January-February 2012 Clearinghouse Review

Articles in this issue cover Medicaid expansion pursuant to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, strategies for responding to Medicaid service cutbacks, leveraging provisions that require nonprofit hospitals to expand access in low-income communities, using the Fair Labor Standards Act to support immigrant workers organizing, and representing youth in foster care who are subject to child welfare proceedings.

Advocacy Story: Community Court: How Creativity and Collaboration Benefit Marin County's Homeless Population

By Maura Prendiville
Advocacy Story: An Education: Virginia's Implementation of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act

By Amy L. Woolard
Leveraging the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's Nonprofit Hospital Requirements to Expand Access and Improve Health in Low-Income Communities
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act amended the tax code to improve the community benefit delivered by nonprofit hospitals. The Act protects against aggressive billing and debt collection, encourages transparency in financial assistance policies, and requires public health and community input in assessing and meeting community health needs. Advocates can push for stronger protections on the state and local level by monitoring compliance, educating officials and consumers, and participating in community-health-needs assessments.

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.
Related Articles
- Valerie McWilliams & Alan A. Alop, The Dearth of Charity Care: Do Nonprofit Hospitals Deserve Their Tax Exemptions? (July-Aug. 2010)
- Alan A. Alop, Hospital’s Failure to Provide Charity Write-Off to Indigent, Uninsured Patient and Inflating Charges for Her May Constitute “Unfair Practices” Under Illinois Law; Suit Will Proceed (May-June 2007)
- Sarah Somers & Jane Perkins, The Affordable Care Act: A Giant Step Toward Insurance Coverage for All Americans (Nov.-Dec. 2010)
- Leonardo Cuello, How the Affordable Care Act Shapes the Future of Home and Community-Based Services (Nov.-Dev. 2011)
By Corey S. Davis, Jessica Curtis, and Anna Dunbar-Hester
Protection v. Presentment: When Youths in Foster Care Become Respondents in Child Welfare Proceedings
Teens in foster care face many challenges. If a teen parent in foster care becomes a respondent in a family court case, she faces another challenge: the same child welfare agency responsible for her welfare as a subject child is, in many jurisdictions, the same agency responsible for proving that she is a neglectful or abusive parent. Not only does this raise issues of trust for the teen parent, but also, because the child welfare agency has a parens patriae relationship with the teen parent, the agency has access to her confidential medical and mental health history, which the agency often uses to the parent’s disadvantage. Is this double role right and lawful? If not, what should child welfare agencies be doing about it?

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.
Related Articles
- Jennifer Pokempner, Jennifer Rodriguez, and Alice Bussiere, Fostering Connections to Success: Extending a Social Safety Net for Youths Facing Homelessness and Poverty (July-August 2009)
- Alice Bussiere, Jennifer Pokempner, and Jennifer Troia, Adolescents, the Foster Care System, and the Transition to Adulthood: What Legal Aid Lawyers Need to Know (July-August 2005)
- Casey Trupin and Richard A. Wayman, From Street Lawyering to Systemic Lawyering: Meeting the Basic Needs of Unaccompanied and Homeless Youth Through Systemic Legal Advocacy (July-August 2005)
By Rebecca Horwitz, Chloe Junge, and Sandy Rosin
Interview Afield: Bob Capistrano
Clearinghouse Review launches a new feature in this our first issue of 2012: Interview Afield. For forty-five years we have sought to introduce and connect advocates with one another. We hope to further that role by briefly profiling, in each issue, an advocate who has made a difference for low-income clients. Leading off this series is Bob Capistrano, who began his legal services career in 1976 as a VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) lawyer with San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation. The foundation has since merged with other programs to form Bay Area Legal Aid, where Bob is now director of advocacy and managing attorney. A reliable author of Review articles (see Robert P. Capistrano, Making the Fair Hearing More Fair, 44 Clearinghouse Review 96 (July–Aug. 2010), for his most recent contribution), Bob is on the faculty for Affirmative Litigation Training, which the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law’s training unit, formerly the Center for Legal Aid Education, will offer in March 2012 in the San Francisco Bay Are.
Read Interview Afield: Bob Capistrano
The Great Medicaid Expansion of 2014: What It Is and How to Make It Succeed
A major aspect of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health reform law signed in 2010, was to bring health insurance coverage--by broadening Medicaid eligibility to cover people up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level--to some sixteen million U.S. residents who go without it. States are now making choices about how they will implement this expansion, to take effect in 2014. As states decide, advocates should weigh in to make sure that the Act’s promise of quality, affordable health coverage, especially for vulnerable populations, is fulfilled.

