Listen to Judith Sandalow
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Judith Sandalow
Executive Director
Children's Law Center
Children's growth and development doesn't always follow the most predictable path, as those who have worked with or raised children know. But our community's most vulnerable children -- the 3,000 plus in foster care in the District of Columbia alone who have been abused and neglected -- often have the bumpiest journeys. These children are three to six times more likely to have behavioral and developmental problems; many will not graduate from high school; others will end up on the streets. Timely, sensitive, and coordinated advocacy work to support these children and families is essential.
Judith Sandalow, executive director of the Children's Law Center in DC, knows that progress with emotionally bruised children and their families is often measured in baby steps. CLC provides free legal services and advocacy to about a thousand of these and other children with special education and health care needs a year, providing a comprehensive range of legal services, including finding children safe, permanent homes, and the health, education, and social services they need to flourish.
It's not just her deep professional commitment that keeps this Yale Law School graduate dedicated to abused and neglected children. About 11 years ago, when she was a poverty lawyer, she was asked to take in a seven-year-old boy who needed a place to stay. That boy, Phillip, and his older brother Antonio, became Sandalow's foster children. By the time she started working at the Children's Law Center, their adoptions were finalized.
She took the job as the organization's first paid executive director, she says, to understand the work more. Her boys shared some of the same mental health and special needs issues that other children of neglect and abuse have. "My kids led me to want this job; they taught me how important this work is. I always thought kids were great but I never thought I'd run a child welfare organization."
Because of her kids, she was able to see things from the perspective of her clients. She had known about the issues; now she knew what it was like from the other side. Sandalow's own upbringing was a happy one; loving parents helped her develop, she says, an "irrational level" of self confidence. "My kids taught me how hard it can be when you don't start life that way; huge wells of anger build up."
In seven years Sandalow has grown the organization into the largest civil legal services organization in Washington, DC. Staff has increased from 3 to 68, with twelve law clerks. She added new programs, such as the Health Access Program (HAP), which brings an integrative approach to addressing the health and developmental issues of children, bringing CLC staff together with medical staff from Children's Hospital and other medical facilities. Staff expertise is called on frequently: flagging system issues and helping to brainstorm solutions, and providing technical support in areas such as adoption, guardianship, housing, and special education.
This year CLC moved into new, metro-accessible offices in Chinatown, within walking distance from Family Court, that accommodate the sensitive work of staff with clients, but, perhaps equally importantly, provide a colorful, friendly oasis for children and families.
"We think creatively," Sandalow says. "We ask, 'how do we use our expertise, our network, friends, and supporters, to make a difference'? Sometimes it's in the court, sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's as simple as an attorney offering to build bunk beds so children can live with their grandmother. Lawyering is more than just filing legal motions."