How Georgian Child Advocates Helped Bring Transparency to Juvenile Courts

With the recent controversies surrounding Georiga's DFCS, Atlanta's local NBC affiliate talks about how a group of women, originally derided as "martini-sipping, tennis-playing, ladies who lunch", brought some much needed transparency to Georgia's juvenile courts:

So real that the group wanted others to see what they saw as child advocates. They created BetterCourtsForKids.org And in addition to their paying jobs, they spent thousands of hours and drove thousands of miles to personally lobby lawmakers to open the juvenile court for cases involving abused kids.

"What I'd like to see is as many people who can get in to visit their juvenile court," said Alice McQuade, an attorney and another member of the group. "To see what's going on in their neighborhood; see what's happening to the children in their neighborhood; see how the judges are performing."

And that was important, they say, because some of the judges were putting children in danger -- kids like little Adrianna Swain.
Back in 2008, a judge sent her back home from foster care on the advice of DFCS and against the advice of everyone else. Her parents beat her so badly, she was read the last rites, but miraculously survived... 

It turned out that lawmakers cared as well. The very next year they overwhelmingly passed SB-207 to open the juvenile court in cases of deprivation.