Saskia Valencia

Biography

Professor Valencia teaches in the Disability and Civil Rights Clinic. Prior to joining the Clinic, she was a senior staff attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services' Family Defense Practice (BDS) where she represented parents and caregivers accused of abuse and neglect. At BDS, Professor Valencia was a member of the Preserving Family Bonds team, which had a specialty focus on post-dispositional and termination of parental rights-stage cases with the goal of supporting families in innovative ways to achieve the most favorable resolution possible to preserve families’ bonds.

Before her work as a public defender, Professor Valencia began her legal career as a Skadden Fellow at Youth Represent where she implemented the organization’s first medical-legal partnership (MLP) dedicated to providing reentry legal services to young people who had been diagnosed with mental illness. Following her fellowship, Professor Valencia remained at Youth Represent where she continued working with and supervising the MLP, while also implementing the organization’s first project dedicated to working with immigrant youth involved in the criminal legal system.

Prior to becoming an attorney, Professor Valencia was a community-based family therapist working with families with children involved in the juvenile legal system in NYC and unhoused and at-risk youth and families in San Diego, CA.

Professor Valencia has an interest in critically researching the implications of the family regulation system on individuals with disabilities.