Our Impact | Children's Rights

Children’s Rights holds government systems accountable for protecting kids and keeping families together.

We don’t protect children one child at a time. Our job is to protect thousands of children over time and over generations by exposing the dysfunction and deep roots of racism inside child welfare systems.

Key Facts

Rosie Perez speaks at 22′ Children’s Rights Benefit

Children’s Rights has a proven model of using litigation to get to the very root of injustice and create transformative social change. Children’s Rights fights for systemic change. And wins.
-Ryan Barker, Missouri Foundation for Health

The Issues

Child Mental Health Is Too Important To Ignore

Through legal action and advocacy Children’ Rights improves the mental health of kids trapped in systems that isolate them from their communities, deny them adequate care, and cause even greater harm and trauma.

Warehousing Kids In Prison-Like Facilities Causes Lifelong Trauma

Children’s Rights launched a nationwide campaign to educate the public and policymakers on the harms of placing kids in dangerous group homes and facilities and adopt recommendations from lived experts on how to end this practice once and for all.

Children Are Still Being Separated At The Border

As co-counsel in the highly publicized Flores v. Garland case, Children’s Rights is one of only three organizations in the country allowed to speak directly with immigrant children inside federal facilities. The Flores lawsuit established the only set of national standards for the detention, treatment, and release of all immigrant minors detained in the custody of the federal government. The children on whose behalf we advocate have all faced tremendous hardships, which often include a mixture of poverty and violence.

Demanding Explicit Protections and Resources for LGBTQ+ Youth

Children’s Rights uses a blend of strategic advocacy, training, public awareness initiatives, and coalition building to address the discrimination and abuse that LGBTQ+ youth face in government systems and beyond.

Racial Injustice in Child Welfare is an Urgent Human Rights Issue

Children’s Rights advocacy is bringing national and international attention to how racist structures contribute to the disproportionate involvement of Black and Indigenous children and families in US child welfare systems—and bringing strategies to address and end the unnecessary surveillance, investigation, and separation of Black families.

Defending The Rights Of Incarcerated Youth And Young Adults

Through our litigation and advocacy work, Children’s Rights is working to ensure that as many youth as possible are able to stay within their communities and that the rights of all those caught up in the criminal legal system are protected.

Current Report

2022 Impact Report

In 2022, we called on states to prioritize children’s mental health, demanded justice for children with mental health disabilities forcibly placed in prison-like institutions, and urged US policymakers to examine and repeal racist child welfare laws. Together, we are holding our leaders accountable and helping build the more just and equitable world our children deserve.

Download The Impact Report

Children’s Rights is relentlessly and unapologetically bringing pressure to systems that have for far too long have been complacent. They are bringing power back to the people who have felt powerless.
Bobbi Taylor, Lived ExperienceEngagement Consultant

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