Needs & Deeds: Organization provides legal representation for children

Hundreds of children are being placed into state custody every year. One nonprofit is making sure these young Oklahomans receive the representation they need. 

Oklahoma Lawyers for Children is a nonprofit serving Oklahoma County with a mission to champion children who are abused, neglected, and in need of legal services.

Tsinena Thompson, president and CEO of Oklahoma Lawyers for Children, said she initially wanted to say no when asked to volunteer for the organization back in 1998.

“When our co-founder Don Nicholson came to the law firm I was working at, I really tried to say no,” Thompson said. “I didn't know anything at all about juvenile law and in all honesty, I wasn't interested.”

However, she took her first case for a 14-year-old girl who had been in custody for six years, staying with the girl until she aged out of foster care. She said that changed everything.

“I don't know that I chose it,” she said, “I think it chose me.”

In a recent interview Thompson spoke about how the organization is filling a void for services greatly needed for neglected children.

Q: What services do you provide for children?

A: We represent children in custody during all stages of their deprived proceeding such as Title 10A Guardianships, adoptions, name changes, amicus briefs, assistance with IEPs for foster children, Kinship Home Studies and Assessment of Alternate Caregivers, translators, and friendly suits for children in foster care.

There are different ways for a child to receive permanency in a juvenile proceeding. They either go home, have a permanent guardianship put into place, or are adopted if parental rights ARE terminated. The least desirable outcome is going into foster care. We do all of the guardianship paperwork for any case in Oklahoma County for free. It doesn't matter if we represent them or the public defenders represent them. We also do any adoption paperwork for any DHS child for free. We have volunteers that come in for friendly suits for children in foster care. The volunteers do what they need to do with insurance companies to settle claims and get funds paid back to the Oklahoma Health Care Authority. For example, expenditures they incurred for treating a child in a car accident. The remaining funds get put into a court-supervised fund for the children until they turn 18. So that's a pretty cool thing we do that, until we came along, wasn't being done.

Then, of course, if kids need to have their names changed because of various things, we do the name changes. We also have advocacy in place for kids who are on individual education plans. If children have to transfer between districts and there are problems doing that, we provide the legal services there along with social security and other issues.

Q: What opportunities do you have for volunteers?

A: We couldn't do what we do without the volunteers that we have. I am continually amazed at how much these attorney volunteers really dive into their cases. Our credit as an organization is deserving to them because they are the ones that pick these cases up and give their 100 percent to these kids.

We have our attorney volunteers. A Show-causes volunteer provides representation to children during their show-cause hearing. We have attorneys for the child that provide representation to children in deprived cases. We also have our Guardian Ad Litem, who provides representation as a best interest attorney for the child. Our attorney Guardian Ad Litem program is almost two years old now. Kids between ages 13 and 18 are really a specific population of the foster care youth who are exponentially more at risk than other kids. Fifty-two percent of that group ages out of foster care without getting a high school diploma or a GED, and 48 percent experiences homelessness within the first 18 months after they age out of foster care. Then they experience criminal activity, drug use, unplanned pregnancy and incarceration. It is a very at-risk group so what we do is have an attorney Guardian Ad Litem assigned to any case that has a child within that age range. They not only work with them advocacy wise, but we also target working with that kiddo on life skills. 

Our nonattorney volunteers can be mentors who build a relationship and teach practical life skills to teens in foster care. For example, getting back on track at school, working with them on communication and interviewing skills, taking them to mock interviews in a real workplace, working with them on healthy lifestyles, budgeting and personal finance.

We actually sit down and work on their FAFSA paperwork if they have goals for post secondary education or trade school. We make sure all of them enroll in the OLAP program, know their housing options, and even understand how to cook and do their own laundry. 

We also have intake volunteers who interview the kids upon the parents' initial appearance. We are very much a first-responder to kids who come into custody. We meet with the children who are going to have actual deprived cases, talk to them, get their picture, and learn about that child as an individual.

We put that together on paperwork that goes into their deprived file. We also setup an appointment to meet with their attorney at this stage.

However, what we really do is provide some comfort to a kid who is really going through a scary time.