After more than 12 years as Legal Director for JustChildren, the juvenile advocacy program he created as part of the Legal Aid Justice Center, Andy Block will step down in June to start a new job—Director of the Child Advocacy Clinic at the UVA Law School.
Block helped found the clinic in 1998 while working at Legal Aid; his replacement at JustChildren, Angela Ciolfi, also worked with Block at the clinic in addition to the time she spent working with him at JustChildren. "He does propel people toward action," Ciolfi told C-VILLE Weekly for a feature story on Block. "He’s not content with words."
A press release from Legal Aid details some of Block’s accomplishments with JustChildren—among them, expanded preschool access for four-year-olds and efforts to sustain it among high school students, and work to protect the rights of disabled students and children who spent time in juvenile facilities.
"Fortunately," says Block via Legal Aid’s press release, "through the Clinic I will still have the opportunity to work closely with my colleagues at JustChildren and Legal Aid."
"He has helped hundreds of individual children, changed laws, greatly expanded the number of effective child advocates across the Commonwealth," says Legal Aid executive director Alex Gulotta in the same release. "While there is no replacing Andy, I have every confidence that the great program he started will continue to do excellent work after he is gone."
Coming soon to a law school near you: Andy Block, founder of Legal Aid Justice Center’s JustChildren program, will step down in June to take a job with UVA Law School’s Child Advocacy Clinic.
