Mobile Legal Aid for Homeless Youth

Hartford Courant
February 9, 2015

HARTFORD — A new legal aid office on wheels will hit the road this month and begin reaching scores of youngsters who are homeless or in danger of landing in the streets, advocates said.

“Most of the youths who are moving around and experiencing some level of homelessness don’t know they have legal rights,” said Stacey Violante Cote, a lawyer who directs the Teen Legal Advocacy Project for the Center for Children’s Advocacy in Hartford.

“This new endeavor of ours is to literally use a vehicle to reach out to this population.”

The center’s new van, which features an office space with a generator and electrical outlet, will be unique in the state when it launches on Wednesday, Cote said. The mobile legal aid clinic is being piloted in Hartford and is aiming to help about 200 teenagers and young adults a year with their basic needs, such as education and health, and more complex matters through consultations, direct representation and legal rights training.

The roving office will especially target “unaccompanied” high school-aged youth who are on their own and may not consider themselves homeless, advocates said, because many resort to “couch surfing” with friends, relatives or anyone else who will take them in for the night.

The project is believed to be the second of its kind in the country . .       read the complete story at http://www.kidscounsel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Mobile-Courant-2-9-15.pdf.



http://www.kidscounsel.org/mobile-legal-aid-homeless-youth/