Lelabari Giwa-Ojuri

The Project

Lelabari used community lawyering tools to advocate for and mobilize the support systems of parents in the child welfare system who had their own families disrupted by the child welfare or juvenile justice systems as youth.

Philadelphia’s child welfare system takes children from their families more often than any other major city. Most of Philadelphia’s children who enter foster care do so because of allegations of neglect rather than abuse. Too often poverty is conflated with inadequate caregiving, leading to children being separated from their parents through no fault of their own. Parents who stabilize and reunify their families usually do so with the support of their families and communities. Yet parents who were themselves separated from their families as children are often isolated. Community lawyering and participatory defense use humanizing and trauma-informed narratives to center parents’ experiences and voices, identify helpful resources, and provide decision-makers with the tools they need to justly avoid unnecessary child removal and ensure faster and safer reunification.

Fellowship Highlights

• Represented 60 parents who were involved with the child welfare or juvenile justice systems as children
• Provided brief services, advice, and/or referrals to an additional 10 individuals, including supporting families who were pre-petition and undergoing a Department of Human Services investigation
• Provided five trainings for allies and other service providers on how to support parents and families involved in the child welfare system, as well as organizing monthly trainings with case managers in schools who work with pregnant and parenting students
• Created a training webinar for host organization attorneys serving clients impacted by intergenerational family separation
• Presented to social work and law students on the intersections between the juvenile justice system and the child welfare system

Next Steps

Following her Fellowship, Lelabari remains at Community Legal Services as a Staff Attorney.

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