We believe:

• Every child has the right to grow up in a safe and nurturing environment.
• Child abuse should be treated as a crime.
• Children must receive fearless, uncompromising, unflinching advocacy for their safety when the system places a higher priority on other values.
• Bureaucracy is often an obstacle to child protection, and the system fails children more often than necessary.
• Family preservation should never take precedence over the the protection of a child.
• Children must receive fearless, uncompromising, unflinching advocacy for their safety in a system often fraught with inappropriate goals for the child or complete disinterest in their welfare.
• In focusing on the child; only indirectly on the protective parent.
• That bureaucracy is an enemy to child protection and that the system fails children systematically.
• Family Preservation is antithetical to the protection of a child.
• In funding from sources independent from the system.
• In independence from the system in order to avoid the co-opting effect of dependence.
• You shouldn’t have to appease judges or public officials to achieve the protection of the child.
• Society has a moral obligation to protect our children from abuse and neglect.
• The safety and rights of the child are paramount to the rights of any caretaker.

Our goals:

• To open up the process of adjudication of children’s rights to the light of day.
• To advocate children having the right to competent legal representation in all child abuse cases. To provide or facilitate such representation whenever possible.
• To advocate children having the basic constitutional protections that are afforded adults.
• To encourage public agencies that serve children to be efficient, accountable, and to place the “best interests of the child” above all else.