Happy New Year!

The new year allows us all a moment to pause, to reflect and to evolve. For Children’s Law Center, 2023 marks an exciting opportunity to increase our impact for years to come.

Since our founding in 1996, we’ve developed innovative strategies to meet the changing needs of DC children and their families. From building one of the nation’s first medical-legal partnerships where our lawyers work in health care clinics across the District to tackling systemic challenges through our city-wide advocacy, Children’s Law Center has sought new ways to use our experience and expertise to support DC children and their families.

Today, we’re refreshing our vision and mission to reflect that growth:

VISION

A world in which all children have a strong foundation of family, health and education and are free from poverty, trauma, racism and other forms of oppression.

MISSION

Together with DC children and families, Children’s Law Center uses the law to solve children’s urgent problems today, improve the systems that will affect their lives tomorrow and strengthen our community so that change endures.

STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK

We are also recognizing our evolution with a new strategic framework. In setting our strategies for the next five years, we listened to our staff, Board, community partners and clients about how to use our core strengths to make the biggest impact. We heard loud and clear that our current programs were critically important and that we should expand the ways we can support children and families.

We reaffirm our commitment to:

Advocate tenaciously for thousands of children and families each year
Fight for changes to the laws and systems that improve the lives of tens of thousands of DC children

We will support that work with four bold and ambitious new strategies to:

Provide legal assistance to parents who are working to improve their children’s lives
Support community-led advocacy
Disrupt racism and other forms of oppression that harm children and families
Increase our impact through new legal strategies

In the coming weeks, we will share more about each of these new strategies. You can also read about them here. I hope you will read these updates and learn with us.

I welcome your thoughts, questions -- and your support -- as we continue to evolve and innovate to improve the lives of DC children and families.

With gratitude,

Judith Sandalow

Executive Director

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