The UNM School of Law has received a grant to attract, prepare and mobilize lawyers to work for the health and well-being of underprivileged communities in New Mexico.
The $2,652,487 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) is a collaboration with strategic community partners, including UNM’s Health Sciences Center (HSC), to address legal needs that harm the health and well-being of children and families living in poverty in New Mexico, according to a UNM press release.
Beth Gillia, manager of the Institute of Public Law and director of the Corinne Wolfe Children's Law Center (CLC) at the UNM School of Law, said the WK Kellogg Foundation provided funding to assist the school's Corinne Wolfe Center for Child and Family Justice in meeting its goals of pursuing justice and racial equity while meeting health standards for vulnerable children and families across the state.
Gillia said a social return on investment study commissioned during the planning process of the project identified numerous counties across the state where the majority of low-income children and families were turned away when they sought legal help from civil legal services providers.
“This grant will fund a number of initiatives that will increase access to justice, primarily by mobilizing Child and Family Justice scholars and fellows in underserved communities statewide in order to provide community education, direct representation and policy advocacy on behalf of low income children and their families in pursuit of justice and racial equity,” she said.
At the most basic level, Gillia said, the project will produce more diverse attorneys who are highly trained in all the legal areas that impact poor children and families in New Mexico, and who are dedicated to pursuing social justice legal careers on behalf of those children and families.
“Those attorneys will provide advice, representation and policy advocacy on behalf of children and families related to access to health care, income security, education and special education, family violence, housing issues and much more,” she said.
Gillia said in New Mexico the health and well-being of children and families marginalized by race and poverty is too frequently compromised by social determinants of health like domestic violence and living in a moldy, rat-infested home.
“A lawyer who helps to enforce housing code regulations, advocates for a domestic violence protection order or secures critical educational services plays an essential role in achieving well-being by addressing these social determinants of health. But New Mexican children and families of color living in poverty lack this critical access to justice,” she said.
Gillia said building on a long-standing Medical-Legal Alliance, the law school is working very closely with the UNMHSC.
Yael Cannon, associate professor at the School of Law, said the project will mobilize highly trained graduates to the target population of children and families in the state.
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“(New Mexico) is a minority-majority state in which youth ages zero to 19 are 58.9 percent Hispanic, 26.1 percent White, 10.2 percent Native American, 2.4 percent Multi-Racial and 1.6 percent African-American," she said.
Cannon said the 2015 Kids Count Survey ranked NM 49th out of 50 states in child well-being, with 32 percent of White, 74 percent of Native American, and 62 percent of Hispanic children living at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level.
She said in 2012 only seven out of 10 New Mexican youth graduated from high school.
Cannon said youth mental health in New Mexico has been among the worst in the nation since 2003, with Native American youth having the highest rate of suicide.
“Well-trained lawyers can use legal and policy advocacy to address these social determinants to achieve justice, health, and racial equity. Yet, there is a substantial justice gap for New Mexico’s children and families,” she said.
Cannon said that studies by the NM Access to Justice Commission show that for each client served by New Mexico Legal Aid and DNA-People’s Legal Services, approximately 2.3 eligible persons were turned away because of insufficient funds. That amounts to over 18,000 applicants a year, she said.
She said the new center for Child and Family Justice will allow the law school to attract, train and mobilize a diverse group of law students and graduates to serve the most vulnerable children and families in New Mexico, improving their access to justice and racial equity.
“Our Child and Family Justice Scholars, and other interested law students, will have access to high quality training to prepare them to serve the most vulnerable children of New Mexico, for whom childhood well-being ranks among the lowest in the nation,” Cannon said.
Sayyed Shah is the assistant news editor at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at assistant-news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @mianfawadshah.
