Suchergebnisse

Dependency attorneys who represent children in child abuse and neglect proceedings engage in cross‐cultural lawyering. Beyond the inevitable cultural differences between lawyer and child client in terms of education, development, and age, there are often differences in race, sexual orientation, language, neighborhood of residence, and countless other cultural dimensions. Cultural differences can lead to miscommunications and misunderstandings between attorney and client, which in turn hurt the quality of representation. Increasing the cultural competence of an attorney can improve the attorney's ability to work effectively with children from different cultures. Unfortunately, very few states currently require cultural competence training for attorneys who represent children. This article calls for making cultural competence training mandatory for all dependency attorneys to improve the quality of representation for children involved in the dependency system.