A report released Tuesday calls for major reform in how Michigan provides legal representation for parents and children in child welfare proceedings.

report The Child Welfare Legal Representation Task Force recommended that legislators create a statewide office of parent-child legal representation as a replacement for the current system in which each of Michigan’s 83 counties operates independently on attorney contracts, salaries and claims.

The report concluded that the current structure results in different levels of legal support for parents and children in child protection proceedings and ultimately unfair treatment depending on the county in which their cases are heard. It also found that some Michigan counties have difficulty maintaining an active roster of attorneys willing to take on child welfare cases.

“The unfortunate reality is that courts across Michigan have struggled for years to attract and retain court-appointed attorneys for this important work,” Judge Megan Kavanaugh said during Zoom briefing with journalists.

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Kavanagh, who co-founded the task force with fellow judge Kira Harris Bolden, said low funding, competition from other private and publicly funded legal systems and the complex nature of child protection procedures were among the main reasons for the struggle.

“The lack of attorneys available to represent children and parents in these proceedings is a situation that simply should not exist in our state,” she said.

The report was the result of input received from parents, children and the legal community during a public listening tour held across the state last year, including in-person meetings in Detroit, Cadillac and the Upper Peninsula, as well as virtual sessions, including in Berrien County and Kent. In addition, the Working Group examined the experience of other states, as well as the models used in Michigan to represent individuals in various legal systems.

Bolden said the information received made it clear that the current system does not promote proper representation.

“I was really amazed by some of the amazing data we collected. For example, more than 50% of young people surveyed indicated that they lawyer-guardian adlitem (L-GAL) did not meet with them outside of court,” she said.

“Forty percent of parents reported that their lawyer did not meet with them outside of court hearings, or they did not feel they could talk to their lawyers when problems arose. And 50% of parents expressed confidence that their lawyer could not effectively defend them in court.”

Bolden, a Democratic-nominated judge, is seeking elections for a four-year term in the Michigan Supreme Court against Republican-appointed Branch County Circuit Court Judge Patrick William O’Grady.

Also present at the Zoom briefing was State Sen. Sam Singh (D-East Lansing), chairman of the Senate Oversight Committee, who said that once the report is completed, they can begin a conversation about how to fund the proposed staff position, whether through the state and/or local resources and then present it to legislative leaders on both sides of the aisle in hopes of working with relevant committees in next year’s session.

“We will begin the development process quite quickly, working with the tax authorities on the financial implications of creating this office,” he said, adding that an example of this type of reform already exists.

“I think in Michigan we actually have a roadmap from others who came before us – Michigan Indigent Defense Commissionand also Michigan Appellate Defender’s Office– said Singh. “We have gone through the processes that the Legislature put in place to develop these offices.”

Asked if they expected any opposition at the county level to creating a representative system for statewide child welfare proceedings, Professor Vivek Shankaran, a task force member and director of the Children’s Legal Advocacy Clinic and Child Welfare Appeals Clinic at the University of Michigan University School of Law, said he expected the opposite.

“I don’t expect any resistance from the counties at all. In fact, what we’ve heard through our task force is the opposite: counties are now really struggling to find highly qualified lawyers to even do the work,” he said. “County administrator after administrator has kind of told us that they can’t find people who can handle both trial court appointments and appellate court appointments in this area. So I expect that they will be glad to receive such help.”

Kavanagh said their main goal is to ensure that those involved in child protection proceedings receive the best possible representation, and the effort is not about starting from scratch, but instead building on what works best.

“Some districts do some things very well, and we want to balance the need for some sort of statewide system that can provide support, compensation and training, and set standards, without losing some of the benefits that individual districts have.” have done for what works in their community that may not work in another community. We don’t need a one-size-fits-all approach that excludes some of the things that work really well,” she said.