The award, one of four announced on Wednesday, April 14, brings the total amount of funding for the Center and its NextCare Urgent Care Family Violence Legal Clinic to $2.1 million. The grant will allow the College of Law to employ one of the leading domestic violence experts in the nation as faculty director of the Center, which will open in fall 2010.
"This support provides crucial funding that will allow us to move forward with the hiring of Sarah Buel from the University of Texas at Austin," said Paul Schiff Berman, Dean of the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law. "Sarah is the leading advocate in the country with regard to the issue of family violence, and her arrival will immediately catapult the Diane Halle Center for Family Justice and the NextCare Urgent Care Family Violence Legal Clinic into a national leadership position."
The Center and Clinic were established in partnership with the AVON Program for Women and the O'Connor House Project. In addition to housing the Clinic, the Center also will administer the Juvenile Legal Assistance Program, the Program to Study and Combat Human Trafficking, and the Justice Bus Rural Legal Services Program.
The Clinic will engage students and professors from the College of Law, the College of Nursing and Health Innovation, the School of Social Work and the School of Social and Family Dynamics at ASU to provide support and free legal assistance to victims. Taking a fully integrated approach, the Clinic will handle issues of child abuse, spousal abuse, protective orders, custody, prosecutions, family law, juvenile law, and health law matters. In addition to serving victims, the Clinic will also train future generations of lawyers to work with other service professionals on the holistic needs of clients, Berman said. The Women & Philanthropy program annually grants funding to ASU programs that help the university address some of the greatest challenges of our time.
Earlier this year, the Diane Halle Center for Family Justice received a $1 million grant from the Bruce T. Halle Family Foundation, and a second $1 million grant from NextCare Urgent Care was made to establish the NextCare Urgent Care Family Violence Legal Clinic.
To read more about the Center and the Clinic, click here. To read more about Buel, click here. Click here to read the press release about other grant awardees of the ASU Foundation' Women & Philanthropy program.