Essay Example on Child Advocacy: Ensuring Justice for Youth in the US Justice System

Introduction

Child advocacy is a legitimate intervention strategy applied to the youths who have enjoyed a quick rush to prominence recently. This paper determines whether the enactment of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) makes children and youth vulnerable to obtaining justice in the justice system.

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In the United States, several federal government reports were laid, which resulted in a Joint Commission on Mental Health of Children. In essence, most Americans believe that a child has a right to have an active and mentally healthy life. However, rights can only be fulfilled if people tackle social crises by committing themselves to change. Since children are relatively politically powerless in society, adults have consistently made serious decisions without consulting them (Isaacs, 2015).

In any society, children are deemed a relatively powerless group. In most instances, adults have the privilege to make crucial decisions over essentials issues without consulting young people. Adults ignore them and do not seek their clarifications to participate in the decision-making process. Ideally, children are hardly informed about the new rules and policies that affect them. The other members of the community take their opportunities and rights for granted. Most of the policies and laws within the community treat children as an object of concern and properties of their parents.

For instance, most of the protectionist policies and laws are anchored on outdated paternalistic beliefs. For that reason, there exists a considerable imbalance between young people and government agencies like schools and police force. Thus, young people seem to be passive recipients of conclusions made by adults on particular subjects.

Literature Review

Child advocacy refers to a social movement that strives to improve children's status. The social campaign focuses simply on the provision of direct services to young people. Child advocacy's ultimate goal is to increase the accountability and responsiveness of social institutions influencing the lives of young people (Isaacs, 2015). The social movement increases self-determination, medical, educational, and social resources to which young people are entitled. In the previous decade, the child-saving movement was embedded on two assumptions. The first assumptions were based on the fact that young people are in a state of dependency, making them vulnerable to adults and caretakers.

Based on the developmental incapacity of young people, social customs, and law, young people are subject to benign oppression, making the virtually powerless. Caretakers may not be malevolent in their intention but their actions may not be in the best interest of children. In essence, the caretaker decision may not suit the children's interests based on the outcomes of complex competing pressures and ignorance.

Research supports that caretakers and adults are primarily concerned and competent with the interest of their children; however, the system realities may hinder them from fulfilling the needs of their children. In other words, a mother cannot do it all for the child. Following that conflicting issue, an advocate is needed to demand the right of the child.

The second aspect of assumptions is that basic needs are essential requirements in childhood. Researchers argue that unless children are given the necessary resources to explore their needs, they shall get the chance of self-actualization in their life (Isaacs, 2015). If children are provided with the state's interest and dependent status, they achieve developing skills that allow them to function independently as adults.

Over the years, the state had a full role of making sure that some minimum of psychological and physical care are present to be utilized (Isaacs, 2015). In the United States, the Children's Defense Fund, which is a child advocacy group has been displayed as an active group that fights recognition of rights to adequate education and health care.

Purpose of Advocacy

Young people depend on adults to speak on their behalf while protecting their rights. Legal processes and societal attitudes reinforce young people's vulnerability. In most instances, children seek the assistance of advocates since they are vulnerable to safeguard their own interest. In that context, the parents are expected to perform these duties to them where some can heed to their need while others refuse (Murray, 2013). The parents who make the most decisions on their behalf often ignore their thoughts. Such that the government, school administrators, and teachers may not be readily available for the family.

In the United States, legal systems deny young people the freedom of speech. For that reason, children are bullied in silence as witnesses, exploited and abused, expelled from schools without recourse, and lost in care in the system that they designed by themselves. In essence, children have the right to air their views and make decisions concerning their welfare. Children should have equal access to the law to permit them to perform numerous tasks.

Based on the exclusion of young people from making critical decisions, they face mental health problems, homelessness, and high rates of unemployment to reinforce the essential need for children. Lately, child advocacy rested on polemics and platitudes without taking into account the rights and obligations of the children and the ways of realizing these goals.

Rights of Children

Children's rights are forms of their entitlement. Although the rights are not fulfilled, the rights do not depend on the benevolence of powerful institutions and people. Children's rights are claims that must be granted. As children grow, they come to understand that hierarchical authorities have no right to withhold their rights. However, if the application is at the discretion of the authority, it implies that the matter is not right.

