The “Mother Up” pre-pilot program is an evaluation of a guaranteed income project targeting Black mothers in Washington, DC, who are in danger of getting involved with the child welfare system. Studying the efficacy of the program provided the A2J Lab with enough solid data to pursue it on a larger scale and bring an evidence-based voice to the discussion on poverty’s link to child welfare.
Eight hundred families in Illinois–and the researchers working with them–are about to find out. With monthly cash gifts of varying denominations dependent on family size and local cost of living, participants of the EmPwR Study will gain firsthand knowledge of whether a year of guaranteed income will stave off child welfare involvement. HLS J.D. candidate Julia Saltzman examines the relationship between poverty and family regulation system involvement and shares details on the randomized controlled trial taking place in urban, suburban, and rural communities in Illinois.
This is the story of a traditional law school clinic that has evolved into much more. CHAMPS, the Carolina Health Advocacy Medical–Legal Partnership, is a legal service provider embedded in a healthcare setting. It’s also the field partner for an A2J Lab study evaluating whether legal partnerships can reduce downstream involvement by child welfare agencies in cases potentially due to poverty-related conditions.
A landmark study on Michigan’s expungement system found that criminal record clearing was linked to low recidivism rates, no compromise to public safety, and better outcomes for the recipients. But what does it say about the process when those promising results are not enough to entice eligible individuals?
Texas’s 2023 “Family Miranda” law requires child welfare investigators to inform parents of their due process rights at the beginning of an investigation. The intent is to reduce unnecessary state intervention, trauma, and coercion. The law passed with bipartisan support and ultimately clarifies existing law, rather than creates new law. In this “Student Voices” blog, HLS student Julia Saltzman calls for a randomized controlled trial to determine the efficacy of the law in improving fairness and reducing unnecessary interventions.
Marriage in the U.S. typically requires a marriage license, payment of a nominal fee, and often a short waiting period from the license signing to marriage. Divorce, on the other hand, typically involves lawyers; courthouse visits; comparatively higher fees; and, in some cases, antiquated roadblocks just to implement this federal constitutional right. The result is that divorce can be an access-to-justice issue for low-income individuals who are faced with trying to pay for a lawyer they cannot afford or navigate unnecessarily complex divorce filing procedures on their own.
Rogers hearings, the Massachusetts ruling designed to protect patient autonomy in involuntary psychiatric treatment, often cause harmful delays in treatment. Two reforms that propose shifting responsibility to Administrative Law Judges and to mental health professionals respectively, however, could help bring timely treatment and better advocacy.
The Access to Justice Lab published a newly released study of Washington, D.C. mothers involved in Child Protective Services demonstrating that government-funded child welfare programs are effective in reducing child neglect cases by prioritizing economic support to overcome conditions caused by poverty.
In the second part of the “Student Voices” series on “no money down” bankruptcies, HLS student Joe Liberman picks up where he left off in the previous blog: exploring possible solutions to the problems of Chapter 13 filings, understanding their tradeoffs, and proposing how we might study them.
The combination of rising debt and inability to pay for legal help has allowed the proliferation of a financially fraught practice: “no money down” bankruptcies. While purporting to help the low income client, these bankruptcies often leave the filer in a worse financial situation because they were ill-suited for Chapter 13 bankruptcy. This post explores the rise of “no money down” bankruptcies and how we can address this access to justice issue.
