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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

WV Children’s Court Guardians See Rising Caseloads and Trouble Getting Paid

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Wednesday, March 17, 2010   

CHARLESTON, W. Va. - The reward for representing West Virginia children who are caught up in the legal system can be more work, and more trouble getting paid for it, than perhaps those who do it had expected.

Shannon Atwell is executive director of Childlaw Services, a nonprofit law firm that provides court guardians for kids in seven southern counties. She says the state public defenders' fund, which makes up one-third of their budget, often runs out of money. At the same time, she adds, the firm's caseload has increased by 50 percent in the last 18 months, a result of the recession and other problems.

"Child abuse and neglect statistics will often rise and fall with the economy. And, with the epidemic of substance abuse that we have in southern West Virginia, that creates a very risky situation."

Her firm represents children in custody battles and with accusations of abuse or neglect.

"We've had two six-week-olds in different families, where the father has shaken them and physically harmed the baby. Depending on the age of the child and the needs of the child, we reflect that child's voice in court."

She notes the public defenders' fund has regularly run out of money for years, but her group always gets paid, eventually.

"When there's funding it can sometimes take six to twelve months – and now, there's no funding at all. It's 'who knows when we'll get paid?'"

Atwell is afraid the courts might short of attorneys who are willing to take on these responsibilities. She explains it might take a year before they are compensated for work they are now doing, and many well qualified people will chose to do something else. In past years, the West Virginia Legislature has granted supplemental money to the public defenders' fund, something she says becomes more difficult to do during tight economic times.



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