The Washington Informer: AmeriHealth Caritas Foundation Grants $100k To Children’s Law Center

Across the District, hundreds of children fall victim to adverse childhood experiences  (ACEs) that can often hamper educational, safety, housing, behavioral and health outcomes. Through an innovative medical-legal partnership, AmeriHealth Caritas DC is working in tandem with Children’s Law Center to provide legal advocacy services aimed to reduce housing and health-related ACEs and strengthen District families and communities overall. On Oct. 23, AmeriHealth Caritas Foundation awarded Children’s Law Center a $100k grant to help bolster the organization’s support toward some of the city’s most vulnerable families. 

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But despite the nature of these cases, Sandalow underscores the mission of Children’s Law Center and AmeriHealth’s partnership, is to help support families who are faced with challenges beyond their bandwidth of resources.  While people commonly question parents for the varying adversities their children face, Children’s Law Center understands that many are doing the very best they can with the circumstances they are dealt. 
 
“The way we think about it is that parents are walking around with this massive burden of poverty, trauma, and racism on their shoulders, and our job is to help lift that burden off of their shoulders,”  Sandalow said.  

“That often takes the form of housing or education, because one of the big burdens is, if a child is not doing well, school is stressful on a parent.” Children’s Law Center aims to reform the city’s behavioral health system as a whole, helping families across the city with a keen focus on supporting children’s physical and behavioral health issues that their parents are seeking help for.  

“All kinds of things, which I like to say, ‘rich people can buy their way out of,’  people without money can’t.  That is a huge part of the work we do.”