KidsLaw - Kids Legal Aid Work

Kids Legal Aid Work (KidsLAW) focuses on the special needs and best interests of children, and helps their families through crisis situations. KidsLAW:

• Prevents families with children from becoming homeless by challenging unwarranted evictions and improper foreclosures;
• Ensures that children and their families have safe and sanitary housing that is free of environmental hazards, and that includes security, heat, water, working plumbing and electricity;
• Helps disabled children access healthcare, medical equipment for disabilities and public benefits to allow them to survive and to thrive;
• Advocates for children with special needs who are struggling in school to receive the assistance and services they need to learn;
• Supports grandparents who need legal help as they try to raise their grandchildren;
• Stops violence at home with individualized Orders for Protection, restricted custody and safe visitation arrangements;
• Prevents violence through the Kindergarten Kampaign, where legal staff gives information about the adverse and long term effects of family violence on children to Moms and Dads registering their children for school;
• Provides representation in complex custody negotiations and trials for low income parents who couldn’t otherwise afford an attorney;
• Helps single dads who want to become more involved with their children by advising them on paternity and family law and working out visitation matters;
• Helps families obtain court-ordered child support so that they do not have to fall back on public assistance or return to abusive situations;
• Assists teens who are neglected, those who have been wrongfully suspended from school, or those in danger of physical harm at home, school, or through dating violence.