The Texas A&M Legal Clinics were awarded a grant by the Texas Access to Justice Foundation (TAJF) to provide legal information and services to both youth and young adults who are aging out or have aged out of foster care.
The TAJF grant will help improve the legal knowledge of those who have experienced foster care and further support the efforts of social services providers already working with these populations. The legal clinics will assist seven counties in the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) Region 3C, as permitted by the grant. These counties include Erath, Hood, Johnson, Palo Pinto, Parker, Somervell, and Tarrant Counties.
In addition, a new staff attorney will work with students and supervising attorneys who participate in the legal clinics to represent youth and young adults in a variety of matters that help facilitate their independence. The new staff attorney will also integrate legal clinic resources and work with grantee partners to ensure collaboration of parties, collection of available resources, multiply on-the-ground capacity, and limit duplication between organizations.
“We are thrilled to have TAJF’s support and are excited to collaborate with other grantees to provide these youth with a more proactive plan for assessing unmet legal needs,” said Professor Luz Herrera, Associate Dean for Experiential Education. “We will work with social workers, foster parents, university liaisons, and others who currently represent some of these youth to identify and address legal needs on a more proactive basis, resolving legal issues for them before they leave foster care so they can transition to independence without these legal burdens.”
The legal clinics currently slated for collaboration through the grant include the Tax Dispute Resolution Clinic, Family and Veteran’s Advocacy Clinic, Entrepreneurship Law Clinic, and Community Development Clinic, among others.
TAJF is the leading funder of civil legal aid to the poor in Texas. Created in 1984 by the Supreme Court of Texas, TAJF's support for civil legal aid benefits hundreds of thousands of low-income Texans annually, including victims of crime, abused and neglected children, veterans, the elderly, and the homeless.
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