The Youth and Education Law Project advocated in the spring of 2023 to ensure that students who are residing in short-term residential treatment facilities (through foster care or probation placements) still have to access regular school, as opposed to being forced into online programs.

Our first step was meeting with Department of Social Services, as described by our project partner:

From Lauren E. Brady, Managing Director, Youth Law Center

The Youth Law Center (YLC) has been working on a number of projects with the support of the Youth and Education Law Project (YELP) at Stanford Law School throughout this past school year (2022-23) to advance our advocacy efforts. YELP is an in-house legal teaching clinic that advocates for equality of educational opportunity for disadvantaged children and their communities, while simultaneously providing intensive training for law students in their second and third year of study. Most recently, after several months of investigation, YELP students and YLC attorneys met with the California Department of Social Services to discuss concerns around systems-involved young people being required to attend online school programs in lieu of traditional public schools when they were placed in short term residential treatment programs. This work resulted in the state’s licensing division reminding these treatment programs that foster youth have the right to attend in person public school and to enjoy all of the supports that attending school can provide, especially in times of transition. We look forward to continuing this and other important work with YELP.
Thanks!
Lauren

In the spring quarter we continued this work by helping to draft comments to the Short Term Residential Treatment Programs draft regulations. Our goal was to ensure, in the regulations, the right to educational access and equity for students in these facilities. To read YELP’s comments follow this link.

Student Team: Stefan Suazo (JD ’24), Ashley Thompson (JD ’24), Jacob Randolf (JD ’24) and Sarah Corning (JD ’24)