Regier accepts PILS' challenge.

A Public Interest Law Section luncheon at The Florida Bar's Midyear Meeting in Miami ended in an extraordinary exchange between lawyers who advocate for children and Jerry Regier, secretary of the Department of Children and Families.

Regier, in the job for a year and a half, challenged lawyers to help him carry out adoptions. In turn, lawyers challenged Regier to help them get past animosities and allow them to represent children. In the end, both children's advocates and the head of the huge, troubled social services agency agreed to work together as partners.

"I've often thought that if you can get past a wall of lawyers, whose job it is to protect their boss and their department, that you can sometimes reach a resolution when you have a one-on-one discussion," said Deborah Schroth, of Florida Legal Services in Jacksonville and a former chair of PILS.

"So I am very hopeful that indeed we will be able to work out a mechanism, especially for children who don't have access to the courts. Because frequently, foster children are not brought into judicial review hearings, and older children don't have guardians ad litem. I am hoping that now the secretary and I can work out a mechanism so that we can each meet one another's challenge."

The impromptu dealmaking began when Regier was wrapping up his prepared speech. He sent out a challenge to Florida's lawyers to help him with a new adoption initiative called "No Place Like Home." Right now, he said, there are 4,600 children in Florida whose parents have already had their parental rights terminated. Of those 4,600, 2,500 children have a family identified to care for them, a foster family, or relative willing to give the child a permanent home. But the other 2,100 children, Regier said, do not.

"That's something we need to work on together," Regier told those gathered at the luncheon. "One of the things I thought about is to challenge this group, to challenge you to think about, maybe even as a group or a section of The Florida Bar, to take up the goal and say, 'I'm going to help in some way to get one child adopted.' What would happen if you took a goal of 500 children this year, to find 500 attorneys who would get involved in some manner to provide pro bono work in terms of the legal needs ... and see if you can find an adoption opportunity for that child?

"Permanency is really where we need to move children in our system. We can build a more responsive system," Regier said. "I believe with all...