South Texas grad selected as Equal Justice Works Fellow

January 3, 2013—South Texas College of Law graduate Stephanie Truong will tackle the complexities of aging-out of the foster care system in Harris County as an Equal Justice Works Fellow sponsored by the Texas Access to Justice Foundation. Truong is the first South Texas graduate to be selected as an Equal Justice Works Fellow, a national process that seeks out unique projects addressing pressing legal issues. Starting in September, Truong will spend two years working at the college’s Randall O. Sorrels Legal Clinic developing her project. “I will focus on a very specialized group of children,” she says. “My concerns are for those kids in long-term foster care between 15 and 17 years old who are languishing in the system. The sense of urgency about these kids is gone because everyone is just waiting for them to age out of the system, but many are not getting the full support they need to be ready for adulthood.”

Truong’s project will seek to establish a task force of representatives from each court that reviews these cases, Child Protective Services, non-profit service providers, and other community stakeholders. The goal would be transforming the review process for these teens, including the appointment of advocates on more cases, to insure all their rights and benefits are available. “I also want to develop a pro bono attorney manual to encourage pro bono representation and improve the consistency and quality of those serving the children,” says Truong. “One-third of all homeless people spent time in the foster care system at some point—we can be doing a lot more for these kids.”

Truong will work with the supervision of the college’s legal clinic staff and anticipates being appointed to at least 20 cases while developing the task force and other project initiatives. The Texas Access to Justice Foundation sponsors multiple Equal Justice Works Fellowships a year as part of its longstanding commitment to growing public interest lawyers in Texas. For more information about Equal Justice Works Fellowships please visit www.equaljusticeworks.org and to contact Truong, please email her at stephanie.truong22@gmail.com.

  

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