Back in 2007, just after the launch of the Child Advocacy 360 News Service, I attended an American Bar Association/Harvard Law Conference where the keynote address was a spirited presentation by Chief Judge Judith Kaye of New York State’s Court of Appeals on “Preparing the Next Generation of Child Advocates.”

In that Cambridge, Massachusetts, setting where I had completed my own legal training many years before, I was introduced to Harvard Law’s Child Advocacy Program (CAP), then in its infancy.

Founded in 2005 by professor Elizabeth Bartholet and law lecturer Jessica Budnitz, it connects academia to the world of child advocacy and equips students "to contribute in their future careers to law reform and social change."

Today, CAP is a robust program (you can take a virtual tour on the Harvard website). A key part of the program is a policy workshop called the Art of Social Change: Child Welfare, Education & Juvenile Justice, which brings students together with experts from non-legal disciplines to discuss cutting-edge reform projects including professor David Olds, developer of the Nurse-Family Partnership model, Jane Aronson, Executive Medical Director and founder of Worldwide Orphans Foundation, Cheryl Dorsey, President of the Echoing Green Foundation, and many other notables.

There is also a course, Child Advocacy Clinic, that sends students to a range of child advocacy settings to experience first-hand the different ways a legal background can be made to work in the interest of children and "encourages critical thinking about the pros and cons of [various advocacy] approaches."

During my visit to Harvard Law School, I asked Elizabeth Bartholet, Morris Wasserstein Professor of Law and CAP's faculty director, about the program's goals for the future. Will it be replicated? How does it hope to make a difference?

“We hope that CAP will continue to send out into the world a growing group of graduates committed to working with children, who will also advance new ways in which this work might best be accomplished," she said. "Harvard Law School will lead by example, demonstrating to the rest of the law school world the importance and the challenge of working for change on behalf of a particularly powerless and voiceless group."

In Their Own Words

We interviewed two recent graduates, armed with prestigious two-year Skadden Fellowships, who took full-time positions working for social change.

Child Advocacy 360 is committed to tracking the work of CAP and its graduates going forward.

Emily Kernan, Director, Mental Health Advocacy Project, Lawyers for Children, Inc.

After graduating, Emily received a two-year Skadden Fellowship to develop and implement the Mental Health Advocacy Project at the New York-based organization Lawyers for Children, Inc. and now directs the project full time. Emily’s mission is to ensure that "children in foster care with mental health needs receive timely, consistent and individualized mental health services."

In our interview, Emily explained that many of her clients are older adolescents, so she frequently collaborates with colleagues in her organization's Adolescents Confronting Transition Project to ensure that these clients are prepared to leave foster care and live independently.

"I assist my older clients with the transition into adult housing and help them to secure therapy, psychiatric treatment and other mental health services before they leave foster care,” she says.

Additionally, Emily is in the process of drafting a handbook for youth in foster care about their rights within the foster care and mental health systems and how they can access mental health services.

She also coordinates and provides training to Lawyers for Children staff on issues affecting children and youth with mental health problems, the programs and services designed to address these issues and the ways in which attorneys and social workers can assist caseworkers, caregivers and clients in navigating the mental health system.

Jason Szanyi, Center for Children's Law and Policy (Washington, DC)

“The Child Advocacy Program was the reason I went to Harvard Law,” Jason told me.

He knew he wanted to work in juvenile justice and he felt that Harvard’s program was the most comprehensive of similar programs he researched.

“I also wanted a community that was doing this kind of work and at Harvard, the CAP community extends considerably beyond the 125 students and immediate faculty. There was always that sense of support,” he says.

With a Skadden Fellowship in hand at graduation, Jason joined the Center for Children's Law and Policy last year. He also works part-time at the Juvenile Services Program at the Public Defender Service and says he enjoys this combination of direct service and policy advocacy at this stage of his career.