LCYC is excited to announce that we have updated our Immigrant Safety Plan for Youth and Children. The Safety Plan is designed to assist families that may be in a position where they are unable to care for their children. The goal is to help parents gather important paperwork and information for their children’s care and needs before the parents may not be able to care for them. The Safety Plan includes information such as: the process and documents to appoint a third party to care for your children and have the legal authority to make decisions on their behalf, how to obtain a birth certificate or passport, and how to find out information on the detained parent. The Safety Plan is particularly helpful if parents are detained and/or deported.
The updated Safety Plan contains 2 major updates: (1) a law passed in June 2020 that creates a Durable Power of Attorney for Caregivers that lasts for up to 24 months, which replaces the Temporary Parent Consent form in the previous plan and (2) as of Jan 1, 2020, the process for obtaining US birth certificates changed.
The Safety Plan is meant to help families, mostly immigrant families and is designed so that parents can fill out the document without the help of an attorney. It does not constitute legal advice. It is free to use and can be shared widely. As with the original, the Safety Plan will be translated into multiple languages so that people can read it in their own language. However, always remember to fill out forms included in the Safety Plan in English so that they may be easily read by authorities.
You can find the Safety Plan here. When translated versions are available, they will be posted on our Immigrant Youth and Family Resources page.
Many thanks to the Seattle Foundation’s Resilience Fund grants which help support LCYC’s engagement and advocacy with immigrant youth and families.