When I announced my decision to leave a teaching job a few years ago, a colleague plaintively cried, "But who will be our warrior?"
And now as I am ready to leave this job advocating for abused and neglected children, I'm told that I've kicked up a lot of dirt and made positive changes.
And I thought I was being subdued here. I faced every day trying to do the best for my child clients, and I can be a little tenacious and outspoken. (You know, a real pain in the ass to work with.) But I didn't take on big battles because I didn't really see the system as broken. In the Louisiana law, children are guaranteed the right to an attorney in Child in Need of Care Proceedings. Whether it was me or somebody else, they would be represented.
The benefit of it being me is how much I enjoy it. Working with kids is really a pleasure, and what other people find annoying (teenagers drastically changing their minds from one minute to the next, for example), I find invigoratingly challenging. I like a challenge. Some criminal defense lawyer wants to get into a screaming match about how his client, the mother, is completely innocent and my client, the child, is spawn of Satan? Oh, I'm not backing down, sir. No, I am not. I just don't have a natural fear instinct, I guess.
But my point is that while it is really dreadful that so many children come into foster care, the system as a whole works. I was privileged to work with three amazing judges who never, ever swayed from always considering the children's best interests. The other attorneys in the courtroom taught me so very much about being a lawyer and were welcoming and supportive. And the other players, such as CASA and DCFS, were overall abundantly great. Some foster care workers I had to pick at sometimes to do their job, but that was the exception to the rule. And CASA - they have to be the best in the country. They are amazingly good.
The kids in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, are looked out for. This is not to say that everything is peachy keen, but there's no systematic widescale change that needs to be made. All the players need to stay on their toes - and parents need to stop abusing and neglecting their children - but I am satisfied that this is as well-functioning a system as can likely exist.
So who do I take to battle? I think my spirit of compromise helped out many children, but there just comes a time for me when I'm ready to take on the bad guys.
And so I'm moving to Liberia. Not that there is a Charles Taylor or other horrific person there, but I will take on rebuilding the judicial system.
So, I kicked up enough dirt here in Shreveport. Let it settle or not - I'm heading to Africa!