For Connecticut’s poorest children, medical needs and legal issues often go hand-in-hand. For more than a decade, Jay Sicklick, director of the Center for Children’s Advocacy’s Medical-Legal Partnership Project, has worked to bring legal services to low-income children and their families in an effort to improve their health outcomes.
“The root cause of a lot of health issues is poverty,” Sicklick said. “It’s just a fact that poor kids have poor health outcomes.”
Each case is unique, but a typical scenario might involve a child whose medical condition is being caused or exacerbated by the family’s living conditions. The child’s primary care physician contacts the Medical-Legal Partnership Project and an attorney works with the family, health care providers, and others to secure Supplemental Security Income for the family and help the parents identify and access the federal and state assistance for which they qualify.
“We’ve worked hard to get clinicians to think proactively about these issues,” Sicklick said. “We want to get people thinking of us as part of the health care system, and we want physicians to recognize that it’s part of their responsibility to address the social determinants that are affecting their patients.”
The center also advocates for children’s health on a systemic level. It has filed a complaint against the Hartford Public School System regarding educational opportunities for immigrant children, and Sicklick is promoting a new initiative for early identification of children with mental health issues.
When the Medical-Legal Partnership Project was launched in 2000, it was only the second of its kind. Now there are more than 150 scattered throughout the country, as well as a national center in Boston.
In addition to Sicklick, the program employs one other full-time and one part-time attorney, and uses interns to help fill the gaps. Services have recently been scaled back because of funding issues, but Sicklick still hopes to expand outside the Hartford area and establish services in New Haven at some point.
Sicklick “takes a driven, straightforward approach to helping the poorest, most disadvantaged kids in this area,” said Bonnie Berk, communications director at the Center for Children’s Advocacy’s. “He’s really devoted his life to this work.”
A native of West Hartford, Sicklick joined a Boston law firm after getting his law degree from Boston College, but it wasn’t long before he left private practice to become a senior staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society in the Bronx.
“I’d worked in a clinic during law school and it formed a lasting impression on me,” he said. “It sounds trite, but that’s what drove me to seek a career working in the public interest.”
In addition to directing the Medical-Legal Partnership Project, Sicklick is an adjunct professor of law at the University of Connecticut School of Law and an assistant clinical professor in pediatrics at the UConn School of Medicine.
His work is “fulfilling, but challenging. Sometimes when you get a good outcome, you see the parent’s years later and they tell you how well their kid is doing. It really makes you feel good.”
STATS
Name: Jay Sicklick
Title: Director, Medical-Legal Partnership Project
Workplace: Center for Children’s Advocacy
Address: 65 Elizabeth Street, Hartford
Website: www.kidscounsel.org
