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My Rights
Are you wondering whether you have any rights as a foster youth? You do!

  • You have a right to be safe.
  • You have a right to be heard.
  • You have a right to receive food, clothing and shelter.
  • You have a right to go to school.

You may not have received these things at home. You may have been physically hurt or hurt in other ways. That is not right! Maybe your parents were mean or abusive to you. Maybe your parents have problems which keep them from taking good care of you. Maybe your parents just weren’t there for you. Sometimes parents just need a little help so they can take care of you safely. And sometimes the problems are so serious that you may need to live somewhere other than home for a while so you can be safe and your parents can get the help they need.

When a family is having trouble, Child Protection Services ("CPS") and the court system may get involved. It can be a confusing process. This site will help you understand the court process, your rights in that process, and what you can expect from the people you meet in the system.

Your Basic Rights

The law says that you have the right to "basic nurture, health, and safety". That includes mental, physical, and psychological health. Abuse is not just physical. It can be mental or emotional. You have the right to have enough clothing, food, shelter, and schooling. You have the right to tell the court if you need to live somewhere other than your home to receive these basic rights.

You also have the right to stay with your family if you can be safely taken care of there. By law, CPS and the courts have to try to make things work at home before they decide you should live somewhere else. This may involve people coming to your house to check on you to make sure that you are ok.

The law works for you at RCW 13.34.020.

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Your Rights When Child Protection Services ("CPS") Gets Involved

When someone believes that you are not being treated right or cared for properly at home, they may call the police or CPS. This can be you, your neighbors, school workers or teachers, counselors or therapists, doctors or nurses, or just anyone who is concerned about your home and your safety.

Your rights when you tell someone what is happening in your life.
If you are not feeling safe at home you may want to tell someone. You should know that if you tell certain people about problems in your home they have to report what you tell them to CPS if they "suspect" you are being abused or neglected. The law calls these people "mandatory reporters". They include teachers (or any professional working at school), counselors, therapists, any social worker, police, daycare providers (licensed day care providers, not babysitters you know in the neighborhood), doctors and nurses, and probation counselors. Talking to these people can be a good way to get information to CPS without having to call them yourself.

But, if you just want to talk to someone and have it stay between you two, you need to understand that it is against the law for these people to keep your secrets about mistreatment in your home. They have to call CPS.

For more details about this, go to Mandatory Reporting.

The law makes adults protect you at RCW 26.44.030(1)(a).

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Your rights when there is a CPS investigation.
CPS or the police are required to investigate claims of child abuse. If CPS investigates, they will send a social worker to your home or your school to talk to you and your family. You should be included in this investigation. Often, the social worker will want to talk to you first.

  • You have a right to talk to the social worker but you can also choose not to.
  • You have a right to have someone else there if you are interviewed by CPS (maybe a teacher or friend or neighbor or counselor).

CPS does not need your parents’ permission to talk to you and your parents do not have the right to be present when CPS talks to you.

The law requires the State to look into your safety and to give you rights in an investigation at RCW 26.44.030.

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Your Rights if THEY decide you are not safe.
If the police are called to your home and believe that you are in danger, they can take you right away. IF YOU ARE TAKEN FROM HOME BY THE POLICE OR CPS YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO FIRST STAY WITH RELATIVES IF YOU HAVE RELATIVES YOU FEEL SAFE WITH. Relatives include blood relatives, half-relatives and step-relatives. However, the police and CPS will not always take you away from your home right away.

If a CPS social worker believes you are being harmed at home , the social worker must first try to work with your family to make things safe, if possible. If the social worker cannot work with your family to make things safe for you in your home (for whatever reason), then the social worker will take the matter to court.

A social worker takes a matter into court by filing a "Dependency Petition". This is a request by CPS to the court, asking the court to supervise your family.

The law requires certain things to be put in writing for the court AND for you at RCW 13.34.040.

If a social worker believes you are in immediate danger, the social worker will ask the court for permission to take you out of your home immediately. This happens when you are either home with no supervision for a long time, or when your safety is in immediate danger.

The law allows the State to protect you right away at RCW 13.34.050.

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Your rights if YOU decide you are not safe.
You should understand that anyone can file a dependency petition asking the court to become involved in your family, including you. If you have reported what you think is mistreatment of you or another child and you don’t feel like enough was done to protect you or the other child, you can go to court and file a dependency petition yourself. You should ask a lawyer to help you. You can call one of the numbers below and say, "I am a __ years old and I want to file a dependency petition, could you please let me speak to a lawyer who can help me?"

