Protecting Children. Improving Systems. Training the Next Generation of Advocates.
Since 1989, the Children’s Advocacy Institute (CAI) at the University of San Diego School of Law has been one of the nation’s premiere academic, research, and advocacy organizations fighting to ensure child safety and well-being.
Advocacy Highlights
Preserving Federal Benefits of Foster Youth
Most foster care agencies routinely screen and apply for Social Security benefits on behalf of youth. They then routinely request to have the benefit checks sent directly to them. After receiving the child’s check, foster care agencies almost uniformly intercept the full amount of the check to reimburse themselves for that child’s foster care. The Children’s Advocacy Institute, with the support of the Walter S. Johnson Foundation, is leading a multidimensional campaign to eradicate this practice nationwide.
Ensuring Online Safety for Kids
Online protections for children and youth have not kept pace with technological advances and societal trends and innovations. CAI's work seeks to hold social media platforms accountable to parents and children for knowingly or willfully addicting children and causing eating disorders, child suicides, fentanyl overdoses, or other harms.
2026 Legislative Priorities
CAI is actively engaged in the 2026 California legislative session, sponsoring and supporting bills to protect children's safety, rights, and well-being. This session's priorities span foster youth benefits and family reconnection, child online safety, and accountability for social media platforms and AI technologies. Visit our 2026 Legislative Priorities page for the full list of bills CAI is sponsoring and supporting, including links to bill text, fact sheets, and CAI's letters to legislators.
Our Work
These highlights represent just a portion of CAI's work. Learn more about our efforts to protect children from abuse and neglect, support transition-age foster youth, improve child welfare courts and systems, and more.
Where Future Child Advocates Begin
The Children's Advocacy Institute offers law students a unique opportunity to develop the skills, knowledge, and experience needed to champion the rights and well-being of children. Through coursework, clinics, and hands-on advocacy work, students engage with real policy issues and contribute to meaningful change. Learn more about CAI's academic programs and how you can get involved.
Our children are our legacy. How we treat them, and what we leave for them, are the proper measures of the worth of our institutions and of us.