Learning to read at grade level, moving from a group home to live with a grandmother, avoiding hospitalization or being reunited with a loving parent — these are the tangible outcomes that we achieve for our child clients every day. The Children’s Law Center measures its success on our ability to achieve positive results and outcomes for each individual child. Today, CLC’s focus is on the children who need us most — children with special health and education needs, abused and neglected children and children who witness domestic violence. CLC’s programs foster hope and create opportunity. Our work represents a comprehensive approach to addressing the needs of some of our community’s most vulnerable and underserved individuals, children in the child welfare system and poor children with education and health problems. Family Permanency Project
CLC provides free high quality legal assistance to foster parents, grandparents, and other relatives who wish to adopt or to obtain legal custody or guardianship of children trapped in the DC child welfare system and children at risk of entering the child welfare system. CLC recruits, trains, and mentors volunteer attorneys from prominent local law firms enabling us to serve more children than our staff of attorneys could directly represent. Each year our pro bono partners donate millions of dollars worth of legal services. The cumulative result is safe, permanent homes — a fundamental building block for successful childhood development — for hundreds of children. Health Access Project
In collaboration with Children’s National Medical Center, the Health Access Project (HAP) helps poor children and their families overcome the effects of social and non-medical factors that negatively impact their physical well-being. By confronting institutional barriers to health and by holding agencies, landlords, and schools accountable on behalf of families, HAP ensures that the services provided by medical staff are not undermined by such systemic issues as inappropriate school programs or illegal, unhealthy environments. Guardian ad Litem (GAL) Program
CLC attorneys are the voice for DC’s abused and neglected children, fighting to find safe homes and to ensure that children receive the services they need to overcome the trauma that first brought them into the child welfare system. Protecting Child Witnesses to Domestic Violence
CLC represents children in custody cases involving domestic violence. Our attorneys are specially trained and understand the uniquely complicated matters that affect a child who witnesses domestic violence, ensuring that children are not re-traumatized by a well-meaning but uninformed legal system. Systemic Advocacy, Training and Technical AssistanceCLC is committed to sharing its expertise with the community through systemic advocacy, training and technical assistance. Through training and systemic advocacy, we make DC a better place for thousands of children. Each year, CLC trains hundreds of lawyers, pediatricians, social workers, judges, foster parents and other community members on a variety of issues that affect children. CLC is frequently consulted by the courts, DC Council, the Mayor’s Office, Congress and other organizations working to improve the lives of children. |
Programs 
