Children's Rights

Children’s Rights is a national advocacy organization that has, for over 25 years, championed the legal rights of children impacted by government systems. Every day, children and their families are harmed by America’s child welfare, juvenile justice, education, immigration, and healthcare systems. These systems, and failures across multiple systems, also disproportionately harm children and families of color, LGBTQ/TGNC, youth with disabilities, migrant youth and other minority youth, and the harms and risks of harm are compounded further for youth with intersectional identities. Children’s Rights uses civil rights impact litigation, policy expertise, and public education to hold governments accountable for keeping all kids safe and healthy.

Our work tackles a variety of historic and emerging social justice issues impacting children and their families. Recent campaigns have targeted, for example, the unnecessary and devastating separation of Black children from their families, the unnecessary placement of youth in dangerous congregate care facilities, the lack of mental health services for Medicaid-eligible children, the unjust treatment of unaccompanied immigrant minors, the pervasive practice of administering powerful and dangerous psychotropic drugs to children in foster care without adequate oversight, systemic discrimination against LGBTQ youth in custodial settings, and the grave outcomes for older youth “aging” out of government systems.