A Safe Place to Call Home

But unfortunately, for many children, home can be a dangerous place. A place filled with abuse and neglect.

Every child deserves a safe place to call home. Loeb & Loeb is deeply committed to pro bono service that helps give them just that.

For years, our firm has actively partnered with the nonprofit organization Lawyers For Children to provide legal representation to young people who are victims of abuse and neglect.

Baby Charlotte is one of those children. Charlotte (now nearly four years old) was removed at birth from her 16-yearold mother who had a long history of untreated drug and alcohol abuse, including drug use during her pregnancy. Charlotte thrived in foster care, with a loving foster family who wanted to adopt her. But Charlotte’s birth mother appealed the court’s finding of neglect.

Working with Lawyers For Children, Loeb & Loeb represented Charlotte in the appeal. Together, we persuaded the court to affirm the neglect finding, removing another obstacle in Charlotte’s path to adoption and helping secure her safe and loving home.

Charlotte’s foster experience was a positive one. But many foster children are not as fortunate.

Loeb & Loeb is trying to change that.

In an unrelated matter and in a different jurisdiction, we’ve served as part of a separate legal team that has been working for more than a decade to compel the state of Mississippi to fix its failing and severely underfunded child welfare system.

The lawsuit, originally filed in 2004, accused the state of extensive violations of the constitutional rights of children in its care. Working alongside one of the nation’s foremost

child welfare advocates, Marcia Robinson Lowry, we reached a historic settlement with the state in 2008, which mandated sweeping reforms.

Seven years and two contempt hearings later, children continue to suffer in a system in which caseloads are dangerously high, staff levels too low and qualified foster homes far too few.

Loeb & Loeb hasn’t stopped fighting to enforce the state’s obligations to its children. We’ve gone back to court time and again – most recently, to request that Mississippi’s child welfare system be put under the control of a federal receiver. The court has yet to make its decision.

And Loeb & Loeb? We’ll keep the pressure on the state to do the right thing and finally make good on its promises.

For the sake of the children.