Children & the Law Section Blog | Children & the Law Section

This blog discusses information of interest to attorneys who represent various parties, including children, parents, and grandparents, as well as agencies that serve children. Published by the State Bar of Wisconsin’s Children & the Law Section, articles include those on changes in the statutes, important appellate and Supreme Court decisions, and family law, juvenile delinquency and child welfare proceedings.

Section members include judges, court commissioners, prosecutors, guardians ad litem, agency attorneys, and private practice attorneys. The practice areas of the section members include family, juvenile delinquency and child welfare proceedings. The section has an email list, monitors and proposes legislation, produces CLE programs, and publishes a newsletter.

Members of the State Bar of Wisconsin may join the section by visiting https://www.wisbar.org/formembers/groups/pages/join-a-group.aspx (login required).

Section website: https://www.wisbar.org/formembers/groups/sections/ChildrenandtheLawSection/pages/home.aspx

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By: Children & the Law Section | State Bar of Wisconsin

Blog Authors

Christie A. Christie
Beth A. Lauck
Monika Allis
Nicole Beitzinger
Sienna Borchardt
Jessica Brown
Emily Dudak Leiter
Eileen E. Fredericks
Jennifer E. Lehner
Rozita Gerhardt
Azucena Guizar
Alyssa H. Paulus
Abigail Hean
Bailey Holt
Brooke Houston
Melissa Ivens
Michael J. Puerner
Alexandra K. Evans
Alaina K. Fahley
Steven Konitshek
Courtney L.A. Roelandts
Kelsey L. Stefka
Lisa-Marie Line
Erin M. Idler
Heather M. Miller
Yolanda Mercedes Gauna
Renee Pasciak
Marco R. Bichanich
Diane R. Rondini
Clarice R. Ruehl
Matthew S. Young
Jenni Spies Karas
Elisabeth Stockbridge
Grace Tressler
Kristen Wetzel

Latest from Children & the Law Section Blog | Children & the Law Section

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The Tailored Dispositional Orders Project is led by the Children’s Court Improvement Program (CCIP) and the Department of Children and Families (DCF).

The CHIPS Tailored Dispositional Project was piloted in three counties during 2021-22. The project is now being expanded statewide to counties that are interested in improving their CHIPS and Youth Justice conditions.

Counties participating in the project have seen a reduction in the number of conditions, language that is easier for parents and youth to understand, and…
Continue Reading Improving CHIPS and Youth Justice Conditions through the Tailored Dispositional Orders Project

Guardians ad litem (GAL) ​​are tasked with the unique role of representing a child’s wishes and their best interest. Everything a GAL does is to ensure that children have safe environments to grow up in and the most meaningful relationships possible with their families.

It is important that GALs understand the impact a child with disabilities has on their family, so they can effectively be an advocate for the child.

Every professional who works within and around the child…
Continue Reading Unveiling the Gaps: Improving Our Advocacy for Disabled Children

Transgender children and their families are under attack. In the last two years, politicians and lawmakers have sought to limit transgender youth from accessing health care, education, and other basic rights.

Through a campaign of moral outrage based on misleading, incorrect, and at times outright fabricated information, state legislators have introduced at least 306 bills from 2020 to 2022 that target the trans community. Most concerning, the majority of these laws, 86%, center on transgender youth.1

Transgender youth…
Continue Reading Gender-affirming Care Is Not Child Abuse

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On May 14, 2019,
Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos announced the creation of the Speaker’s Task Force on Adoption, charged with addressing the barriers faced by biological and adoptive parents in the adoption process. On Oct. 3, 2019, the task force
published an interim report – and proposed
numerous bills in the 2019-20 legislative cycle.  One of the task force’s recommendations was to eliminate jury trials in the fact-finding portion of the adoption process.
Wisconsin Assembly Bill 628…
Continue Reading For Efficiency’s Sake: Should Jury Trials be Eliminated in Involuntary TPR Actions?

The primary goal of Wis. Stat. chapter 48 is to protect children and to preserve families, whenever appropriate. When this cannot be done, “instability and impermanence in family relationships are contrary to the welfare of children and … [there is] importance of eliminating the need for children to wait unreasonable periods of time for their parents to correct the conditions that prevent their safe return to the family.“1

As practitioners, one simple way we can ensure children achieve…
Continue Reading No Contest Pleas to Grounds in TPR Cases: A Practical Guide

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I have practiced children’s law for a very long time. In the beginning of my career, I was a social worker and employed in the delinquency, CHIPS, and family arenas in the court system. During and after law school, I remained entrenched in the court system, working for the district attorney’s office prosecuting delinquency and CHIPS cases, and the Public Defender’s Office as advocate counsel for criminal, chapter 51, CHIPS, TPR, and guardianship cases. Over the past two…
Continue Reading Transitioning CHIPS Children to Adult Guardianship

