Children's Advocacy in Human Services

Children’s Advocacy in Human Services
Name
Course number
Instructor’s name
Date
Frontline workers in child care play a significant role in the realization of children rights and in assisting them to gain access to proper and adequate government services. Advocacy works to prevent breaches of human rights of varying classes of children such as children of the poor and those with incarcerated parents among others. There are documents that outline child advocacy promises such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the World Summit for Children and those arising from the Child Rights Caucus of 2000 which guide child frontline workers in defending children’s’ rights (Grover, 2004).
There are many agencies in the area of human services. The agencies provide services for children and family and work to prevent and respond to child maltreatment among other services. Many of these agencies work under the office of the administration for Children and services. Advocacy supports four facets of wellbeing namely cognitive functioning, physical health and development, social functioning and emotional functioning (Lou, Anthony, Stone, Vu, & Austin, 2008). Child advocacy services are aimed at preventing child maltreatment and championing family and community wellbeing.
Child advocates the role in advocating for the child’s wellbeing in several ways. One of the ways is through the best interests advocates appointed by the court to represent the best interest of the child in court cases. The advocates are also referred to as Guardian s ad litem (GALs) and they are appointed to advocate for the best interest of the child in court cases where there are mental health and substance abuse concerns, where the children are under stress owing to high parental conflict particularly in custody cases and where child abuse allegations exist. Appointment of a GAL by the court is non-discretionary in some instances and sometimes i...