OAKLAND — Within three hours of learning that they had been licensed to be foster parents, Hayward residents Kelli Rockafellow and Michael Cohen got the call to meet their future son: a 9-month-old boy, sick with whooping cough, who had been abandoned at a nearby hospital.
Almost three years later, Drew is thriving, playing with toy cars on a family room table as his parents try to recall the foggy, whirlwind days of new parenthood and the critical role played by dependency attorney Rob Waring in navigating the bumpy 865-day journey to his adoption.
“He didn’t care what we wanted, he didn’t care what the biological family wanted, he only wanted what was best for Drew,” said Rockafellow, a 37-year-old zookeeper turned stay-at-home mom.
But because of state funding issues, Waring and other attorneys at the East Bay Children’s Law Offices (EBCLO) are finding it increasingly difficult to continue representing some 2,000 Alameda County children each year who have been orphaned or removed from their parents or guardians because of abuse, neglect or abandonment.
The state Judicial Council reports that $202.9 million is needed to represent all the children and parents in California’s dependency courts, but the state allocated only $114.7 million for dependency counsel in the current fiscal year and has proposed the same for the next, leaving stakeholders up and down the state in a financial panic.
EBCLO said the Judicial Council has warned that if the state doesn’t backfill $22 million of the $88 million dependency counsel operating deficit at the June state budget hearings, funding for dependency attorneys in donor counties (counties whose revenue is redistributed to poorer court systems) such as Alameda County is going to be slashed again. EBCLO expects its operating budget to be slashed by 11 percent for the second consecutive year.
“Every year we go back to the Legislature asking for more for dependency counsel,” said Judicial Council spokesman Peter Allen. “It’s about the kids, and these attorneys are justifiably concerned about adequate funding for the work. The work they do is incredibly important, and everyone in the Judicial Council agrees.”
Fearing a devastating effect on the service provided to the children they represent, EBCLO is considering following the lead of dependency attorneys in Santa Clara and San Francisco counties and asking the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to direct funds from the county budget to help, said Kristin Mateer, managing attorney at EBCLO.
“We are really afraid,” Mateer said. “We will make it though this year one way or another, but we are really concerned these next cuts will result in us not being able to maintain staffing levels.”
The Judicial Council said the standard load for a dependency attorney is 141 cases at a time. The busiest attorney at EBCLO is juggling 192. The biggest concern, said EBCLO interim Executive Director Susan Walsh, is that attorneys next fiscal year will be too overstretched to spend time with their young clients at their homes to gain real insight into their living situation before making decisions about their future.
“Attorneys need time with the child to earn their trust, to get the real information,” Walsh said. “You aren’t going to get that information in a five-minute conversation in a courtroom hallway where there is no privacy and the kids are being triggered by what’s going on.”
Rockafellow recalls how in court during the dependency hearings that led to adoption, Drew’s attorney could tell the judge the boy’s favorite color, what nursery rhymes he liked to sing, how far he could count. While everyone in the process said they were working for Drew’s best interests, his parents believe that Waring was the only person who truly was.
Dependency attorneys stay in the young clients’ lives for years, sometimes after they age out of the foster care system. College student Kalani Smith, 19, became a foster child after her half-sister’s father was murdered in 2009 and her mother entered a deep depression. She fears the budget cuts will sever long-standing relationships between children and their attorneys. Her attorney, Mateer, is like a family member to her in many ways.
“She’s the person that knows about me more than even my family. I tell her things that I wouldn’t want to tell anyone in my family,” Smith said.
EBCLO also consists of social workers and case workers who specialize in areas like education, mental health and juvenile delinquency. Mateer said they have managed their budget crisis so far through grants, attrition and making some positions part time. But unable to see how they can serve their vulnerable clients through more cuts, the organization has ramped up its fundraising efforts and is joining other dependency lawyer groups in lobbying efforts in Sacramento.
Judge Charles Smiley, presiding judge of Alameda County’s juvenile court system, worries that the ongoing funding crisis will push skilled individuals away from working with dependency court children, who themselves are at increased risk for incarceration, homelessness and exploitation.
“We see every day how important it is to have rigorous and compassionate advocacy on behalf of the most vulnerable in society. The children who come to us in dependency cases are fragile, having endured some form of trauma, sometimes years of trauma,” Smiley said. “The work is not just important. It’s critical.”
