Children and Youth Advocacy Clinic

Students in Children and Youth Advocacy Clinic (CAYAC) provide interdisciplinary, holistic advocacy on behalf of children and youth in foster care.  CAYAC operates on the belief that policy change needs to be rooted in the lessons learned in individual representation of clients. 

CAYAC was established in 1996 as a multidisciplinary program of the University of Washington schools of law, social work and medicine. The clinic’s primary focus is child advocacy and the development of a holistic legal program for children and youth within the framework of the existing child abuse and neglect prevention system. Students may represent their clients on diverse legal matters, such as immigration, family and education law, and juvenile defense.

CAYAC provides court-appointed service to children and youth in the state’s child welfare system.

CAYAC in the News

• New program designed to improve response to child welfare cases - UW Law Spring '08
  Building on the strength of the Child and Youth Advocacy Clinic, the law school recently implemented the Court Improvement Training Academy (CITA) under the direction of Tim Jaasko-Fisher.
• School safety issues bear scrutiny - Seattle P-I
  In this Op-Ed, CAYAC Supervising Attorney Kim Ambrose says the suggestion that schools notify police if "any crime" is believed to have been committed takes us down a very murky path.
• Prof. Lisa Kelly Installed as Bobbe & Jon Bridge Professor in Child Advocacy
  Acting UWLS Dean Gregory Hicks installed Lisa Kelly as the Bobbe and Jon Bridge Professor in Child Advocacy January 31. Prof. Kelly presented her lecture, "Telling Children’s Stories: Legal Advocacy for Children and Youth."
• Foster Care: Worthy legal pilot - Seattle P-I
  The P-I endorses a legislative proposal that would make the Children and Youth Advocacy Clinic the site for an exciting pilot project providing representation to children in foster care.
• Are teens old enough for life/death decisions? - Seattle Times
  Lisa Kelly, director of the Children and Youth Advocacy Clinic at the UW Law School, said that while courts are listening more to adolescents, there's also the understanding that teens "have a developmental trajectory that is not yet like an adult's."
• Humble Roots Imbue Life’s Work - KCBA Bar Bulletin
  Although she is now associate dean for faculty and administration and director of the Children and Youth Advocacy Clinic at the University of Washington School of Law, Lisa Kelly describes herself as "just a working class kid from Pittsburgh."
• Gig Harbor school tape of kiss leads to complaint - Seattle TImes
  Lisa Kelly, a University of Washington law professor who heads a Children and Youth Advocacy Clinic, said that the teens don't have a very high expectation for privacy in a public place such as a cafeteria. “Even so,” Prof. Kelly stated, “it was troubling that school officials would interpret a kiss between two girls "as unusual or aberrant behavior."
• Who speaks for kids in dependency court? - Seattle Times
  At least one-third of Washington children who are removed from their homes don't have anyone at all to speak for them in court, according to a statewide work group studying the issue. "We clearly don't, as a state, have an ethos that this is important," said Lisa Kelly, a University of Washington law professor who chairs the work group.
• Washington is in the minority of states that do not provide legal counsel to all children in abuse and neglect proceedings - Seattle P-I
  In this Op-Ed, UW law lecturer and supervising attorney Kim Ambrose, writes that abused and neglected children in state custody deserve a fair chance to succeed in life and should have access to trained advocates during legal proceedings.
• Giving Every Child A Voice - Seattle Times
  In this Op-Ed, Prof. Lisa Kelly, looks at court proceedings and the child welfare system through an eleven-year-old’s eyes and argues that “ We are failing our children when we don't give them a voice in the proceedings that place them at the center of the controversy. Parents have the absolute right to an attorney under state law. The state has an attorney through the Attorney General's Office. The child does not have an absolute right to an attorney or any kind of voice.”