CCA secures important settlement with the Connecticut Department of Corrections

Earlier this year, CCA, with co-counsel National Center for Youth Law and Juvenile Law Center, worked to address the Connecticut Department of Corrections' (DOC) practice of placing youth in need of COVID-19 medical quarantine into solitary confinement. As a result of this advocacy, CCA and its partners entered into a Settlement Agreement with the State wherein the State agreed to reduce its use of solitary confinement as a method of COVID-19 quarantine, while also providing access to appropriate education and mental health services to youth incarcerated at Manson Youth Institute. A link to the settlement is available here.

As a result of the settlement, CCA helped coordinate two consultations between DOC and national experts. These consultations focused on safely ensuring and maximizing out-of-cell time and programming for young people at Manson. Written recommendations from those consultations are currently being formalized for publication. There are currently approximately 300 young people incarcerated at Manson Youth Institute, around 40 of whom are minors.  

For more information, please contact CCA attorney Marisa Halm.

CCA's advocacy efforts have helped to secure crucial protections against utility shut-offs.

No household should face the crisis of getting a notice from their utility company that their lights or heat are going to be turned off. CCA attorney Bonnie Roswig has spent the summer working to ensure that when children returned to school, their homes have heat and electricity.

As the medical data shows, children who live in households without light and heat have negative health outcomes, increased rates of hospitalization and experience mental health issues –and certainly cannot successfully complete their homework. Attorney Roswig has been advocating for children before the Connecticut Public Utility Regulatory Authority (PURA) and has been educating all energy stakeholders regarding the challenges of financially challenged families.

Based on those efforts, households of limited income are eligible to have their state regulated electric and heat service protected from termination through May 22, 2022. Families should also have the opportunity to enroll in affordable payments plans.

Do you or your organization work with families at risk of having their utilities shut off? CCA has prepared a flyer to help explain how to prevent utility shut-offs. This flyer is available below:

• - in English
• - and in Spanish

For more information, please contact CCA attorney Bonnie Roswig.

CCA reopens Harding High's unique school-based legal assistance clinic.

Students at Bridgeport's Harding High School now have access to pro bono legal assistance — within their own school. Harding's Teen Legal Action Clinic has been operated by CCA since its opening in 2008. Now, with students returning to the classroom, the Harding High clinic is open in-person for the first time in more than a year. The Harding High clinic is one of just a handful of school-based legal clinics in the country.

Since the start of the school year, Bianca Herlitz-Ferguson, CCA's Singer Fellow, has staffed the Teen Legal Action Clinic at Harding High. With the help of Harding High administration and staff, Bianca works to identify students' legal needs and help them with issues as diverse as immigration, youth homelessness, and LGBTQ teen rights. She also plans to hold legal rights workshops for both students and staff at Harding. The unique, school-based environment of the clinic allows CCA to be proactive in reaching out to young people who may not otherwise have the opportunity to speak with a lawyer.

The Singer Fellowship is a fellowship offered through the Connecticut Bar Foundation and Herbert and Neil Singer Foundation. This fellowship supports the placement of new lawyers with public service legal organizations in Connecticut. CCA is grateful for the CBF and Herbert and Neil Singer Foundation for their support in helping the Harding High clinic return in-person.

For more information, contact CCA attorney Bianca Herlitz-Ferguson.

Client Spotlight: W.C. gets vaccinated

CCA's attorneys do whatever they can to help their clients. Sometimes, this means assisting them in matters outside legal cases – such as getting vaccinated. W.C. is a long-time CCA client; CCA attorneys started representing him and his brother in 2016, and attorney Jay Sicklick took over his case a few years later. W.C. was hesitant to get the COVID-19 vaccine, but after talking about it with Jay – the director of CCA's Medical-Legal Partnership Project – he decided to get vaccinated.

For W.C., a lack of reliable transportation was one of the major barriers to getting vaccinated. When Jay heard about this, he drove W.C. to a local pharmacy to get his vaccine. The picture above was taken after his second vaccine shot. Congratulations, W.C.!

CCA partnered with organizations around the state to launch an innovative program to address the needs of minors experiencing homelessness.

The Center for Children’s Advocacy partnered with advocacy organizations, state agencies and national organizations to build a collaborative system in the Stamford area addressing the needs of minors experiencing homelessness and housing instability.  

Currently, there is no streamlined way to track the number and needs of housing unstable minors and no one system for minors to access supports and services. Building off of the state’s efforts to ensure youth homelessness is rare, brief and one-time, the Stamford Juvenile Court geographic area was awarded the opportunity to receive direct technical assistance to better understand how youth homelessness and juvenile justice intersect, assess and understand how policies and practices may criminalize young people experiencing homelessness; and identify ways to provide more diversion options and related supports. This led to the creation of a Minor Homelessness Pilot, initially in Stamford, to eventually expand throughout Fairfield County.

As a result of the pilot, youth in the Stamford area will, for the first time, have a regional point of contact to obtain homelessness services. Additionally, the pilot increases regional outreach to minors experiencing homelessness, and encourages the creation of a case plan to provide individualized services and supports to each youth. A Statewide Minor Homelessness Taskgroup, co-chaired by CCA attorney Stacey Violante Cote, is also supporting two additional pilot sites in Manchester & the Eastern Region.  

The Minor Homelessness Pilot will officially launch later this month. 

For more information, please contact CCA attorney Stacey Violante Cote.