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Across the country, Children’s Rights investigates, exposes and combats violations of the rights of children.

Through relentless strategic advocacy and legal action, we hold governments accountable for keeping kids safe and healthy.

More About Our Impact

We’re Advocates

For

Child Health

To ensure that governments provide necessary and appropriate medical and mental health care services to children in systems.

For

Families Together

To stop the unnecessary institutionalization of children and ensure families have the community resources they need to keep kids at home in the care of loving adults.

For

Government Accountability

To expose violations of children’s rights in government systems and hold states accountable for keeping kids healthy and safe.

For

Immigration Rights

To ensure the fair treatment, placement, and release of all immigrant minors in the custody of the federal government.

For

LGBTQ+ Rights

To ensure LGBTQ+ youth and families have the legal protections they need to live their lives free from discrimination and mistreatment.

For

Racial Justice

To dismantle racist laws and policies that lead to the unjust removal of Black children from their families.

For

Youth Justice

To end the mistreatment of detained and incarcerated youth, and derail the foster care-to-prison pipeline that funnels children into the juvenile and criminal legal systems.

SPEAKING UP FOR CHANGE

View All Stories

I said I lost my childhood to the foster system, but I will not let this be the end of the story. I will continue fighting so others do not suffer like I did. By sharing my experience, I hope to spark a much-needed conversation about overmedication and other abuses in the foster system and the urgent need to make things better for kids.

Read Khi’Marria’s Story

Every time I work with Children’s Rights, it makes me feel empowered. They want to create real change with strong rippling effects that give young people and their families lasting change.

Listen to Jasiyah’s Story

America has a legal and moral obligation to provide children in its custody with proper shelter, food, recreation, and medical care. And to reunite them with their families.

Read Leecia’s Story

I do not believe that kids who are institutionalized get enough love at all. I believe they’re treated as objects.

Listen to Alyssa’s Story

I want to help break down the destructive generational structures that children in foster care inherit. But also celebrate memory and ancestry – including my own ancestors, who have been right there with me for 32 hard years.

Read Ivory’s Story

Even if the world is challenging and hard, we shouldn’t just be asking young people about their traumas. We should be finding out what helps them thrive and figuring out how we can make those things possible.

Read Elliot’s Story

One of the many reasons I participated in Are You Listening? Is to lift up all of the voices that were never heard, all of the youth that were mistreated at the hands of the system. All the young people I have worked with over the years. People listened to me and that’s why I am who I am today.

Read Michelle’s Story

It is unfair and cruel to expect young people who have already suffered so much, been denied support and the unconditional love every child deserves to get no help in the biggest transition of their lives — adulthood. Imagine being expected to pay the rent and be responsible with no information and no resources. Not fair.

Read Jonathan’s Story

Today, when I encounter transgender children, be they teens or younger kids, I remember my own childhood. I recall the longing to be heard and seen as myself. I remember the confusing and oftentimes lonely battles with self-doubt. My need for support and affirmation from others was profound. I badly wanted to belong, just like everyone else. I know that these children want the same.

Read Samantha’s Story