Increasing Educational Equity for Systems Impacted Youth

Support for foster and systems-impacted youth

County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit)

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Systems impacted youth include youth in foster care, the juvenile delinquency system, students subject to exclusionary discipline, and youth at risk of restrictive placement (group homes, residential homes, detention, hospitals). Systems impacted youth experience staggering disparities in educational outcomes, and the likelihood for positive educational outcomes declines further for youth that have special education needs. Negative outcomes are often the result of educational instability including frequently changing schools, lack of appropriate assessments, placement in overly restrictive educational environments, and/or inappropriate school placement. This directly correlates to lower rates of graduation, negative mental health outcomes, and social and emotional developmental delays. Legal advocacy for appropriate educational accommodations at court hearings is critical to improving positive life outcomes for systems impacted youth at the individual and district-wide level.

This program expands CLI’s existing special education legal clinics to serve more systems impacted youth by increasing dedicated staff and by seeking new staff admission to the LA Superior Court Juvenile Division panel. Currently, CLI offers limited special education legal clinics led by pro bono attorneys and the organization’s Executive Director who is a practicing children’s rights attorney. Legal clinics provide counsel, advice, and representation in matters relating to the educational rights of children with disabilities. As a result of capacity limits, CLI’s staff serve less than 8 special education clients annually despite the organization’s extensive internal expertise.

Program expansion will allow CLI to increase the number of clients served more than threefold by hiring a specialized attorney, increasing existing staffing allocations to conduct specialized program outreach to nonprofits, juvenile public defenders, and legal aid organizations, and seek panel admission on the LA Superior Court for the new attorney. Importantly, when clients prevail this often results in district-wide policy improvements.

This program is both scalable and sustainable. As a result of the Federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), when a client prevails in their legal issue with a school district, the district is responsible for paying the plaintiff’s attorney fees. This means that within one year of program expansion, CLI will be able to fully self-sustain the program.

This program increases the number of legal service resources for systems impacted youth with special education needs and supports improving educational and life outcomes for youth at the individual and collective level. Improved educational and life outcomes result in decreased monitoring by and participation within County systems. As such the program will also contribute to alleviation of strain on County entities including the Department of Children and Family Services and Probation Department. When CLI receives LA Superior Court panel admission, this will increase the number of qualified attorneys able to represent systems impacted youth which enhances opportunities to achieve district-wide policy compliance with civil rights law. This will directly benefit clients participating in the program and County systems by decreasing the burden on an overworked and imperfect social service and carceral systems and improve systemic compliance with existing school civil rights law.