(a) The following excerpts from the National Association of Counsel for Children's (NACC) NACC Recommendations for Representation of Children in Abuse and Neglect Cases (2001, available at http://www.naccchildlaw.org ) are adopted by the Office as the policy guidelines of the Program: - (i) Each child is valued as a unique human being, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, age, social class, physical or mental disability, gender, or sexual orientation.
- (ii) Each child is vested with certain fundamental rights, including a right to physical and emotional health and safety. In order to achieve this, we must promote legal rights and remedies for children, including empowering children by ensuring that courts hear and consider their views in proceedings that affect their lives.
- (iii) Every child subject to a child protection proceeding must be provided an independent, competent, and zealous attorney, trained in the law of child protection and the art of trial advocacy, with time and resources to handle the case.
- (iv) Children's attorneys play a critical role in empowering children and ensuring that children's views are heard in legal proceedings. Outcomes in our adversarial process are directly tied to the quality of legal representation. Additionally, the presence of children's attorneys is critical to ensuring the timeliness of proceedings.
- (v) Children's attorneys play a critical role in advocating for permanency and for the continuation of familial relationships, family preservation and family and community placements where appropriate. The attorney must advocate for timely resolution and permanent resolution (absent compelling reasons to the contrary) of the case. The attorney must advocate for food, shelter, clothing, and safety, including a safe temporary placement where necessary and for educational, medical, mental health, and dental needs. Where appropriate, the attorney should advocate for continuation of appropriate familial relationships, family preservation services and against out-of-home placements.
(b) As NACC has found, attorneys representing children should have a combination of knowledge, training, experience, and ability which allow them to effectively discharge their duties to their children clients. To that end the Office will develop reasonable and enforceable rules for the provision of quality GAL services to children in all types of cases handled by the GALs.
(c) The Program and all Program GALs shall embody these policies and strive to fulfill those ideals. The child's attorney should not be merely a fact-finder, but rather, should zealously advocate a position on behalf of the child. In furtherance of that advocacy, the child's attorney must be adequately prepared prior to hearings. The attorney's presence at and active participation in all hearings is absolutely critical.