Lawyers as Advocates

Last night at my child advocacy policy workshop the discussion centered around intensive early home visitation programs. This strategy has been substantiated by the intensive social scientific reviews of Dr. Olds over the last 30 years. Now it is at the slow implementation phase nation-wide.

In order to take the successful results from double-blind randomized experiments and replicate them, there is a lot more than child-advocacy and legal know-how necessary. It is becoming increasingly understandable that progress is slow and limited.

One of the speakers focused her presentation on describing how lawyers can effectuate change. It is not enough to have a passion, become an expert and get the credentials -- rather, political connections, know-how and to a certain extent luck are all necessary to ensure that any program can be implemented (or really recieve necessary funding).

As I learn more about child advocacy it becomes increasingly clear how much more I have to learn in order to hope to make any change. Thankfully, there seems to be a community of skilled and talented individuals at the ready to instruct and participate in the successful implementation of the few strategies that seem capable of preventing the vicious cycle of child abuse and neglect.