Lawyer Phone Numbers
The Defender Association – 206 447-3900. (877)-241-1695
The Child Advocacy Clinic at the University of Washington – (206) 543-3434
Society of Counsel Representing the Accused (SCRAP) – 206 322-8400.
Office of Public Defense (206) 296-7662]

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Your Rights Once Your Case is in Court

You can find information about your legal rights in a dependency case at RCW 13.34.062.

You have a right to a lawyer, CASA or GAL.
If your family becomes involved with the court system because of CPS, you have a right to have an adult representative just for you. This is to make sure that your voice is heard loudly in court.

Your Right to a Lawyer

If you are at least twelve years old and do not have a lawyer, you have the right to ask for one. The most important person to ask is the judge or commissioner in your case. You can also tell your case worker that you want a lawyer.   If you have a CASA, you should tell your CASA that you want a lawyer.   A lawyer is different from a CASA, caseworker, or GAL.   The lawyer's job is to tell the court what you want and to work with you so that you understand what your legal rights are.

 

 

Whether you get a lawyer or not may depend on which county you live in. Different parts of the state do this differently.   Ultimately, it's the judge's decision, and it never hurts to ask!

The law gives you a lawyer at RCW 13.34.100.

Your lawyer has what is called an "attorney-client" relationship with you. That means a lot of things. Here are some important basics:
  • Your lawyer must keep what you tell him or her secret. There are two exceptions to this: (1) if you give your lawyer permission to talk about what you discussed; or (2) If your lawyer believes you are about to commit a crime he may tell someone but is not required to do so.

  • Your lawyer works for you; not your parents, not CPS, not anyone else but you.

  • Your lawyer should tell the judge what YOU want. It is not your lawyer’s job to decide what is best for you. It is your lawyer’s job to tell the court and the other people in the system what you want. They may not always get you the result you want, but they are required to try.

If you have information that you think is important to your case or your life generally, but you’re not sure how to tell people, or whether to tell people, TALK TO YOUR LAWYER FIRST. Your lawyer can advise you about who to tell, when, how, and what is likely to happen as a result of what you say. If you decide you don’t want to tell anyone, you can tell your lawyer to keep it between you, and it will stay there.
Also, if you have any questions about what you read on this site, court orders or other documents, PLEASE call that person to give you more information.

Your right to a Volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) or a Guardian ad litem (GAL).
If you are under 12, you have the right to have another adult; either a person called a CASA or a GAL; to look out for your interests in court. If you are 12 or older you may have both a lawyer and a CASA/GAL, but not usually.
A volunteer CASA is assigned to represent "the child’s best interests". He or she works for the court and is meant to have ONLY what is best for you in mind. That means this person interviews all the people in the case, reads all the paperwork, and then tells the court what he or she thinks should happen. The CASA can be very powerful in a dependency case, and you should be sure to meet with him or her and tell them your thoughts. But you should know that the CASA is not there to tell the court what you want to happen, but what the CASA thinks is best for you (and the other children). This is different than your lawyer, who should try to get the court to do what you want. Your volunteer CASA is not required to keep any secrets for you.

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Your other Basic Rights in the Dependency Court Process.
If a case comes to court, you may not understand all of the words or proceedings. You have a right to understand things and the other people involved have a duty to make sure you do. Be sure to ask questions if you do not understand.

The Words
You will find help understanding the words in our Dictionary. or you can directly link to this law, RCW 13.13.030.

The People
You may wonder who all these people are that have opinions about what is best for you. For more information on these people, click on The People. Remember, the best way to understand your particular situation is to ask your lawyer if you have one.

The Hearings
You will learn about all the different hearings by exploring our How the Child Welfare System Works page. Skip down to the Court Process and read about the hearings while using the interactive flow chart. The details are there; some very basic information is below:

The Shelter Care Hearing
The first hearing about your family’s situation will take place within 72 hours of the time that you were taken from your parents’ home; not including weekends and holidays. This is usually a short hearing at juvenile court and the results are not meant to answer all of the questions but ARE meant to keep you safe for the immediate future.

