Council for Children’s Rights works to affirm rights for children daily through our individual services, research, and policy work. We are heartbroken and grieve over the senseless deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and the countless others before them. These tragedies continue to make headlines because, for too long, we have allowed racism to thrive in our systems with the absence of adequate and equitable structural change.

Children and families do not exist in a vacuum but, rather, are embedded in our communities and in our systems. Specifically, systems such as education, healthcare, and justice, intersect with social determinants of health, to create a set of conditions within which children and families live, work, play, learn, and interact. Those conditions affect their quality of life and ability to thrive.

In early March 2020, Council for Children’s Rights’ Individual Advocacy Team was gearing up for our next “New Volunteer Training” for the Special Education Advocacy for Kids (SpEAK) Volunteer Program. We were finalizing the training materials, contacting the planned attendees with last minute details, and polishing our presentations, excited about sharing the material and getting to know our new volunteers.

Thank you as always for your support of Council for Children’s Rights, and our mission to serve the children in our community by providing essential legal representation and advocacy. We are living in a time of crisis and great uncertainty, and because of that, the public services that our legal teams provide are needed now more than ever.