficient. Relationships between parents and students with school administrators plays an important role in preserving the opportunity for students to receive the best education available, so part of the legal advocacy I am learning about is discovering how to preserve or create positive relationships between families and the school despite the adversarial nature of legal advocacy.
Submitted July 28, 2018
