The ABA Children’s Immigration Law Academy (CILA) is excited to offer legal and social services advocates serving unaccompanied youth a new written resource, Collaborative Efforts to Immigration Relief: A Call for Integration of Social Workers + Lawyers. CILA staff worked with Yvonne Mendoza, LMSW and Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, to produce the resource. In creating it, Yvonne interviewed staff at six legal service providers (in Arizona, California, Florida, Nebraska, New York, and Texas). The resource offers information about social work specialization, professional duties for social workers and lawyers, social work service models, the functioning of the interviewed organizations, and more. The document is available to all individuals with a CILA account of any color.
The resource was introduced during a live 90-minute CILA webinar, “Considerations and Strategies for Integrating Social Services and Legal Teams Serving Unaccompanied Children,” on August 13, 2024. The webinar highlighted key aspects of the resource and provided insights into how program structure can impact the professional duties of both attorneys and social workers. A recording of the webinar is available on CILA’s website here. For easy access to CILA’s social work program written resources and trainings, see here.