Refocusing the Lens of Child Advocacy Reform on the Child
When placed within family court jurisdiction, children need lawyers. Dependency [FN1] cases in the family court--in which parents are accused of abusing or neglecting their children--are fraught with constitutional tensions regarding the state's and parents' rights to regulate the well-being of children, [FN2] along with systemic pressures such as federal statutes and state funding [FN3] that substantially affect family relationships. Children sit at *482 the heart of these proceedings; indeed they are the very reason for them. Facing abrupt state intervention into their family life and the oft-accompanying physical removal [FN4] from their homes, these children travel a tumultuous and uncertain road from the time the alleged abuse or neglect occurs until the allegations are resolved. Threatened also with termination of parental rights, [FN5] they--for better or worse--face the potential permanent loss of their natural family life. The recognition that children are not mere property to be tossed between their parents and the state has prompted states to require representation of children as independent parties. Children possess unique rights and interests--to be free from harm and to access relevant social services, among others--that need separate advocacy, particularly in light of the frequent conflicts between the respective interests of parents and children. [FN6] Though a relatively common practice, child representation in dependency proceedings remains both inconsistent and disputed across the country.
Children's Voice and Justice: Lawyering for Children in the Twenty-First Century
Although children in the United States have been subject to public regulation and protection since colonial times, during the twentieth century notions of children as autonomous and as rights holders who are entitled to "justice" have become pervasive. States have created specialized juvenile and family courts; large federal and state entities exist to aid in the protection, education, and control of children; the Supreme Court has extended many constitutional rights to youth, including the right to counsel in juvenile justice proceedings;' and Congress has required states receiving child welfare funding to appoint representatives for children subject to child abuse or neglect proceedings.2 As a result, minors are widely understood to have both substantive and procedural rights and interests and, accordingly, they receive legal representation in a number of legal proceedings involving children's rights and interests. It is far from clear, however, whether these notions of justice and rights, and the corresponding creation and growth of a children's attorney bar, have promoted children's objectives or made their worlds more just. On the contrary, children have fared poorly in the five or six decades since they were acknowledged to be constitutional rights-holders in Brown v. Board of Education3 and entitled to due process protections against certain coercive state action in In re Gault.4 The United States has one of the highest poverty rates among children of the western, industrialized world, and child poverty here has actually increased by more than fifty percent in the past quarter century. 5 We
Developmental aphasia: The perception of brief vowels and extended stop consonants
Abstract Developmental dysphasics and matched controls were examined for their ability to discriminate (a) two synthesized vowel-vowel syllables and (b) two synthesized consonant- vowel syllables. For both vowels and consonants, dysphasics were impaired when the discriminable components of the two stimuli were brief (43 msec) but unimpaired when these components were 95 msec or longer. It is concluded that developmental dysphasics have no difficulty in discriminating transitional auditory information as such and that their impaired discrimination of synthesized stop consonants is attributable solely to the brief duration of the discriminable components.