Page 99 - Impact: Collected Essays on Expanding Access to Justice

in some cases has been quite the opposite .14 Children in broken adoption situations continue to be in dire need of legal and social work advocacy as it relates to the inability to access the subsidy and also they can lose their medical coverage . Some young people need access to medication or other mental health services and an inchoate mental health system that is not attuned to these young people’s unique trauma experience may be a barrier to their well-being . These children experience removal from a birth parent and family, possible trauma in foster care, and now the break of the adoptive relationship with little recourse . Also the lack of understanding of the behavioral conduct and attachment disorders as well as the issues related to identity exploration and formation that youth face as they approach adulthood are part of this jumbled experience for them . Access to justice where no one sees their needs has left a part of our youth and young adult population invisible to any access to justice paradigm .
When Ollie was put back into foster care, he lost contact with his sibling . Another common issue for broken adoption youth, is the refusal of their adoptive family to allow contact between them and their sibling(s) . Many children are adopted out of foster care with at least one of their biological siblings . When their relationship with their adoptive parent ends and they are not welcome in the home, they may lose contact with siblings who remain in the home .
The current posture of New York State adoption regulations only mandates that foster care agencies ensure contact between siblings if they are placed in different foster homes .15 However, once the adoption is finalized, the foster care agency is no longer obligated to maintain sibling contact; it is up to the adoptive parent . In fact, the adoptive parent can simply terminate all contact between the siblings . In either situation—being adopted into different families or being barred from contact with siblings who remain in the adoptive home after a sibling leaves—there is a growing number of siblings who have lost contact, and access to justice for them does not exist .16 Social science research has noted that the longest continuous relationship that people may have is with a sibling, but in the eyes of the law, that relationship is not paramount .17
Iv. Conclusion
Seeking to have access to justice programs for the poor or other vulnerable people is embraced as a public charge . The plan to provide access to these communities varies by each state . The key points for an access to justice system are that the system must endeavor toward transparency, quality, and quantity of resources in order to have equal access and readily obtainable legal information . Groups in and connected to the legal community in the private, public, and government sectors strive to provide needed resources for a modicum of access to their justice systems . States within this framework are at the forefront of trying to enhance funding for attorneys through civil legal aid, pro bono attorney support from the private bar, self-help services for the self-represented, and other creative projects .
Methods for addressing barriers to both quantity and quality of legal assistance continue to evolve . However, gaps to access exist . They exist in several different ways . Even though Kay and Ollie have had some access to the legal system, they still face the cracks within the systems
14 See Post & Zimmerman, supra note 10.
15 See 18 N.Y.C.R.R. § 431.10(e).
16 Dawn J. Post et al., Are you Still my Family? Post-Adoption Sibling Visitation, 43 caP. u. l. reV. 308 (2015).
17 See id. at 319-26.
Alternative Models
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