Children's rights are believed to have a different meaning as compared to adult rights based on the necessity of meets the vital needs of the child. In reality, there ceases to be any approach needed in defining rights as the society agrees to bears the requirement of providing the fundamental needs of the child. For instance, in the United States, states are constrained by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution to recognize the legitimate entitlement of students to public education (Murray, 2013). The reason for enacting the 14th Amendment of the Constitution was to acknowledge that misconduct allegations may lead to suspensions which could further contribute to severe damage to the student coupled with interfering with higher education and employment opportunities. The Supreme Court ruled that education is not children's fundamental rights as the constitution implicitly and explicitly supports it.

When children are born, essential rights are vested in protecting them. In most instances, children are unable to represent and speak for what they expect for survival. For that reason, the United States Constitution enacted Children' Right laws that cover children. The rules have been enacted to adapt to the needs of young people enrolled in daycare settings and schools. In the daycare facilities, there are higher chances for children to get sick based on their interaction with their peers.

Children are rendered without any option but to reside in those filthy places. Parents or adults are ignorant about the contagious diseases that may be spread within these confinements.

Attitudes towards the Rights of Young People

Studies have shown that attitude towards the right of the young people has two dimensions, namely self-determination, and nurturance. In essence, the rights of children advocated here entail provision and protection of goods and services needed to promote quality of life and self-actualization. Some of the rights exposed to cover the determination of a person's freedom and their own fate from government intervention and coercion.

A child can advocate for nurturance or positive freedom but still not favor self-determination or negative rights for children. Nurturance rights are stemmed from paternalistic beliefs that the state has to respond to the aspects of a particular of children's interests and needs (Isaacs, 2015). However, self-determination focusses on the belief that the civil freedom of the adults should be extended to the children. Thus, self-determination and nurturance belies are structured in different concepts of children's capacities and nature of childhood based on their vulnerability. However, the mixture of self-determination and nurturance attitude may not be inconsistent, requiring some logical reasoning.

The State and the Family

For a state to be stable, children must be given a chance to occupy their states in the community as autonomous members. The state a crucial role in helping the families to fulfill the needs and the demands of the children and may intervene to protect and control the requirement of children if their family members cannot meet the standard set forth by the state.

Many theories support the way the state and family relationships on matters concerning children. One of the approaches argues that the state occupies a minimal role in taking care of young people. Such that the state intervenes only when there are extreme cases for correction and protection of children (Murray, 2013). Arguably, the minimal level of intervention is crucial to respect the sanctity and privacy of the relationship between a child and a parent.

In extreme cases, the intervention is very narrow to the point of excluding emotional harm and the risk of abuse. The approach posits that, in most instances, the interest and needs of the children are neglected as they believe that the interests of children comply with the wishes of their parents.

The other approach to the role of the state in family observes the ultimate function of keeping biological family wherever possible. If there is separation, the state maintains the link between the family and children. Research supports that the view puts more emphasis on biological ties that do not necessarily differentiate between welfare, feelings, interest of the parents and children.

The Needs of Programs and Policies for Children Coordination

Splitting of the government policies into states and federal can be vital in meeting regional needs. The urge is to help solve the inconsistency of the set of complex standards in particular areas such as juvenile justice and protection and care. Ideally, the coordination between agencies in consequence, limited, and shifts responsibilities.

Children's advocacy is not initiated dramatically. In the contemporary world, people expect adults to take care of children or be motivated strongly by the sense of the law and fairness. Child advocacy began in the era of social reform at the end of the 1960s. Child advocacy concepts are attractive since it combines the lack of specificity with the promise that required a change. In the late 1960s, child advocacy was considered as an activity that could be financed (Isaacs, 2015). Child advocacy provides a counseling service, reaches out, and serves as a mediator between a service system and children.

Based on the common law, young people were deemed as valuable when labor was needed and was almost exclusively owned by their parents. The intervention between the relationship of a child and a parent was handled hesitantly and was considered as the necessary evil. In the early days, child welfare services fostered care agencies as they were the orphanages. The early policies and programs were motivated by a strange combination of community self-interest and religious charity.

The child welfare...