Youth Justice

The Youth Justice team serves young people in Contra Costa experiencing homelessness, incarceration, or trafficking. We also help young people coming out of juvenile hall get back to school and stabilize once back at home with their community.

We partner with the Bill Wilson Center (BWC) in Santa Clara County, supporting young people under 18 and young adults at BWC’s emergency shelters, drop-in centers, and transitional housing programs who don’t have a safe caregiver and assisting older youth with a variety of issues, including public benefits and name and gender marker changes.

Our attorneys and social worker work with teenagers and young adults who have been involved with Alameda County Juvenile Probation. They work with other service providers to support youth whether their juvenile case is current or happened years ago.

We also support youth who use drop-in and residential programs at DreamCatcher and Covenant House youth shelters in Oakland, providing legal and social supports for young people under the age of 18 who don’t have a safe caregiver and young adults who want to remove obstacles to their independence.

We are also available to talk to youth in San Francisco, San Mateo, Marin, and Napa Counties. Our team social worker helps secure essential services and helps youth plan for safety in their communities. Maighna Jain, our Youth Justice Managing Attorney, coordinates this regional work.

Youth who successfully receive housing, medical, education support and more through advocacy by BayLegal are significantly less likely to reenter justice systems.

With BayLegal’s assistance, youth are appropriately supported by community resources such as proper educational placement, access to mental health counseling, economic stability through government benefits programs – and therefore no longer needs the continued supervision of the juvenile justice system.