Jennifer Garber

Center for Children & Youth Justice
Seattle, WA

Jennifer is an intern at the Center for Children and Youth Justice in the Lawyers Fostering Independence Program (LFI) in Seattle, Washington. A pilot project of the American Bar Association and its Bar-Youth Empowerment Project, LFI recruits and trains attorneys to provide pro bono civil legal assistance to youth involved in or aging out of the child welfare system. While at LFI, Jennifer will work with clients through the Seattle clinic, conducting intake and handling her own cases. Ms. Garber will also travel through Washington, working with youth, service providers, and pro bono attorneys to expand LFI to other regions within the state.

July 2009

Whenever we do outreach, we come away with new clients. Whenever we do intake with new clients, I learn the broad range of legal issues youth who have no support network face. In the last week, I have heard stories about domestic violence, sexual abuse, loss of a credit card because a medical bill was sent to collections, the inability to get a job with a juvenile record, the need for a parenting plan, and multiple denials of public benefits. Every day, we hear a new story. Because we are able to accept many different types of civil issues at Lawyers Fostering Independence, we really get to know what former foster youth are facing. Not only does this inform the work that we do at Center for Children & Youth Justice; it also impacts my interests and my big picture view of the foster care system and its failures.

Last week I was invited to a barbecue hosted by SOAR, a community coalition of youth-serving organizations. At the barbecue, I met people from organizations I had never heard of and introduced CCYJ and LFI (few people had heard of us). It was quite the experience to be invited into this community partnership. We now have access to more youth through more programs. At the bbq were some youth interning at the YMCA this summer. They spent their time practicing their networking skills, and they seemed very interested in the LFI program. Although none of the youth I spoke with were in foster care, they had friends that were or had a foster sibling. Their questions helped me understand how our program is perceived, and it helped me work towards explaining the program better and the type of work that we do.

Tomorrow I will spend my afternoon in Gas Works Park, a perfect way to end the week. Along with various other youth service providers, we have been invited to set up a table at the Seattle/King County Coalition for the Homeless (SKCCH) Food & Fact Fair for homeless, street-involved, and at-risk youth. Besides being a nice day in the park, the opportunity to conduct outreach directly with the youth will be fun. The best part about what I do is that I'm out talking to people and serving youth at the same time. It's a nice change of pace from the academic year-not stuck behind a book in a quiet corner.

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June 2009

I've been at CCYJ for nearly four weeks now. I have spent a good deal of that time conducting outreach for the Lawyers Fostering Independence (LFI) program. The program is very new. Although it was developed in the fall of 2008, the program maintained a low profile through the early part of 2009 to secure funding. The day I started was also the first day of the interim managing attorney. We've worked together over the last few weeks to get the word out about LFI and schedule clinics around the city.

The outreach I have been conducting has had many layers. The most basic is reaching out to organizations, agencies, and institutions providing services to youth and young adults to inform them of our program and what we can do for them and their clients. This has included public defenders associations, day centers for homeless and at-risk youth, superior and juvenile court staff, community colleges, public libraries, temporary residential facilities, and direct service organizations. While most of the outreach is initiated via email or telephone calls based on recommendations from people I already know in the community, a few of the places I've talked to were simply places I visited. A couple of weeks ago I took a stack of our flyers and a notebook and just walked around Capitol Hill stopping into places that I thought would serve the youth eligible for our services (17-23 year-olds who were state-dependent at some point after their 15th birthday). The most productive was a visit to Seattle Central Community College. I dropped off a flyer, and the next day I was setting up a new drop-in clinic for us and coordinating with people that work exclusively with former foster youth as well as people whose clients include former foster youth.

In addition to simply giving information on our program, I have also tried to give the service providers some tools to identify civil legal issues-or potential civil legal issues-that we could ultimately help with. For example, at our first drop-in clinic, we realized that an easy referral for organizations to make is when there are any eligible youth that have been in domestic violence situations and/or have a child of their own. The idea is that we have attorneys who can help create a parenting plan for the child, which would provide legal protection for custody of the child. It's been a challenge trying to educate non-lawyers on how to spot legal issues, but it seems every day we come up with new ways of articulating when an issue might appear. So, it has been an interesting experience to take the skills I learned in law school and try to share them with people outside the legal profession.

On a personal level, the outreach has also helped me to learn who does what in the community. I moved to Seattle the summer before I started law school knowing little about the local community. Although I intended to focus my legal practice on youth, I had no idea where to start. After two years in Seattle, I finally am starting to connect faces with names and to see where the work is being done. I've visited the YMCA Young Adult Services center a number of times and received telephone referrals from them. I visited Spruce Street, a short-term residential facility close to our campus, but I never knew what they did. Seeing the facilities and speaking at staff meetings has been an invaluable resource for me to learn what services are offered in the community, learn where the gaps are, and consider how our program and I in my future professional capacity can assist in serving these youth.

Of course, along with outreach, I've also had the opportunity to staff one drop-in clinic and conduct one intake over the telephone. In the next couple of weeks we have four more clinics set up, and I look forward to meeting more clients and, hopefully, taking on my own client. More on that later...