Vol. 10, No. 3, Pg. 14. What Lawyers Need to Know About Child Abuse and Neglect in 1998.

• Author: By Janet T. Butcher

South Carolina Lawyer

1998.

Vol. 10, No. 3, Pg. 14.

What Lawyers Need to Know About Child Abuse and Neglect in 1998

14What Lawyers Need to Know About Child Abuse and Neglect in 1998By Janet T. ButcherMost lawyers in South Carolina today have the opportunity to provide legal representation in child abuse and neglect cases. For children--perhaps the most vulnerable members of our society--and their parents, an abuse and neglect case may be the most important event in their lives.

What many South Carolina Bar members do not know is that the South Carolina Children's Code has undergone drastic changes since 1994, with the key changes focusing on the best interests of children. This article highlights the changes so that South Carolina lawyers will be in the best position to represent children, guardians ad litem, parents and other family members.

By 1994, many professionals, judges and lawyers realized that a child who has been removed from his or her birth parents needs love and a stable, nurturing environment more than anything else. Indeed, in the early 90s, an awareness developed across the country that states were not the best permanent parents for foster children.

BENCH-BAR COMMITTEE

Fortunately, South Carolina was able to act on this increased awareness when the state received a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to review its foster care system. The grant established the Bench-Bar Committee formed on February 17, 1994, which developed into a driving force behind foster care reform. Composed of judges and lawyers from the private and public sector, the committee first examined the system and then launched an ambitious legislative program to change the system.

The South Carolina General Assembly responded to not only the Kellogg Bench-Bar Committee and its "new" thinking about foster children but also to its own members. A legislative subcommittee of the Joint Legislative Committee on Children and Families immediately focused its energies in reforming South Carolina's laws relating to abuse and neglect and foster children.

In 1996, the state legislature adopted major amendments to the Children's Code that overhauled the philosophical foundation of foster care in South Carolina. One reason for the changes was the belief that it was no longer acceptable for children to grow up in foster care and never achieve permanency. Foster care, except for some statutory exceptions, was to be for a limited period of time.

According to the 1996 legislation, each foster child is to have a permanent plan within 12 months and that plan is to focus either on returning the child home to the

16biological parents or on terminating the parents' rights and then adoption. Some other permanent...