Stacey Violante Cote helps the homeless. Not by running a shelter or dishing up meals in a soup kitchen, but by serving up a healthy portion of legal advice and representation.
Cota, the director of the Teen Legal Advocacy Project at the University of Connecticut School of Law, calls homeless teens the "invisible population" of the state. And, she said, many of these young people defy stereotypes.
"One thing I have found," Violante Cote said, "is that most of my homeless clients share the desire to go to school, remain steady in school and see school through, despite the fact that the rest of their lives may be in chaos."
The project is part of UConn law school's Center for Children's Advocacy. And the staff does more than help the homeless. Violante Cote and her crew advocate for a wide range of low-income teens, including those who are victims of abuse, neglect and other traumas. The Teen Legal Advocacy Project tries to remove barriers that prevent youth from completing high school, addressing civil issues such as: the educational rights of homeless students and improper denials of state and federal benefits, among others. It's a never-ending battle, as Hartford has one of the highest drop-out rates in the state.
But the efforts to fight homelessness got a recent boost when the center launched a new website, www.speakupteens.org, which links homeless young people with resources ranging from lawyers to shelters.
"The young and homeless basically operate beneath the radar," said Robert Francis, executive director of the Regional Youth Adult Social Action Partnership (RYASAP), who has been working with Violante Cote for five or six years. "Through our state mechanisms, we are able to identify 2,000 kids who are considered homeless—that's probably 15 to 20 percent of the actual [adolescent] population who are not sleeping in their own bed every night."
'Gray Area'
Violante Cote entered her own young adulthood ready to become a teacher; she liked working with kids and wanted to help them.
"I quickly realized that the classroom was not the place for me," she said. She got her JD from UConn law, with a joint degree in social justice. About that time, she met the Martha Stone, the long-time child welfare advocate who is the founder and executive Director of the Center for Children's Advocacy.
The two women clicked right away, and Violante Cote has been working at the center for 11 years.
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