This project was formed in direct response to the haunting reality that the State of Nebraska’s child welfare “system” is far too often failing the thousands of low-income children and families it was meant to help - and faces little to no direct accountability for its failure to act. Modeled on Nebraska Appleseed’s highly successful “Welfare Due Process Project” (organized to protect the rights of low-income families and children in public assistance, Medicaid, and child care programs), this project is focused on enforcing constitutional, federal, and state statutory requirements for providing adequate child welfare protection services in the State of Nebraska. We will also use this legal advocacy to support and complement highly needed policy reform initiatives.

The problems in the child welfare system are numerous, as widely publicized in the media over the last year and a half, including the neglect of and tragic deaths of young children. This project will engage in advocacy that will protect the rights of low-income children and families, and in turn help produce the full policy response. Our goal will be to help to create not just a “better” system, but a model system in which children and families are well served by a system with principles.

As a non-profit law project committed to positive system-level change, Nebraska Appleseed is the only legal organization in Nebraska positioned to help in this way, with this population, on this problem.

This project is organizing its legal advocacy to move forward on the following objectives:

Require the state to provide appropriate services to children and their families to ensure that children may stay with their families or, if removed, be reunited with their families when safe and appropriate, or moved to more permanent settings where they have the benefit of a loving and nurturing family.

Require the state to address workforce and management issues so that caseworkers have the time and the resources to properly fulfill their critical roles in these children’s lives, and that the state develops an adequate number and array of safe and appropriate placements.

Ensure non-English speaking children and families are provided the same level of services and opportunities as others when involved in the Nebraska child welfare system, receive full constitutional protections, and are provided culturally sensitive services addressing the reasons for involvement with the system.

Ensure Native American children and families with rights under the Indian Child Welfare Act receive full protection and opportunities under the law.

The goal of the Foster Care Reform Legal Resource Center is to engage child welfare attorneys in Appleseed’s reform efforts, by helping them enforce constitutional and statutory rights and connect the legal and policy issues they see daily with system-level change in Nebraska’s foster care system.

By and large practitioners are unable to take on the systemic issues they see daily in their practices; their resources must be and should be directed to addressing the immediate needs of their clients. Nevertheless, the same issues arise in case after case and affect client after client, child after child. Through the Foster Care Reform Legal Resource Center, Nebraska Appleseed - with its ten-year history of targeting reform at its roots - can assist “on-the-ground” child welfare practitioners (guardians ad litem and counsel representing biological or foster parents) in addressing these issues.

Click Here to visit the Legal Resource Center

The Foster Care Reform Legal Resource Center can assist juvenile court practitioners with the following:

• Legal research on constitutional or statutory issues implicating targeted systemic issues in the system
• Information on child welfare reform that is occurring across the state and nationally, including case law and legislative developments
• Co-counseling, intervention, and development of amicus briefs in selected cases involving systemic policy issues
• Nebraska child welfare listserv featuring regular updates and the opportunity to dialogue with other juvenile lawyers across the state on issues faced in your practice

In the future, the legal resource center will also provide:

• Resources including sample pleadings and briefs
• Collaborative trainings

Important Note: The mission of Nebraska Appleseed is to address policies and systemic issues facing low-income Nebraskans. Therefore, the Foster Care Reform Legal Resource Center is only able to provide assistance on cases that involve systemic issues in the child welfare system that are within our expertise and resources to address. For example, we are unfortunately unable to help with everyday issues and basic procedural questions. Whereas, we may be able to provide research and information related to the rights of non-English speaking families in the child welfare system.