Everychild Foundation Awards $1 million to the Center for Juvenile Law and Policy at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Everychild Foundation announced today that its 2017 $1 million grant has been awarded to the Center for Juvenile Law & Policy (CJLP) at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. The grant, payable over three years, will help launch the Everychild Integrated Educational and Legal Advocacy Project. 

The project aims to stop the school-to-prison pipeline for "crossover youth," the name given to foster youth who are also involved in the juvenile justice system. The program anticipates serving 300 unduplicated such youth and will increase graduation rates for crossover kids and their potential to become productive members of society.

"Crossover children require a strong advocate to assure them the services and opportunities to which they are entitled, but most often denied. Without this support, they are invariably pushed further along the proverbial 'Pipeline to Adult Prison.' However, with education proven to be the best vehicle to avoid this trajectory, the Loyola program has the ability to provide brighter futures for generations of children," said Jacqueline Caster, Founder and President of the Everychild Foundation.

Each EIELAP client will have a legal team including a juvenile-justice attorney, an education lawyer and a social worker. The education attorney and law student will advocate for the youth's education and disability rights, in tandem with a juvenile justice attorney and law student who will defend the youth in delinquency court. The social worker will help address the issues that are causing the delinquent behavior.

The project will also train 1500 child advocates on education law, delinquency and disability issues. Additional project goals are to secure successful outcomes for at least 90 percent of the clients served, based on their identified needs, train 36 lawyers in best-practices education advocacy for children, and push for systemic reform and a replicable system standard of integrated advocacy. For more information, visit www.lls.edu/cjlp.

The Everychild Foundation makes a single $1 million grant to a different Los Angeles-area non-profit agency each year that benefits children and youth, ages 0 to 24. This is the 18th consecutive award made by Everychild, bringing its overall community contributions to date to $16 million and more than one million children served. For more information, visit www.everychildfoundation.org.

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SOURCE Everychild Foundation