At the first Shelter Care Hearing you have:
  • A right to an attorney if you are over 12 years old or a volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) if you are under 12 years old
  • A right to know where and when the hearing will take place
  • A right to know what the hearing is about
  • A right to agree or disagree during any negotiations that take place outside of court
  • A right to be a witness or call witnesses
  • A right to have a juvenile court judge or commissioner make a decision about your case after everyone (CPS, your parents, and you) have presented information about what has happened
  • A RIGHT TO HAVE YOUR VOICE HEARD.

Review Hearings
There will be other hearings to review your case. The first shelter care review will be within 30 days of the first hearing above. After that reviews usually take place on a schedule as outlined in detail in the Court Process at How the Child Welfare System Works.

At Review Hearings you have:

  • All the rights outlined above.
  • A right to set other review hearings if something comes up that you need the court to know about.

Dependency Fact-Finding
A dependency fact-finding hearing will automatically be scheduled when your case begins. It is the time when the courts are able to really find out what the facts are that lead to the problems. It may seem strange that this takes over two months to happen but it may take that long to investigate the situation and to make sure everyone can learn enough to make recommendations to the court. Sometimes this fact-finding is a full trial but, most often all the people (including you!) come to an agreement about what’s best for your family.

At a Dependency Fact-Finding you have:
  • All the rights outlined above

Dispositional Hearings
A dispositional hearing will follow within two weeks of your dependency fact-finding. Usually it happens right after. At this hearing, the court will decide what will happen next. Where will you live? What services (like drug treatment or counseling) will everyone do? How will everyone work together to try to get you in a permanent home, either with your family or someplace else?

At a Dispositional Hearing you have:
  • All the rights outlined above

Permanency Planning Hearings
Permanency planning hearings are set to make sure that everyone continues to work toward finding some place for you to live long-term and to make sure that your needs continue to be met.

At Permanency Planning Hearings you have:
  • All the rights outlined above

Guardianship or Termination Hearings
These two hearings usually take place when one of the parties decides that enough time has passed and you now need to know what your life will look like long-term. A guardianship hearing results in some adult or adults having legal rights to take care of you while your parents still have some limited rights to be involved in your life. A termination of parental rights hearing is just what it sounds like; your parents lose any legal rights that they have to be involved in your life and you are free to be adopted by someone else.

At Guardianship or Termination Hearings you have:
  • All the rights outlined above

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In Addition to Your Rights, You also have Responsibilities
Most of the court orders we’ve talked about so far (they come out of each hearing) have some part that tells the children they need to do certain things. In almost all cases, those things involve basic stuff you already have to do like going to school on time with no unexcused absences, following a curfew, following house rules, and maybe going to counseling.

You need to understand that these are no longer just "house rules". They are orders of the court. When children become part of the court process in a dependency case, the State of Washington takes responsibility for them. Even if they still live in their parents’ home, the State will have to answer for any harm that comes to these "dependent children". In the State’s eye (and the court’s eye), "harm" includes failing to get an education, being on the street late at night, doing drugs, being sexually promiscuous, etc. If the court makes an order that says you can’t do something and you disobey the court, you can be put in jail.

Contempt
When you disobey the court’s orders, you may be found in "contempt" of court. It’s a legal status you don’t want to have. It means you’ve disrespected the court by failing to follow the court’s orders. Sound familiar?!! Just like parents. At a contempt hearing you have:
  • You get to have a hearing to argue about whether you are breaking the rules, with your lawyer there to argue for you
If the court decides, after the argument, you did break the rules, the court can (and often does) send you to detention (jail.) The court can’t just lock you up in detention forever after finding you are in contempt in a dependency case. The longest the court is allowed to put you in detention is for seven days. And when the court puts you in detention, the court has to give you something to do to get out earlier than seven days. It is called a "purge condition." This is something like read a book, write a paper or both. The idea is, by finishing the little assignment in jail, you’ve shown the court you will follow the court’s orders, and the court has to let you go. Of course, the court can put you in jail again if you break the rules again.

BOTTOM LINE: Make sure you get a copy of all court orders and get your lawyer to explain it so you know exactly what is expected of you. Many court orders are hard to understand, even for lawyers. There are new court orders at every hearing. Sometimes the new orders change the old ones, and sometimes they don’t. If you’re not exactly sure what the orders say, call your lawyer and get an explanation.

The law requires you to take responsibility for your own actions at RCW 13.34.165.

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Your Rights in School

Explore this free child Web site outlining your basic rights in school at Directory of Student Rights in Schools.

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