Legal Partnering for Child and Family Health: An Opportunity and Call to Action for Early Childhood Systems
This paper focuses on the important role that legal interventions can play in accelerating access to concrete supports in times of need for families with young children. The paper orients early childhood systems to the public interest law community; spotlights an evidence-based legal strategy; introduces a Health-Promoting Legal Partnering Impact Pyramid to guide how early childhood systems and legal community collaborators can work together; illustrates the levels of impact that can be achieved for families by partnering with legal community collaborators; and calls upon early childhood systems to robustly integrate legal partnering into their concrete support “toolbox.” The goal is to ensure that all families know their rights and more families can pursue those rights if they wish, either independently or in partnership with a trusted resource.
The Health Impact Pyramid
The Health Impact Pyramid illustrates that when foundational social, economic, and environmental conditions are improved, population-level impact increases and fewer people are in need of individual, intensive interventions.
When legal strategies are refracted through the prism of the Health Impact Pyramid, the public interest law community’s robust problem-solving assets are highlighted.
