Dependency Law (Child Welfare)

A large amount of our legal practice at Michael & Casey deals with the Arizona Department of Child Safety, commonly known as DCS. This is Arizona’s current child welfare agency, formerly known as CPS or Child Protective Services. Unfortunately, this agency is most well-known for removing children. When DCS believes significant intervention is required in a child’s life it will…Read More

We know that children who are removed from the home and placed in foster care suffer trauma due to the removal. In the child welfare agencies and courtrooms, efforts are made to mitigate this trauma. What is rarely talked about though is the effect of removal on the education of the child. We all know it does affect education, we…Read More

I’ve had a lot of calls in the last two weeks about Arizona Department of Child Safety’s Dependency Registry (also called the Central Registry). The Department of Child Safety is required to maintain a registry of people who have substantiated reports of reports of abuse or neglect. This registry is used to prevent people from working with children, getting fingerprint…Read More

Whether a child should or should not have a lawyer appointed in child welfare proceedings is an easy question for me to answer: yes! They are the most important person in the entire court case. In fact, they are the reason everyone is there. Unfortunately, Washington State disagrees. They decided against a child getting a lawyer automatically at the start…Read More

In 2016, 13,132 children were taken away from their homes in Arizona alone due to abuse or neglect allegations. Thankfully, just about half of these children were able to move in with aunts, uncles, adult siblings, cousins, grandparents and other “kinship caregivers” who were able to step in an help out. Congresswoman Karen Bass said it right when advancing the…Read More