2018 NLADA Annual Conference--Resilient Justice

In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Plyler v. Doe that students could not be constitutionally denied a free public education on account of their immigration status. In addition to Plyler, civil rights laws—Title VI, EEOA, IDEA—guarantee meaningful access to educational opportunities for all children regardless of national origin and to all parents by requiring schools to communicate with them in a language they understand. Amid the atmosphere of increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement, some localities have stepped up protection and support for immigrant students and their families, while others blatantly violate long-standing policies. With a federal Department of Education that seems inclined to weaken the efforts of the Office of Civil Rights and indications that Trump Administration support for Plyler and language access may disappear, the need to support immigrant students and their families takes on new urgency. This panel will review the educational rights of immigrant families, connecting those policies to state and local implementation. We will also discuss legal strategies and current litigation.

Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas (LANWT) and New Mexico Legal Aid (NMLA) share a heavily rural 400-mile state border region where low-income clients and communities in each state frequently encounter legal problems involving cross-border parties or jurisdiction. The two legal aid programs are collaborating to build a regional advocacy partnership that will expand expertise and capacities to address these issues, including streamlined referrals between the organizations, joint legal clinics and outreach, and strategic co-counseling. The project includes attorneys at both programs who are licensed in both states. The panel will discuss the formation, operation (including supporting technologies), and strategic goals of the project and encourage audience discussion for how similar regional partnerships can be created between adjoining states elsewhere.

We are facing a crisis in the low numbers of leaders of color in our legal services community. How can our programs create racial justice for our clients when we ourselves fail to attract and retain lawyers of color? What will we do about it? The African-American Project Directors Association will highlight the voices of emerging leaders of color as well as the best practices for nurturing them.

Many, if not most, legal services providers work with clients who are in vulnerable situations. Clients often present in crisis when they are socially or economically insecure. They may be in danger of losing housing, unable to buy food or medication, or be in an abusive situation. The issues of poverty, racism, ageism, ableism, and more have far-reaching effects, including the ability to effectively represent a client who is facing these challenges. Addressing the many needs of a client who is in a vulnerable situation can be overwhelming. This session will discuss an inner office framework where social workers and attorneys work collaboratively to provide holistic services to clients based on the nature of their vulnerable situations. We will also discuss how to build community partnerships and engage with other providers to start coalitions and harness the available resources so your clients may live with dignity.

Partnering for Native Health is a multi-state collaborative project serving members of more than 100 tribal nations in some of the most isolated and rural communities in the country. Panelists will discuss their project and their vision for the future that integrates post-secondary education, health care, legal aid, and technology to build a community-based, culturally appropriate legal extender network that empowers communities and provides access to justice to people living in places as far flung as Tuba City, Navajo Nation, to the native Village of Selawick, Alaska.

Leverage Geographic Information System (GIS) and mapping techniques in the strategic planning process to create living tools for development, evaluation, and strategic advocacy. We outline a modern approach to strategic planning that incorporates GIS and mapping to develop practical processes for strategic thinking and decision-making. Programmatic goals and strategies are developed and revised using GIS and mapping techniques. We will discuss how to use mapping visualizations of internal and external data sources to bring the clarity needed to gain insight, drive strategic decision-making, and garner support. Use mapping to identify new data worthy of collection to enhance assessments of progress toward strategic goals. Identify patterns of legal issues and unmet service needs to guide ongoing strategic efforts. Overlay demographic data (e.g., poverty, race, English language proficiency, disability, at-risk status, veteran status) with service availability, office locations, and point-in-time snapshots of closed case data to provide powerful visualizations of the alignment between relevant populations and actual service delivery. Visualizations can be segmented in a number of ways – geographically, substantively, economically – to allow consideration of a number of different perspectives and evaluate whether current driving theories or hypotheses are accurate.