The winners of this year’s LexisNexis Community & Educational Outreach Awards showed a wide range of ideas and innovation in their attempts to help educate the public.

The awards, which were presented at the NABE Annual Meeting, ranged from teaching librarians how to explain the law to library patrons, to helping to screen children for mental health issues. The NABE Board of Directors chose the winners.

The Missouri Bar, which won in the category of state bars with more than 18,000 members, was part of a team that developed a program to provide librarians throughout Missouri with free training and resources to help patrons who come to libraries looking for answers to legal questions. Missouri librarians are learning from a team of instructors that includes: a lawyer, a law librarian, a bar executive and an experienced general librarian.

“Like every other bar association, we provide libraries and the public with a series of public information brochures about the law. It occurred to us that we’ve never talked to librarians about how to use this information,” said Jack Wax, media relations director.

“It’s very stressful to be a librarian and to have someone come in with an emotionally charged legal problem. You want to help them, but you can’t offer them legal advice,” Wax said. The program helps teach librarians what to do in those situations, and how to direct people to the proper resources.

The cost to the Bar is minimal, basically covering travel expenses, Wax said. He expects the program to continue,

At the Indiana State Bar Association, which won in the category of state bar association with 18,000 or fewer members, the focus was on children with mental health issues.

The ISBA brought together more than 250 national, state and local leaders to address the vastly neglected needs of children with mental health disorders. Lawyers, judges, educators, doctors, counselors, law enforcement and court personnel, state office holders, and state and county policy makers attended the Children, Mental Health & the Law Summit.

The purpose of the summit was to explore the best ways to serve children with mental health needs before they come in contact with the judicial system as well as when they are in the middle of it, said JauNae Hanger, Immediate Past Chair ISBA Civil Rights of Children Committee.

“There is growing recognition that juvenile delinquency and the unmet mental health needs of children are linked,” Hanger said. “If you’re really going to deal with the numbers of children who come into the juvenile justice system, then you’re going to have to deal with the mental health needs of children.”

The summit led to the issuance of a report with recommendations that include routine screening of children for mental health issues once they enter the juvenile justice system, which some states do but Indiana does not, Hanger said.

The ISBA committee will follow up on the recommendations, she said.

The Allegheny County Bar Association took the issue of jokes and used it to educated children about the harm that jokes can cause if directed cruelly at others.

The ACBA, which won in the category of Local Bar Association with more than 5,000 members, set up a program “to try to head off insensitivity and bigotry by teaching children the differences between a good joke and a bad joke and how bad jokes can hurt your feelings,” according to the nomination form.

ACBA volunteer members go to classrooms to speak with children in grades K-5 about how jokes can hurt people’s feelings, said Tom Loftus, ACBA director of Media Relations/Public Relations.

“We felt the joke angle – where students bring their favorite jokes to the seminar – would help us teach serious lessons/messages in a fun environment. Our feeling is that all children like to tell jokes from an early age on,” Loftus said.

In the category of local bar associations with 5,000 or fewer members, the Hillsborough County (Fla) Bar Association developed a program that encouraged students at a poorly-rated elementary school to perform better in order to receive recognition and invitations to special gatherings, said Susan Sandler, former chair of the HCBA’s Community Liaison Committee.

The school’s main problem was that the children’s behavior issue were getting in the way of teachers being able to teach, Sandler said. Sandler and the committee came up with a program that rewards well-behaved children once a month with a party that features presentations from local institutions such as the zoo. Those students whose behavior earns them a reward every month get an additional gift, such as a gift certificate to a toy store.

Lawyers from the HCBA go the events and help the children with crafts projects and other activities, and also server as mentors. The school reports increased performance from the students.

The Toledo Bar Association’s Color of Justice program won the award in the local bars with fewer than 2,000 members category.

“The program exposes students to the work of lawyers and judges and encourages the students to pursue law as a course of study,” said Trish Branam, TBA executive director.

TBA worked with minority junior high schools students to expose them to role models who might encourage them to participate in the legal profession. The program included a mock trial, where attorneys played the trial participants and the students acted as the jury.

The TBA plans to repeat the program next year, Branam said.