Children's Rights

www.childrensrights.org
Legal Representation, Policy & Advocacy
New York, National

About

Children’s Rights is a national advocacy organization dedicated to improving the lives of children affected by America’s child welfare, juvenile legal, immigration, education, and healthcare systems. We use civil rights impact litigation and policy expertise to keep families together and hold child-serving government systems accountable for keeping kids safe and healthy. Our work centers on creating systemic change that will advance the rights of children for generations.

We work in partnership with lived experts and communities to understand issues, practices and policies impacting children and families and strategize solutions and actions that shift people’s experiences with systems and in community with one another.

We support a youth-led coalition, the Are You Listening Collaborative, focused on ending the use of congregate settings for youth in the foster system in New York State. We also co-facilitate the New York Mandated Reporting Working Group, focused on ending the harm caused by mandated reporting and resulting CPS investigations.

Our legal campaigns advance interconnected priorities through groundbreaking cases that Children’s Rights is uniquely positioned to lead. Through civil rights litigation, we are challenging the inhumane warehousing of youth with mental health needs, the unsafe use of psychotropic medications in government systems, harmful conditions and denial of special education in carceral settings, and states’ failures to provide home- and community-based mental health services to Medicaid-eligible children. We are also working to dismantle the child welfare-to-homelessness pipeline, protect the rights of immigrant children in state and federal custody, and prevent unnecessary family investigations and removals.

Support

  • Legal Representation

    Our legal work is systemic in nature and against government agencies, including medicaid and child welfare agencies across the country. We do not engage in direct legal representation. We work with local communities when they believe a class action lawsuit on behalf of children is a tool they want to explore to address systemic harms and constitutional violations. Our legal campaigns advance interconnected priorities through groundbreaking cases that Children’s Rights is uniquely positioned to lead. Through civil rights litigation, we are challenging the inhumane warehousing of youth with mental health needs, the unsafe use of psychotropic medications in government systems, harmful conditions and denial of special education in carceral settings, and states’ failures to provide home- and community-based mental health services to Medicaid-eligible children. We are also working to dismantle the child welfare-to-homelessness pipeline, protect the rights of immigrant children in state and federal custody, and prevent unnecessary family investigations and removals.

  • Policy & Advocacy

    Our advocacy work is focused on dismantling harmful and racist child welfare legislation that impacts Black families. Our work is centered on upholding the constitutional right to family for all families and building and developing supports and resources in communities and delinked from harmful, carceral systems. We lead and work in partnership on numerous coalitions.

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