History

In 1992, the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) the Massachusetts public defender agency, established the Youth Advocacy Project as an initiative to assign experienced trial attorneys to defend juveniles who faced adult incarceration. The attorneys soon recognized numerous missed opportunities for intervention and diversion from court involvement. YAP therefore broadened its representation and advocacy to include youth with less serious offenses.

Historically, CPCS had focused on representing adults in Superior Court. The agency, however, started to recognize the importance of representation in juvenile court in the 1980s with a one-person initiative, the Juvenile Law Advocacy Program (JLAP), spearheaded by Public Defender Jay Blitzman. The goal of the JLAP was to create a modest CPCS presence in the juvenile court and to develop training for the private bar. Blitzman began representing juveniles charged with homicide and met with juvenile defenders around the state.

By the early 1990s, children began receiving harsher sentences, particularly in Roxbury. In 1992, Blitzman and JLAP moved to Roxbury, JLAP was renamed YAP, and Josh Dohan joined Blitzman as YAP's first staff attorney. The team started taking cases in all the juvenile sessions in Boston. YAP continued to be involved with statewide training and policy advocacy. YAP's development was heavily influenced by the community orientation and multidisciplinary team of the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem.

At the same time that YAP was building a caseload of serious juvenile offenses, it started to develop relationships with community organizations and private foundations. Tom Coury of the Gardiner Howland Shaw Foundation played a crucial role, providing YAP with seed money and introducing it to other foundations. By 1993, through the assistance of the Shaw Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, and the Boston Foundation, YAP had developed a multidisciplinary advocacy model that incorporated legal services, social service assessment and advocacy, and community outreach.

CPCS Chief Counsel William Leahy decided that YAP should be permanent and went to the legislature asking for a budget line in 1994. The next year, YAP became a full-fledged unit of CPCS and social service provider Christine Fiechter and community liaison Andrea Goode-Litthcut, formerly grant-funded, became state employees. YAP continued to grow its staff through foundation support, and when each addition proved to be successful, moved to put it on the state payroll.

YAP has continued to grow and now serves its clients, CPCS, and the Massachusetts Juvenile Justice System in a variety of ways. Two of the most significant innovations have been the formalization of education advocacy and statewide training. As YAP staff represented hundreds of children through the mid nineties, it became painfully evident that approximately eighty percent of them were failing in school. In many cases the primary issue was that the school system was not providing appropriate educational services. The EdLaw Project, an initiative of YAP and the Children's Law Center was founded in 2000, specifically to advocate for those services. YAP now has three fulltime attorneys providing legal representation for youth involved in school disciplinary and special education issues. This initiative is still supported entirely by grants and private donations. In 2003, YAP formalized its training function by creating The Juvenile Defense Network. Coordinated by Wendy Wolf, a lawyer with twenty plus years of experience and recipient of the 2007 Massachusetts Bar Association Access to Justice Award, JDN is a support network for juvenile defense attorneys.

YAP now has a staff of five delinquency attorneys, three education lawyers, two Forensic Case Managers, two psychologists, a community outreach coordinator, a Juvenile Defense Network Coordinator, an administrative assistant, an operations manager, a program manager, a Community Notebooks Coordinator, and an executive director. YAP also has several Vista and Americorps volunteers serving in a variety of important functions.

Learn more about our staff.