This Workgroup was created pursuant to Enactment Clause No. 3 of Senate Bill 396 (Virginia Acts of Assembly – 2022 Session – Chapter 305), which states that:

...the Office of the Children's Ombudsman shall convene a work group to consider issues relating to the Commonwealth's model of court-appointed legal counsel in child dependency cases.(*1) The work group shall include representatives from the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission, the Virginia Bar Association Commission on the Needs of Children, the Commission on Youth, the Office of the Executive Secretary of the Supreme Court of Virginia, and the Virginia Poverty Law Center and other Virginia Legal Aid programs. The work group shall make recommendations for legislative and budgetary changes to address these issues by November 1, 2022, to the Chairmen of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and the House Committee for Courts of Justice.

Pursuant to this charge, the Office of the Children’s Ombudsman recruited members of the groups listed in the enactment clause as well as a number of juvenile and domestic relations district courts judges, private attorneys that serve as counsel for parents, guardians ad litem for children, counsel for local departments of social services, a private child welfare expert consultant, and representatives from a local department of social services, the Office of the Attorney General, a local Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program, and the University of Richmond School of Law. A list of the Workgroup members is found in Appendix A.

The Workgroup met eight times between June and October, 2022 to discuss the issues related to the appointment of counsel in child dependency cases. In the initial meetings, the members agreed that the most immediate issues to consider were those related to court-appointed counsel for parents in child dependency cases, specifically compensation and performance standards. The Workgroup considered various models of legal representation used in other states and discussed whether Virginia should consider adopting any of these other models in the long-term.

This Report summarizes the issues identified by the Workgroup and provides recommendations to address them with the goal of improving the quality of legal representation provided to parties involved in child dependency cases. The Workgroup did not conduct an in-depth study of these issues but rather relied upon the subject-matter expertise, knowledge, and experience of the members of the Workgroup, who each provided valuable input to the discussions. For a detailed study, please refer to the 2015 Report of the Virginia Commission on Youth on Court-Appointed Counsel for Parents in Child Welfare Cases, attached as Appendix B or found on-line here.
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(*1) For purposes of this Workgroup, “child dependency cases" are cases involving children who have been alleged to have been abused or neglected and/or who have entered foster care. Child dependency court proceedings include emergency removal order hearings, preliminary removal hearings, preliminary child protective order hearings, adjudicatory hearings, dispositional hearings, foster care review hearings, permanency planning hearings, and termination of parental rights hearings.