Interdisciplinary Child Advocacy Clinic - Educational Mission

The educational mission of the Child Advocacy Clinic focuses on the role and skills of an advocate, including the importance of collaboration with committed professionals in other disciplines. Students face the need to solve clients' problems. They must identify relevant law, evaluate the myriad personal and interpersonal perspectives and relationships that affect their clients' best interests, find resources to support the needs of the clients and their families, develop strategies and tactics, draft legal documents, obtain and evaluate medical, mental health, and educational records, communicate with clients, other counsel, and third parties, including child welfare caseworkers, other governmental agencies, and various service providers and meet critical deadlines.

Some of the most challenging professional responsibility issues arise where "advocates" from three different disciplines seek to zealously pursue their clients’ articulated goals, and best interests, while acting consistently with the ethical precepts of their respective professions, their own values, and the law. Students collaborate with each other and their faculty supervisors to help them identify, understand, and work through the problems in individual one-on-one supervision sessions, in informal small groups, or in the regular seminar classes. Science tells us that the lessons thus learned are the lessons best learned, and the students will have these experiences to assist them as they go forward in their careers, facing new, and unsuspected, challenges every day.