By Heather Meade

Posted: 9/28/2007

Nicole Cerquitella and I agree—some of our most personally rewarding work at Groom is our pro bono work. Nicole and I work with the Children’s Law Center, a non-profit organization serving children in the D.C. foster system. Through our work with the Children’s Law Center we help children in abusive, neglectful, and unsafe homes become part of a permanent and loving family.

As pro bono adoption attorneys, we assist parents who are adopting foster children wade through the endless bog of paperwork, regulations, and constant parade of invasive social workers and attorneys. Payments are always late, birth parents are unreliable, and important papers like Medicaid cards and birth certificates are continually missing. Despite all of the aggravation, these amazing kids and parents are still determined to build a new family and we get to help them do it.

At the core of every adoption is a civil litigation case. With the support of the firm, Nicole and I manage the adoption litigation, argue to terminate the parental rights of the unfit birth parents and petition for the adoption. More often than not, we also help track down those pesky late payments, unreliable birth parents, and missing Medicaid cards.

It is easy to get bogged down in all of the paperwork and system inefficiencies, but when we reached the end of our first case and saw tears of joy and relief roll down the face of the twelve year old adoptee, I knew we were doing what we do every day at Groom: solving problems and helping people—only this time we could feel the life changing result first hand.