Children's Advocacy in Human Services

Children’s Advocacy in Human Services
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Frontline workers in child care play a significant role in the realization of children rights and in assisting them to gain access to proper and adequate government services. Advocacy works to prevent breaches of human rights of varying classes of children such as children of the poor and those with incarcerated parents among others. There are documents that outline child advocacy promises such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the World Summit for Children and those arising from the Child Rights Caucus of 2000 which guide child frontline workers in defending children’s’ rights (Grover, 2004).
There are many agencies in the area of human services. The agencies provide services for children and family and work to prevent and respond to child maltreatment among other services. Many of these agencies work under the office of the administration for Children and services. Advocacy supports four facets of wellbeing namely cognitive functioning, physical health and development, social functioning and emotional functioning (Lou, Anthony, Stone, Vu, & Austin, 2008). Child advocacy services are aimed at preventing child maltreatment and championing family and community wellbeing.
Child advocates the role in advocating for the child’s wellbeing in several ways. One of the ways is through the best interests advocates appointed by the court to represent the best interest of the child in court cases. The advocates are also referred to as Guardian s ad litem (GALs) and they are appointed to advocate for the best interest of the child in court cases where there are mental health and substance abuse concerns, where the children are under stress owing to high parental conflict particularly in custody cases and where child abuse allegations exist. Appointment of a GAL by the court is non-discretionary in some instances and sometimes it makes appointments based on request by the parents. The Federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 makes it mandatory for state courts to appoint a GAL in cases with allegations of child abuse and neglect (Marby, 2013).
The GAL gathers firsthand information from the child and the situation and makes recommendations to the court. Different states have different criteria for appointing GALs in custody cases. The court appoints qualified attorneys with the requisite practicing license, GAL training, knowledge on the subject area such as family or juvenile law, relevant experience in child advocacy, and knowledgeable on the court system process. GALs consider the wishes of the child when making recommendations to the court and are required to make sure that the child has access to requisite social services (Marby, 2013).
Another way of child advocacy for wellbeing of the children involves prevention programs through the concerted effort of various agencies. The programs strive to foster factors such as enhancing warmth between parents and their children, boosting parenting knowledge to ensure children attain their developmental milestones, assisting parents to develop resilience to ensure that refrain from venting their anger towards their children, providing a platform for social connections that offer encouragement among members and building coping strategies for challenges of raising families, providing support such as food, housing, child care and medical care, and promoting children’s’ ability to interact with others in the society in a self-regulated way which reduces abuse occurrences (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2013).
There are advocates that champion the wellbeing of children during investigations into sexual abuse and other maltreatment. Child Advocacy Centers are in the frontline in championing for a well-coordinated response in the processing of sexual abuse cases (Jackson, 2004). Child Advocacy Centers (CACs) were designed with an aim to provide smoother and well-coordinated investigative processes in child maltreatment and sexual abuse cases. The process reduces the amount of stress that the abused child and family are subjected to in the investigation process. The CACs do so by eliminating redundant interviews by different agencies, ensuring that children are interviewed by professionals that are knowledgeable of child...