SIDEBAR Summer/Fall 2020 - 16

MONTGOMERYBAR.ORG

MCAP UPDATE

MCAP: what's going on
and what's coming up

ello from MCAP! We hope you and your families and
friends are managing as best you can in these challenging
times. We're pleased to provide you with some updates:

Run For The Hill Of
It! went VIRTUAL this
year! As the safety of our

runners, volunteers, staff,
and board is always our top
priority, the coronavirus
pandemic compelled us to host
a VIRTUAL race this year.
From July 25th to August 1st,
we invited our participants to
run, walk, hike, dance, do yoga,
bike, swim - any activity for
30 minutes. And we were so pleasantly surprised that 166 people
signed up and helped us to raise over $32,000! We hope next year
that we are able to get back to our usual race along the beautiful
Wissahickon in Fairmount Park, but we are so grateful to everyone
who made our first virtual event such a rousing success.
MCAP Executive Director Mary Pugh;
MCAP Board President Kate Imbesi and
friends; MCAP Director of Community
Partnerships Ingrid Parker and family

CLEs: We offered our first virtual CLE,
"Representing Children and Addressing
Trauma In and Outside of the Courtroom"
with MCAP's Social Worker and Director of
Community Partnerships Ingrid Parker and
Executive Director Mary Pugh on August 13th. 24 people joined
us for this informative two-hour CLE, presented in conjunction
with the Montgomery Bar Association. We will be offering
"The Art of Representing a Child in the Legal Arenas," the CLE
required of all MCAPs, as a multi-day series of two- to threehour parts. Be on the lookout for more information about this
and other upcoming CLEs and seminars on our website (www.
MCAPkids.org) and our Facebook page (www.Facebook.com/
MCAPkids).

Representing Children
and Addressing Trauma,
August 13th

Cases: Like everyone,
MCAP has had to adapt
to many changes to
how we operate. Video
conferencing has become
vital to our work, helping
our staff attorneys and volunteer MCAPs manage cases and
participate in meetings with
partners and stakeholders. Our MCAP advocates and staff
attorneys had been - and continue to - attend Virtual Court
Hearings via Zoom for Dependency and other matters, and PFA
cases began being heard in-person at the Courthouse on June
1st. One of the few matters held live at the Courthouse, PFA
hearings went from being held on Tuesdays and Thursdays only to
five days per week in three courtrooms. We are also having visits
with the children we serve via Zoom, Facetime, or phone. We
are so grateful for all of the MCAP advocates who have helped us
through this challenging time!

MCAP staff is still mostly working from home and has Zoom
meetings once per week. They are staggering office visits with
just one person going in at a time.
On behalf of MCAP's board and staff, thank you for
everything you are doing to keep Montgomery County safe as we
continue to weather this storm together.

Montgomery Child Advocacy Project's (MCAP) mission is to end and prevent child abuse and neglect in Montgomery County through legal services, advocacy, and
education. MCAP operates as a pro-bono model with 140+ professional attorneys (trained by MCAP) on our roster who donate approximately 8,000 hours to our
child clients' cases each year. Since our founding in 2004, MCAP has provided free legal services for more than 6,200 children. To learn more please see our website
at www.mcapkids.org.
16 SIDEBAR

http://www.MCAPkids.org http://www.Facebook.com/ http://www.mcapkids.org

SIDEBAR Summer/Fall 2020

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