Happy Holidays again and welcome to 2018, Juvenile Defender family! We hope everyone has had a safe and happy holiday. We’ve got a few resources and announcements to share to start you off and we will be bringing our 2017 Year in Review very soon as well.
New Year, (Kind of) New Resources
Here on the OJD website, we have updated our “Training Material – Listed by Subjects” section, located under the “Materials for Defenders” tab, with the PowerPoints from our most recent training, hosted in Goldsboro in collaboration with the N.C. Advocates for Justice. These training materials include tips on how to get experts, detention advocacy, the role of juvenile counsel, and a new introduction to juvenile court.
On the Office of Indigent Defense Services homepage, a video from the IDS Commission has recently been added. The 10-minute segment features several members of the Commission including James Payne, Judge Lisa Menefee, Art Beeler, Dorothy Hairston Mitchell and others. Each member briefly discusses their own career, the importance of indigent defense, the need for quality representation, and offers thanks to others who serve in indigent defense. You can view the video here.
A Good Time for Training
The National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice along with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s School-Justice Partnership Project is hosting a podcast series titled “Strategies to Build Family and Youth Engagement to Keep Kids in School“. This series will highlight methods to aid youth with behavioral health needs and strategies for families to work with schools and stakeholders to improve outcomes for children.
Registration for the 2018 Child Support Enforcement: Representing Respondents seminar will remain open until 5 p.m. today. This full-day seminar provides training for attorneys who represent alleged contemnors in child support enforcement proceedings, and it is open to public defenders and private attorneys. The program will take place on Friday, Jan. 19 from 8 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. There is a $160 fee for privately assigned counsel, which includes materials, lunch, parking and breaks, but there is no fee required for IDS employees. Six hours of CLE credit will also be provide for participants, including one hour of ethics. To register and to find more information, including hotel reservations and contact details, please check the link here. IDS employees may contact Elisa Wolper, Fiscal Officer at IDS, at 919-354-7200 for any questions regarding travel reimbursement.
The UNC School of Government has also announced that registration is now open for the 2018 Felony Defender Training, scheduled from Wednesday, Feb. 14, beginning at 9:45 p.m. and ending Friday, Feb. 16 at 12:45 p.m. The deadline for registration will be Tuesday, Jan. 30. This training is intended for attorneys who are new to handling felony cases and will cover multiple topics including lab reports, discovery and investigation, sentencing, and more. This program will be open to private attorneys and public defenders. There is a $415 registration fee for private assigned counsel which includes materials, parking, breaks, and lunches, and no fee is required of IDS employees. Participants in this program will receive 15.5 hours of CLE credit, including one hour of ethics, one hour of mental health/substance abuse, and qualifies for N.C. State Bar criminal law specialization credit. To register or to find more information on course materials, hotel reservations, or other details, please check the link here. IDS employees may contact Elisa Wolper for information on travel reimbursement.
That is all for now. There are already plenty of other training opportunities available for this year, so please feel free to check through our archives, especially those from the past month, to make sure you don’t miss out on any of them. We will have more updates and highlights to come soon, so please check back with us often. And again, we wish everyone a happy New Year and hope to help all juvenile justice advocates get a strong start in 2018.