LRI: Practice: Children

Legal Aid and Defender Association, Inc (LAD) launched a model program providing legal intervention to get children, ages 7-17, back into school called Another Chance for Education (ACE). These children are truants or have been dismissed because of attention disorder, disruptive behavior, or for allegedly breaking school rules. Many of these kids wind up in the juvenile justice system where they become clients of Legal Aid and Defender's Juvenile Law Group as misdemeanor offenders.

ACE evaluates and selects children from LAD's existing caseload who hold the best promise of returning to and staying in school. A panel of attorneys and the LAD staff social worker evaluate the children. The type of legal service they receive includes litigation to get clients into special education services, individualized education pleadings, representation at school administrative hearings for school reinstatement, probation hearings, and other related due process work.

Typically, when children are not in school, they engage in misdemeanant behavior and find themselves in the juvenile justice system for activities such as shoplifting and vandalism. The court often recommends that a child receive a personality or psychiatric evaluation before returning to school, which usually does not happen for lack of follow-through. Often a child has little or no care from a full-time parent or guardian. These children need evaluation for placement into alternative education services, special education programs, day treatment or mental health services before they can return to regular school. Through ACE, children are placed in these services.

To read more about Another Chance in Education please click here

Contact Information:

Joan Glanton Howard
Chief Counsel, Civil Law Group
Legal aid and Defender Association
645 Griswold street, Suite, 2600
Detroit, MI 48226
Phone: 313-964-4111
Fax: 313 964-0466
jhoward@ladadetroit.org

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