New USD-Based Institute Goes to Bat for Children

A newly created children’s issues institute based at the University of San Diego will soon provide a stronger voice in Sacramento on behalf of children, USD officials said Monday.

At a press conference Monday, they said the California Children’s Advocacy Institute, or CalCAI, will be dedicated to serving the interests of children under the age of 14. The institute, which will operate during its first two years with a staff of three out of the university’s Center for Public Interest Law, received a $409,000 grant from the Weingart Foundation last fall, said John Nunes, director of USD’s news bureau. CalCAI will also have offices in Sacramento and San Francisco.

For the next several months, the institute will conduct research in child care, children’s services and, using San Diego County as a case study, child-abuse detection. It will use its findings to support or recommend legislation for the well-being of California’s children as early as the next legislative session, in January.

For Robert Fellmeth, director of the Center for Public Interest Law and CalCAI’s executive director, the establishment of the institute is the fulfillment of a 20-year dream.

“I like representing a group where I don’t see anybody else doing it. I see a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum,” Fellmeth said in an interview last week.

‘No One to Speak for Them’

“Children . . . have no one from within their group to speak for them. I know that sounds obvious, but other groups have someone from within the group to stand up for them. I looked at the way in which interest groups organized in general and saw that there are about 800 full-time, professional lobbyists. That’s more than six for every (state) legislator. Society is organizing horizontally around its own interests and stakes.”

By contrast, there are only a handful of children’s advocacy groups in Sacramento, Fellmeth said.

“I thought, if you’re going to be a public interest attorney, the whole idea is to represent those who are under-represented,” he said. “It seems to me that the most under-represented group is children. The rhetoric is deep in this area, but . . . the actual bodies, the actual information being produced and the actual advocacy is in very short supply.”

Class-Action Suits

Although the advocacy group will not represent individual children in court matters, the possibility of taking on class-action suits is within the institute’s scope, Fellmeth said. CalCAI’s research will also aid other children’s lobbying groups in Sacramento, such as Children Now and the California Children’s Lobby.

Paul Peterson, chairman of the board of CalCAI and a partner in the San Diego firm Peterson, Thelan & Price, said the institute will provide a better network for those who provide children’s services.

“There’s not a lot of communication between the different players involved. We hope to try to bring some . . . focus . . . that may not have existed before this organization was formed,” Peterson said. “If we save one kid that would not otherwise have been saved . . . it will be worth all the work we did.”

Fellmeth said he envisions a worldwide expansion of CalCAI.

“If we succeed, our hope is that the organization will someday become international. . . . The problem internationally is that it’s obviously overwhelming. But, if we were to grow large enough to develop the resources, the model was to not preclude gradual expansion into the international arena.”