Guardian program seeks more money and volunteers
By Jan Pudlow
Associate Editor
American Airlines Arena, where the Miami Heat play basketball, is not big enough to hold all of the abused and neglected children denied a guardian ad litem to speak up for them in Florida’s courts.

The arena holds 19,600 sports fans. There are 21,282 children who still wait for an advocate, while their worlds are ripped apart — half of the 42,565 total of abused and neglected children in Florida enmeshed in dependency courts.

Never mind that the appointment of a GAL for these children is required by law. Florida has never adequately funded the mandate.

Angela Orkin, executive director of the new Florida Guardian ad Litem Program, is on an aggressive mission to improve that situation.

In one year, she hopes to recruit at least 1,000 more volunteers to serve as guardians ad litem. (Currently, 4,670 trained volunteers, with help from professional staff, represent more than 14,000 children at any given time in Florida.)

She’s making an impassioned pitch to Florida’s lawyers to volunteer. (See story, page 15.)

“I can’t think of anything more rewarding, particularly for an attorney, to be able to speak up for children who truly can’t speak for themselves,” Orkin said. “It’s the best volunteer job going.”

A year ago, Orkin began her new job sitting at a card table with a cell phone. Now, she’s anchored in a corner office in the Holland Building, conveniently located across the street from the Florida Capitol, where she will spend a lot of time lobbying legislators.

She is asking for $4.3 million in additional funds — beyond the total current budget of $22.3 million — to move closer to 100 percent representation.

How much closer?

“We believe that if we achieve all of the goals outlined in the report, and receive the $4.3 million requested, we will be able to increase our caseload by 5,800. We currently have a caseload of over 21,000 children,” said Orkin.

That additional $4.3 million will be used to hire case coordinators, program attorneys, and limited support staff.

The report she refers to is “The Voice for Florida’s Abused and Neglected Children,” the Florida Guardian ad Litem Program’s 2004 progress report that she hopes is must reading for Florida’s legislators who chose the GAL representation model for children in dependency court.

Gerard Glynn, executive director of Florida Children First (who returns to the faculty at Barry University School of Law in January) sits on the GAL program training committee and has read the report.

“We are very supportive of the effort, and it is a commendable and wonderful report. It is exciting we now have a statewide office to coordinate leadership and assessment, and we will support all of their efforts,” Glynn said.

“However, the Florida Legislature needs to step up to the plate and fully fund 100 percent representation,” Glynn said.

“For a child to wait another year for the legislature. . . is a lifetime to a child. Every child deserves to have a voice in the dependency program. They are losing their parents, losing their friends, losing their schools. Many of these issues are constitutionally protected, and they are losing them because they don’t have a voice.”

The progress reports details how Florida GAL program has the highest level of volunteer recruitment in the nation.

“And we’re still only at 50 percent,” Glynn said. “For the legislature or anyone to think we can get 100 percent representation with a pure volunteer model is unrealistic. That is one of the messages to take away from this report. We can continue to do the best we can with volunteers. But at some point, the state must fund a core staff to supplement the volunteers. The pure volunteer model will never get us to 100 percent.”

Orkin outlined her two-year plan as pushing for as many volunteers as possible this year, as well as requesting the $4.3 million in additional funds. Her office has also set a “five percent efficiency goal” within the existing budget, looking at efficiently using every state dollar, so the office is able to represent five percent more children.

Then the following year, Orkin said: “My goal is to be able to stand before the legislature next session (2006) and demonstrate all the things that we’ve done to get volunteers, and to be able to say with confidence that this is how many volunteers we think we will be able to keep. Then I can develop the number for the rest of the kids.”

If Orkin is successful in recruiting 1,000 new volunteers who agree to take one case, that means about 1,800 more children will have an advocate in court (the average case has 1.8 children). At that rate, it would still take at least 14,780 more volunteers to assign a volunteer for every child in dependency court.

“Given the fact we are at 4,500, we are working to do better. At some point, we need to realize what the saturation is,” Orkin said. “At some point, we have to give the number to staff the rest.”

She knows there is a lot of support for the program.

“But to get that to translate into a financial commitment is another thing,” Orkin said.

“What we will do with legislators is remind them it’s not just a program that is nice to have. It’s really needed for each and every one of these kids. The report was the starting place, but we are going to continue to really educate and remind everyone why it was mandated.”

The report also touches on the issue of attorneys ad litem, noting that currently $330,000 has been set aside for their appointment in dependency court. The statewide GAL office is “monitoring the use of attorneys ad litem in an effort to determine the needs of the state,” according to the report.

In an interview, Orkin said, “I didn’t want to go back to this big debate. We need to get everybody focused on getting the kids represented. The legislators made a decision at one point it was a guardian ad litem. Until they decide to address it, we have our marching orders, so to speak.”

She notes that when the GAL versus attorney ad litem debate raged during the three years of The Florida Bar’s Commission on the Legal Needs of Children, ending with a final report in June 2002, there has been an evolution within the GAL program.

“We now have 75 full-time lawyers within the program,” Orkin said. “Now we have an attorney representing the program in every court hearing, which is a huge change.”

With unlimited resources, Orkin acknowledges, “There are a whole slew of cases where a child could benefit” from an attorney ad litem.

“But the question is, if you have this many children with no representation, are you going to provide a small section with a guardian and an attorney ad litem and leave these kids with nothing?” Orkin asks.

“That is where I am sitting. I want to get everyone covered, and then we’ll talk about improving.”