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The Importance of Family Defense  

By Martin Guggenheim,  ABA Family Law Quarterly Volume 48, No. 4 (Winter 2015) pp. 597-607

This article describes the growing field of “Family Defense,” which involves lawyers and other advocates working on behalf of parents or other family members whose children are at risk of being placed in court-ordered foster care. Although lawyers have been doing this work for several decades, a national movement to consolidate and enhance the field’s status in the legal profession is less than a decade old. Based in the American Bar Association’s Center on Children and the Law, this movement’s purpose is to achieve procedural and social justice for all families involved with child welfare systems, through legal, legislative, and policy advocacy. Above all else, it seeks to ensure that every parent who is in jeopardy of having a child removed from his or her care by a child welfare agency is able to secure excellent legal representation during the entire length of the court process. This article explains the importance of the field and how it differs from criminal defense. Finally, it offers some insight into why the field is relatively unknown in the legal profession despite the important work that it does.

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