Grant Database

Children’s Educational Advocacy Law Project: Provides community education, systemic advocacy, litigation and legal representation to assure that disabled children enrolled in public schools receive legally mandated educational services.

Guardian ad Litem Program: Provide representation to Orange County children who have been declared dependent by the court due to allegations of abuse, abandonment, or neglect. The mission is to provide holistic advocacy for children with goals of increasing health, mental health, education, independent living and immigration services, protecting their safety and well being, reducing their length of stay in state care, and of those children who age out of licensed care, increasing their success in transitioning from foster care to independence.

Special Education Advocacy Project

Children’s Legal Representation Project: Advocating, monitoring, overseeing and collaborating needs of children in the areas of dependency, delinquency, education, public benefits and economic independence.

Education Advocacy Project

Statewide Foster Children’s Advocacy

The project will serve foster children (Out-Of-Home-Care) in Hillsborough County ages birth to five. Project will increase permanency and reduce the length of stay in foster care.

Legal representation to children aging out of state administered foster care.

Legal advocacy for dependent youth, especially children within the foster care system aged 13-22 at risk for homelessness due to limited financial and medical resources and or due to the need for special education services to assist in transition to adulthood.

Provide legal services for free and appropriate education on behalf of children with special needs. CLSMF provides intensive legal advocacy and long-term representation to ensure the public school system is in compliance with IDEA, Section 504 and ADA.

Provide critically needed legal representation including appellate advocacy to transitioning foster teens. (Collaborative grant with Lawyers for Children America)

Direct representation of school age children, and their parents, in accessing free and appropriate education in public primary and secondary schools, focusing on substantive rights of students in the areas of special education and student attendant services mandated by IDEA, homeless children under the federal McKinny-Vento Act, and monitoring district compliance with consent decree in LULAC vs. Commissioner of Education.

Provide legal representation to unaccompanied minors declared by the state to be abused, abandoned and neglected and are in foster care in DCF custody. Also train and provide technical assistance to case workers and Case Mgmt agencies under contract with DCF.

FILS will continue to identify children incarcerated in state prisons and juvenile detention facilities suffering under unconstitutionally harsh conditions and will take legal action to enforce their rights. Focus on the punitive treatment of mentally ill children, advocating for adequate mental health care, accommodations for disabilities, and the provision of special education services to which they are legally entitled. FILS and Florida Legal Services will collaborate in the identification and litigation of legal claims on behalf of children in prison and detention facilities.

Provides legal representation, outreach and education to juveniles on education related matters in school discipline and special education cases.

Statewide support project. FLS collaborates with other Foundation CLS grantees, and other statewide children’s advocates to promote systemic reform on behalf of children subject to state systems, including foster care, education and juvenile justice, and to children who are or should be served by Medicaid EPSDT funding and/or through the state’s Developmental Disabilities program.

Providing legal representation to children with special education and healthcare access issues

FCF will continue its leadership role in securing representation for children in the dependency system, advocating for youth aging out of the foster care system, securing improved educational outcomes for children in foster care, and expanding on FCF’s efforts to protect the rights and interests of children in the foster care system suffering from disabilities.

To assist undocumented children in obtaining Special Immigrant Juvenile Status

Target most needy children in foster care with developmental or emotional/mental disabilities and languishing in foster care and education systems that negatively impact foster children in Duval County