The Colorado Supreme Court has finally laid down the law for attorneys representing children on behalf of the state. Chief Justice Anthony Vollack issued a directive that took effect this month: The lawyers, called "guardians ad litem," must meet with their clients personally, visit their homes or placements and show up for every court hearing.
Vollack acknowledges that he read last year's Westword story ("The Best Interests of the Child," August 23) on the shoddy legal representation given by state-funded GALs to state wards. But he says he issued the directive primarily because legislators already were poised to take similar action. GALs found violating the directive could lose their contracts with the state or--in the case of hourly appointees--find their names removed from the "appointment list."
"We're ecstatic over the new directive," says Phyllis Roestenberg, staff attorney at the Children's Legal Clinic, a nonprofit child-advocacy center in Denver. "It's criminal how we treat children in this country," she adds. "We have to hold GALs accountable."
Personally meeting with the attorney being paid to represent you is an act that most adults take for granted. But the need for Vollack's directive came out of the realization that many lawyers the state hired by the hour or by contract were taking cases and collecting their fees without ever meeting with the children they were representing.
Alicia, a twelve-year-old girl whom Westword interviewed last August, was one of those children. She had been in the state's dependency-and-neglect system for four years, and she had never laid eyes on her GAL, Allen Alderman. Alderman admitted that he delegated that task to an intern in his office, a practice that allowed him to take more cases. And he assumed more cases--at $600 a pop--than any other GAL in Denver. He estimated last August that he was carrying "around 200 cases." Others put the number at closer to 900. Alderman explained that he had set up a system in which unpaid student interns got school credit by working in his office and interviewing or observing the kids for him.
Thanks to the new directive, Alderman will have to revise his self-described "system." But not everyone is gung-ho about the new rules.
While Denver Chief Juvenile Judge Dana Wakefield says he's "pleased" about the directive, he's anything but enthusiastic. "It'll make the contracts less affordable," he says. "The cost will increase exponentially." And, he warns, there are already signs of trouble. "The directive became effective on February 1" he says. "Today is the 21st, and I already have one motion [from a GAL] to withdraw on the basis the GAL can't fulfill the directive."
Alderman did not return Westword's phone calls.
