People Met: Judge Clark Richardson and Three social workers from Lawyers For Children
Date: December 19, 2012
Author: Jessica
Our second fieldwork was a very interesting and intriguing experience for myself and my group. We sat down at Manhattan family court to view various different child abuse/neglect cases. The goal of this fieldwork was to find out more about how child abuse/neglect cases are dealt with within the court system and the procedures it takes to get through them. We learned many things from viewing the many court cases that were dealt with. We learned that many cases dealing with child abuse/neglect mostly fell under the neglect side. Child Neglect can be many things such as not giving the child/ren enough food, not providing proper medical care, and allowing an underaged child to care for younger siblings. We learned that many times children who are neglected have parents who are abusers of drugs or alcohol. We also learned that the way the court deals with child abuse/neglect cases is much different from the way a social worker might deal with it. The court looks at the cases from the laws point of view more than a personal point of view and the social workers vice versa. What really stuck out to me while looking at these court cases is how if you don’t have a sufficient amount of paper work or evidence it is very easy for the judge to call the case in another time. Some of the speakers from Lawyers for Children (Lawyers for Children is an organization that provides free legal and social help and advocacy for children who have been neglected and/or abused) really motivated me to want to learn more about the topic. Seeing how passionate they were for the subject really made me think about how many defenseless kids have to go through this system at such a young age. Another thing that struck me was that many of the lawyers for Lawyers for Children had to defend children who could not speak or walk yet. I believe that my group members and myself worked really well together and we are all able to learn easily together. Although I’ve learned that some of my group members are not really helping the group when it comes down to the talking and asking questions. It is intimidating to talk in front of people who are older and wiser than you, but thats the risk we must take in order to learn more about this subject in depth. We will definitely pull out key quotes from the recordings we have about the court system and how it works to help these children. Also, what Lawyers for Children specialize in to help the kids as well. All in all this experience was very life changing and showed me how so many kids are fighting in the court for a safer life.
