The transition to adulthood is a critical time in child and adolescent development and youth go through tremendous growth and challenges as they move through this period. Youth with experiences with foster care, homelessness, or the juvenile justice system face many obstacles during this transition, including lack of family and community connections and appropriate services and supports which can be compounded by a history of trauma.
In this roundtable discussion, you'll hear about the ways that dependency attorneys, juvenile public defenders, and civil legal aid attorneys can work in partnership to support transition-aged youth (ages 16-26) impacted by the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Panelists will speak about the importance of high-quality youth-directed representation, meeting the various civil legal needs of youth and families involved with these systems, the ways that legal aid, dependency counsel, and public defenders can connect and partner on behalf of clients, and successes and challenges with connecting transition-aged clients to civil legal aid.
