Elizabeth Leonard (1L)
Attorney General's Office, Regional Services Division
Pacific Northwest
Elizabeth is working for the Attorney General's (AG) Regional Services Division in Everett, Washington. As a law clerk for the AG, Elizabeth will have the opportunity to support the office in its dependency, labor & industries, foster care and adult family home licensing, and community college litigation. Elizabeth will be learning firsthand how state agencies are represented in the adversarial legal system and will gain insight into how children, parents, and working people can be better served by the legal profession.
July 31, 2011
During second half of my summer internship with the Attorney General's Office Regional Services Division, I have continued to assist in dependency, labor and industries, community college law, and foster care licensing cases. My projects have included issues related to child support, federal tribal law, collective bargaining rights, incarcerated parents, and DSHS assistance. I have been able to work on a wide range of legal issues and have gained an understanding of the breadth of case types that are handled by the AG Regional Services Division.
Recently, I was given the opportunity to observe Family Drug Treatment Court (FDTC). FDTC is similar to Drug Treatment courts for adult and juvenile criminal offenders. FDTC is an alternative court for eligible parents with dependent children who also have chemical dependency issues. If a parent applies and is admitted to FDTC, the court handles all the hearings for the dependent children, which are usually heard in juvenile court, and also provides more extensive services for chemical dependency. The parents are given access to more services for chemical dependency, but also have to agree to sanctions if they do not comply with their chemical dependency services. FDTC aims to more directly assist parents with chemical dependency as part of the larger effort to reunify the parents with their children.
I have gained a lot of experience this summer with the AG's office and am looking forward to the opportunities I will have over the last few weeks of my internship.
June 29, 2011
During the first 6 weeks of my summer internship with the Attorney General's Office Regional Services Division, I have had the opportunity to assist in dependency, labor and industries, community college law, and foster care licensing cases. I have enjoyed working on all stages of cases through research, writing, and observation in court. As well as learning the general stages and processes involved in the litigation of these cases, this experience has given me insight into the difficulties faced by both state agencies and the individual parties in resolving these types of legal issues.
In particular, I have had the opportunity to observe the difficulties that arise when the State steps in to protect vulnerable children. Fortunately, there is a system in place to take action in the protection of vulnerable children, but I have learned how complicated it is for the court to advocate for a child and balance the interests of all the parties involved. I have been able to see how both the parents and the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) face obstacles to achieving what is in the best interest of the child in dependency and termination proceedings. DSHS must act in the best interest of the child and must always be working to reunite the family which means that it must provide services to all parents, even those that are uncooperative or hard to reach. Additionally, as a state agency, DSHS must advocate for itself as well as the child and so must often take adversarial positions for liability purposes. In contrast, parents are charged with proving to the court that they are fit to parent their children and so must comply with DSHS ordered services in order to gain more visitation and to have their children returned home. Compliance with DSHS services and procedures can be particularly difficult or impossible for parents who work, have other children, attend school, are completing in-patient services, are persons with disabilities or mental illnesses, or are incarcerated. As a result of these difficulties, many parents lose their rights to their children even if they desire to care and parent them. Through witnessing the needs and obstacles faced by all the opposing parties involved in dependency and termination proceedings, I have learned how complicated it is to establish what is in the best interest of a child and seen that, many times, one party's interests must be sacrificed to ensure stability and permanency for the child. Additionally, it is noticeable that State intervention occurs more frequently in marginalized communities such as people that are low-income, people of color, people with physical or mental illnesses or disabilities, people that identify as LGBT etc.
I have learned an incredible amount during the first half of my internship and am excited for the rest of the summer.
