Florida Tomorrow is a belief...
that everyone deserves equal, informed and fair representation.
At the Fredric G. Levin College of Law, children are important clients. Barbara Bennett Woodhouse makes sure of it.
Woodhouse is director of the law school’s Center on Children and Families. The center, established in 2001, has an ambitious vision. Woodhouse and her team see the center as a spearhead in efforts to serve Florida’s most vulnerable residents: its children. To put it in simple terms, the center’s mission is to make sure all neglected and abused children receive integrated help from professionals in law, social services, education and mental health.
“We make a difference,” Woodhouse says, “because we are involved at every level — from the trenches to the Supreme Court.”
With legal issues nowadays affecting families and children so commonplace — there are 1.2 million divorces each year and more than 21 million children involved in some form of custody or child support dispute — the need for coordinated services has never been greater, Woodhouse explains, especially when resolution and problem-solving, rather than litigation, is the goal.
To that end, UF’s Center on Children and Families now includes the Child Welfare Clinic. The clinic is one of the first in the country devoted to teaching law students the skills to collaborate with physicians, nurses and social workers in a unified approach to child protection. Another program in the UF Law Virgil Hawkin’s Civil Clinics, Gator TeamChild, makes it possible for law students to learn firsthand the art and science of child advocacy. Through Gator TeamChild, UF students become Florida Supreme Court-certified legal interns and represent at-risk and indigent children in the 16-county area surrounding Gainesville. The program provides practical, ethical and interdisciplinary experience in cases involving custody disputes, delinquency, domestic violence and healthcare.
To date, some 50 graduates of the Levin College of Law have earned a Family Law Certificate, creating what Woodhouse calls a ripple effect in society. In training a new generation of child-centered advocates, Woodhouse and the other founders of UF’s Center on Children and Families hope to see that salutary effect strengthen and spread.
As Woodhouse explains, the center’s initial leadership role — based on the philosophy of inclusion and collaboration — might well serve as a model for other similar and much-needed statewide initiatives.
