We hope to make an impact for youth in education, stable and safe housing, removing post-conviction burdens and barriers, and reducing the use of incarceration to respond to the needs of young people.
In our July blog, we want to highlight a few of the new laws, that are now in effect, that impact our clients and communities and help everyone prepare for the changes.
TeamChild continues to support Washington State Supreme Court’s rule changes that protect youth from a lifetime of exposure to their juvenile legal cases. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court voted to delay implementation to allow for more discussion about how to implement the new rules.
On May 5, the Washington State Supreme Court delayed implementation of these new rules and referred them back to the Supreme Court Rules Committee to recommend next steps. We urge the Rules Committee to reaffirm these rule changes and set a definite implementation date. These rules are important and necessary steps toward dismantling longstanding inequities in the court system and the detrimental impacts on the lives of youth.
As TeamChild moves into our second year of supporting a policy team, we have given a lot of thought to how we make policy decisions. We work to center our anti-racism principals in all of our decisions, especially policy decisions that are intended to improve the experiences of youth who are impacted by incarceration, court systems, and other oppressive systems.
Many decisions are made each session about young people. We hope TeamChild’s work in the policy realm will align with our mission & values, to center youth in this process.
For TeamChild attorneys, this new law has a positive impact on the options we can provide to clients when they seek legal assistance to stabilize their living situation.
TeamChild supported the end to Parent Pay because we know from our clients and their families, that one important way to support a young person returning home from a time of incarceration is to make sure their family is as strong as they can be economically.
From now on, when schools and courts are addressing the needs of students who are absent from school, the student does not risk incarceration as a consequence of missing school.
We know from our work with young people across the state, juvenile court involvement does not produce good educational outcomes. The 2017 Washington State Center for Court Research report Students […]
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