Law School Blog
Presentation Day and Hearing the Works of Others
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Yesterday, my panel and I presented during a session entitled "The Natural and Necessary Intersections of Mental Health And Law Impacting Children ad Families." My particular talk addressed the issue of mental health advocacy for adolescents in the child welfare system.
Included on my panel were Sarah Ramsey (Syracuse) and Robert Kelly (LeMoyne
College) who presented on the issue of testing the effectiveness of child custody evaluations in family law matters, Laurence Nolan (Howard) who spoke about seeing visitation between incarcerated parents and their children through the lens of therapeutic justice, Cynthia Mabry (Howard) who discussed the mental health debates in the field of transracial adoptions, and Gilbert Holmes (Baltimore) whose talk advocated a new rule of sixes to address the capacity of children as rights enforcers. Prof. Mabry should receive a great deal of credit for organizing this dynamic discussion.
Afterwards, we all retired to a cafe near the Basilica of St. Anthony for gelato, cafe latte, and a serenade by a roaming band of accordion players who, sensing immediately that we were an American audience, tried desperately to please us with their rousing renditions of "Chattanooga Choo Choo," "Hello Dolly," and "New York New York!" Unfortunately, our phrase books did not include how to tell them that we wanted their other playlist.
I also learned some fascinating things from other panelists during the day.
A social science researcher from the University of North Carolina, Desmond Raymond, outlined the developing results of a national longitudinal study on the effect of maltreatment on the mental health of children and youth. As an advocate for bringing forward the voice of children, I was pleased to see that a big part of this study is to compare the reports of young people themselves with those of caregivers and child welfare workers. The result is that the youth self-reporting provides an important and very different perspective on this topic. Another interesting finding is that youth report more distress from witnessing family violence than from either physical or sexual abuse. If you want to learn more about this study (our own Diana English here in the Northwest is a research partner) you can find out more at www.iprc.nc.edu/longscan.
One more significant side note. You all are probably aware of Professor Paul Miller's recent successful conference on the ethics of growth attenuation raised by the Ashley X. case. I did not realize until I came here the impact of that case. More often than not when I introduce myself as being from Washington, I am likely to be asked about that case. Whether from the east coast of the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, or Canada, professionals in the disability field know of the Ashley X. case. I was glad I had attended Prof. Miller's conference so that I could talk about what a great job he did in mobilizing professionals and members of the disability community to debate such an important topic.
- Professor Lisa Kelly