Spring 2007

Ounce of Prevention

Duncan Campbell launches project to help at-risk youths while giving law students experience

The Portland girl had been shuttled to twelve different foster homes and care facilities in just eighteen months. Poor casework, thought one lawyer. But did the judge have the authority to intervene? UO law students helped the attorney find out—and helped a child in the process.

“It was a useful thing, because it made the judge very comfortable telling the agency what to do,” says Professor Leslie Harris. “Now that memorandum is on the website for anybody to use.”

This is just one example of how the UO’s Child Advocacy Project promotes the welfare of children while giving law students hands-on experience. The project started in 2005, thanks to a $250,000 gift from Duncan Campbell, the founder and chairman of the Campbell Group and founder of Friends of the Children. The project pursues systemic legal change to protect children’s relationships with nurturing adults.

“Nobody says they’re against children,” says Harris, who is the project director. “But it’s easy for children’s needs to get lost in complex cases because parents’ lawyers are obviously advocating for what those parents want, which may not be consistent with what the child needs and wants.”

The project sponsors an annual conference, promotes judicial reform, and provides much-needed help for child advocacy lawyers. Each year, two or three law students are chosen as Campbell Child Advocacy Fellows. They receive stipends, conduct research, and organize projects.

“Kids are one of the most vulnerable segments of our population,” says Molly Allen ’06, one of the program’s first fellows. “They’re also probably the most malleable. I think that child advocacy law is an opportunity to intervene before kids become part of the welfare system or the criminal justice system.” Campbell agrees that early intervention is crucial. “The legal system tells you to work at the end of the spectrum historically,” he says. “I’m trying to take it to the earlier stages where they create rights for children and the community gives them resources.”

Campbell overcame a childhood of poverty and neglect, thanks in part to positive adult role models. As a boy growing up in Northeast Portland, he made a promise to himself “to not lead the type of life my parents did (welfare, alcohol, prison) and to be a loving, caring, and nurturing parent to my children. And to help other children in similar circumstances in life.” He worked his way through college, earning degrees in both business and law from the UO.

“Before I died, I wanted to change one child’s life,” says Campbell ’66, J.D. ’73. “Friends of the Children does that, and fortunately it has grown to change more than one—it has changed hundreds. But with the law school you have broader policy issues, legal rights. As part of a broader community, you have to do both. You have a micro and a macro and that is why I have been interested in the university and the law school.”

“I am a believer in giving back,” says Campbell. “I feel very fortunate to be able to go to the UO and to have the opportunity to go to a public school. I was fortunate enough to have resources later, so I wanted to do something for the university.”

—Ed Dorsch