Healthcare Providers and Legal Advocates Working Together
Healthcare providers and legal advocates address families’ unmet civil legal needs as follows:
- Referring families directly from the clinics to Legal Aid for advice and advocacy
- Catalyzing system-level change through joint advocacy
- Educating healthcare professionals about the social determinants of health and legal remedies available to help patients and families
- Sharing management, data, and stories that advance the partnership
Child HeLP helps ensure that children and families reach their full potential by addressing risks including poor housing conditions and evictions, delays and denials of public benefits, and special education needs.
Accomplishments
Each year, Child HeLP achieves hundreds of positive outcomes for families including:
- Improving housing conditions and preventing homelessness
- Securing education services to resolve school problems
- Obtaining medical insurance coverage for children
- Securing or increasing income to meet basic needs
- Resolving legal problems interfering with employment of parents
- Resolving other legal problems detrimental to health and well-being
- Providing advice or information about legal rights
Research
The Child HeLP team is leading the way in demonstrating the value and evidence-based impact of medical-legal partnerships through research:
- Reductions In Hospitalizations Among Children Referred To A Primary Care–Based Medical-Legal Partnership
- Identifying and Treating a Substandard Housing Cluster Using a Medical-Legal Partnership
- Doctors and Lawyers Collaborating to HeLP Children – Outcomes from a Successful Partnership Between Professions
- Medical-Legal-Psychology Partnerships – Innovation in Addressing Social Determinants of Health in Pediatric Primary Care
- A Road Map to Address the Social Determinants of Health Through Community Collaboration
Training Video Curriculum
Child HeLP developed an innovative social history video curriculum to teach providers how to screen for social and legal issues affecting their low-income patients and families.
Sign in to MedEdPORTAL to view Video Curriculum on Screening for the Social Determinants of Health.