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.
Related Articles
- Leonardo Cuello, How the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Shapes the Future of Home- and Community-Based Services (Nov.-Dec. 2011)
- Sarah Somers & Jane Perkins, The Affordable Care Act: A Giant Step Toward Insurance Coverage for All Americans (Nov.-Dec. 2010)
- John Bouman & Robert A. Crittenden, Health Care Reform: Seizing the Moment and Shaping the Message (Nov.-Dec. 2008)
By Andrea Kovach and Rachel Gielau
Letter from the President

By John Bouman
Responding to Medicaid Service Cutbacks: An Advocate's Checklist
Helping low-income clients with medicaid problems is a complicated endeavor in the best of times. With the economic recession prompting states to cut Medicaid spending by reducing provider payments and covered benefits, advocates for these clients face an even greater challenge. Even in tough economic times, however, states have to follow state and federal law when the cut Medicaid services. The states’ errors often follow similar patterns, and advocates who understand those patterns are better situated to help their clients.

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.

Related Articles
- Sarah Somers & Jane Perkins, Medicaid Managed Care and People with Disabilities: Challenges and Opportunities (Sept.-Oct. 2007)
- Sarah Somers & Jane Perkins, The Affordable Care Act: A Giant Step Toward Insurance Coverage for All Americans (Nov.-Dec. 2010)
- Sarah Somers, Cost-Related Community Integration Barriers in Medicaid: A Review of the EPSDT Program and Home and Community-Based Waivers (March-April 2002)
By Jane Perkins
Using Fair Labor Standards Act Litigation to Support Immigrant Worker Organizing: Turning Direct Legal Services into Impact Litigation
Unpaid wage claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act can support immigrant-worker organizing campaigns. Legal services organizations should prioritize wage-theft litigation with worker centers, as clients see better case results and extend the reach of the litigation to broader change. Advocates must beware of discovery tactics and retaliation aimed at stifling immigrant clients’ participation in employment cases.

Copies of this article are available for individual purchase online for $15 apiece.
Related Articles
- Rebecca Smith, Cynthia Mark, & Anita Sinha, Protecting the Labor and Employment Rights of Immigrant Workers (Sept.-Oct. 2004)
- Cynthia Mark & Evonne Yang, The Power-One Campaign: Immigrant Worker Empowerment Through Law and Organizing (July-Aug. 2002)
- Marielena Hincapié, Opportunities for New Alliances to Protect the Rights of Undocumented Immigrant Workers (Jan.-Feb. 2001)
- Rick McHugh, Recognizing Wage and Hour Issues on Behalf of Low-Income Workers (Sept.-Oct. 2001)
- David T. Hutt, Ensuring Fair Wages? Subminimum Wages for Individuals with Disabilities Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (May-June 2011)
- Naomi Zauderer, Supporting Low-Income Workers: An Organizer’s Perspective (Jan.-Feb. 2001)
By Hollis V. Pfitsch
A Quick and Easy Method of Screening for Medicaid Eligibility Under the Pickle Amendment
The Pickle Amendment allows individuals to qualify for Medicaid by subtracting from the countable portion of their social security income any cost-of-living adjustments received since their last Supplemental Security Income. Advocates can use a simple formula for calculation and screening.
Read more and view the chart.

By Gordon Bonnyman
Training Programs: Shriver Center Introduces National Training Programs

By Ellen Hemley

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