MedicoLegal Partnership for Children

In keeping with its mission to create a world of hope for the most vulnerable and poorest of our children, Community for Children is undertaking a project to forge a partnership between the Brownsville Community Health Center (BCHC) and Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid (TRLA).

Under the guidance of the national organization Medico-Legal Partnership for Children, BCHC and TRLA will work together in an effort to better meet the needs of the Lower Rio Grande Valley community and its children.

From the Medico-Legal Partnership for Children website:

The Medico-Legal Partnership for Children promotes collaboration between pediatricians and lawyers at sites around the country. The lawyers help to meet children’s basic needs, including food, housing, health care, education and safety. MLPC, by providing technical assistance and funding to active and nascent sites, seeks to transform the practice of pediatrics and the delivery of legal services by introducing preventative law to the clinical setting. By drawing on the strength of two powerful professions, community resources can be leveraged, and children and families can realize the promise of integrated, preventive services that promote health and well-being.

Participants in the elective will have the opportunity to help forge this partnership from its infancy, working with both attorneys at TRLA and social workers, physicians and staff at BCHC.

Children in Immigration Detention: A Medical/Mental Health Perspective

In keeping with its support for the Universal Rights of a Child, Community for Children offers participants the opportunity to work with the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR), an agency formed to provide high quality pro bono legal representation to the thousands of immigrants detained in the Rio Grande Valley, primarily seeking protection in the form of political asylum. Over 400 are unaccompanied children from Central America – children who have fled their home countries and journeyed to the United States without parents or guardians. These children are housed in federally run shelters and foster care homes while they are placed in deportation proceedings to be sent home. Many of them are escaping some form of violence, either physical or sexual abuse and many suffer the ongoing effects of emotional, mental and physical trauma and illness. The participants will have the opportunity to witness the conditions in which the children are living, hear first hand the experiences they have survived, and attend a court docket, while working with ProBar to establish best practice guidelines for attorneys interviewing these most vulnerable of children, including identifying resources in the area for children who have suffered trauma.

Cameron Park Colonia Project

Colonia is a Spanish term for neighborhood or community. In Texas, colonia refers to an unincorporated settlement that lacks basic water and sewer systems, paved roads, and safe and sanitary housing. The development of Texas colonias dates back to at least the 1950s. Using agriculturally valueless land, land that lay in floodplains or other rural properties, developers created unincorporated subdivisions. They divided the land into small lots, put in little or no infrastructure, then sold them to low-income individuals seeking affordable housing. Houses in colonias are generally constructed piecemeal by their owners and may lack electricity, plumbing and other basic amenities.

Dilapidated homes, a lack of potable water and sewer and drainage systems, and floodplain locations make many colonias an ideal place for the proliferation of disease. Texas Department of State Health Services data show that hepatitis A, salmonellosis, dysentery, cholera and other diseases occur at much higher rates in colonias than in Texas as a whole. Tuberculosis is also a common health threat, occurring almost twice as frequently along the border than in Texas as a whole.

Community for Children participants have opportunities to develop programs for families who reside in the community. They conduct needs assessments through discussions with mothers and grandmothers, provide health education classes and other interventions.

Proyecto Azteca

A member of the Equal Voice Network, Proyecto Azteca is a nationally recognized, community-directed, self-help housing organization that has financed and trained more than 700 families in the construction and first time home ownership in over 120 Hidalgo County colonias.

The mission of Proyecto Azteca, rooted in the hope of creating a more equitable society, is to build healthy and thriving communities by assisting low and very low income families, traditionally denied home ownership opportunities, with the construction of quality affordable houses, and empowering them to become responsible home owners with an enhanced quality of life.

Staff at Proyecto Azteca chair the Equal Voice Housing Coalition, bringing together over 40 partners involved in housing programs in the 4 County area of Starr, Hidalgo, Cameron, and Willacy. Staff also chair the Equal Voice Health Care Coalition in Hidalgo County which has 15 members including the federal clinic, Nuestra Clinica del Valle; the State funded COPC (Community Oriented Primary Care Clinic), El Milagro; and a free clinic providing medical and mental health services, Hope Clinic.