Across the U.S., 2,529,000 children were raised in kinship care from 2020 through September 2022, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. In Wisconsin, there were approximately 32,000 children in kinship care during this time frame. This data includes in its definition of kinship care children who are cared for full time by blood relatives or other adults with whom they have a family-like relationship, such as godparents or close family friends. Most children are raised by kin…
Continue Reading Fictive Kin and Guardianship: Acknowledging Emotionally Significant Relationships with Children

​In the past few years, there has been a reckoning nationwide as to the history of racial injustice and its continued effects on people of color. The murder of George Floyd and countless other Black people by police has reinvigorated a national discussion of racial injustice in the U.S.

One only needs to observe one day in a Wisconsin courtroom to see racial disparity in stark reality. As a youth defense attorney in northeast Wisconsin for the past nine…
Continue Reading We Need to Recognize the Implicit Bias in Wisconsin’s Youth Justice System

Youth justice advocates have been on a rollercoaster the past several years, waiting to see if the promised changes to juvenile correctional facilities, such as closing Lincoln Hills/Copper Lake and opening one or more new facilities, will happen. While the number of children being held at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake has declined, there are still troubling issues with the facilities, including staffing shortages and the fact that most of the children are hours away from their…
Continue Reading Youth Justice Reform: Progress in Replacing Lincoln Hills is Much-Needed Step Forward

The sudden emergence of the COVID-19 virus in early 2020 left families around the world with questions about how to best protect themselves. The development and ultimate approval of the COVID-19 vaccine for children  has created an additional layer of uncertainty for many families when they do not agree on whether to vaccinate their children against COVID. This decision implicates the joint legal custody decisions, since it involves medical decision-making for the child. In Wisconsin In Wisconsin, when parents…
Continue Reading Vaccines for Children and the Role of the GAL

The Family First Prevention Services Act of 2018 was signed into law in an effort to induce a dramatic shift in child welfare goals toward prevention and family preservation.1 Although Wisconsin deferred implementation until Oct. 1, 2021, the prevention services and appropriate placement model is now in full effect in the state.2 The child welfare system’s reconceptualization focuses on changing from reaction to abuse and neglect, to connection with services for families at risk of entering the…
Continue Reading Family First and Qualified Residential Treatment Programs

In recent years, further research into mental health and the continued efforts to destigmatize mental illness have contributed to an increase in access to resources for mental health information and treatments. These resources become increasingly important in providing children with mental and behavioral illnesses with the services they need to thrive, as these illnesses are developing earlier and at increasing rates in children. More Diagnoses Each Year Mental, behavioral, and developmental disorders in children begin developing in the early…
Continue Reading Mental Health Resources for Children in Wisconsin

The spread of COVID-19 in early 2020 initiated a major shift in how people interacted with one another. What once took place in person moved online, and for some, the change was nice. Showing up virtually to work or school provided a getaway from the hassles of getting ready or commuting. While the push to an almost all-virtual way of living may have provided some with a reprieve from the stresses of everyday life, for others it made life…
Continue Reading Due Process Rights in the Era of Video Proceedings

The Milwaukee County Accountability Program (MCAP)started in 2012 as a diversion program to rehabilitate juveniles in the court system. Male youth (ages 13 to 16½) charged with delinquency cases who were at risk of being sent to the Department of Youth Corrections could be court ordered to MCAP as a postdispositional placement.1 This one-year program consisted of an out-of-home placement and an in-home placement with the supervision of the parent or guardian. Participating youth had been adjudicated delinquent…
Continue Reading From a Juvenile’s Perspective: How Effective is the Milwaukee County Accountability Program?

In re The Marriage of Valadez, an ongoing divorce case in Waukesha County, has been the subject of consternation on both the part of legal journalists and members of the Wisconsin family law b​ar (notably for entirely different reasons).

The battle in the courtroom is ongoing, with the Wisconsin District 2 Court of Appeals ruling in February 2022 on three separate contempt findings issued by the trial judge, who thereafter
recused himself from the case.
The Case…
Continue Reading A Reminder from Family Court: Domestic Violence Affects Children

​One of the mainstays of President Donald Trump’s administration’s policies was a crackdown on immigration. This objective manifested in the “zero tolerance” policy, which encouraged attorneys to prosecute adults in federal court for crossing the border illegally.

Federal prosecutions then often required separation of the migrant from their families. Because entering the U.S. without proper documentation is a misdemeanor, it was not commonly prosecuted in federal court. Attorneys used to be given discretion to bring the case in federal…
Continue Reading U.S. Immigration Policy and Migrant Family Separation