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August 12, 2025
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The Oklahoma Office of Family Representation (OFR), led by Director Gwendolyn Clegg, is reshaping the state’s child welfare system. By providing families with access to strong legal teams, OFR ensures both parents’ and children’s voices carry weight in court. In the first episode of the podcast mini-series, Bright Spots, Clegg joins host Maya Rupert to reflect on OFR's impact and share her vision for a system that prioritizes reuniting families whenever it is safe.
This story is adapted from Bright Spots, a new mini-series within the Good Things podcast. Produced in partnership with Lemonada Media, the series features bite-sized stories of community impact that leave listeners feeling inspired and hopeful about what is possible. In a moment when so much feels uncertain, each story shines a light on the people who are making a difference in their communities right now, and the solutions that can make a difference in other communities, too. To explore more of the mini-series, check out Good Things.
The foster care system is meant to protect children. Yet, for many parents, one bad day or one difficult circumstance can lead to losing custody of their children—sometimes for years, and sometimes forever.
From the beginning of her legal career, Gwendolyn Clegg felt a calling to champion families. As an intern in a district attorney’s office, she watched as the criminal legal system imposed punishment rather than provide support to people struggling. She saw how poverty, trauma and other hardships brought people into the criminal legal system, only for the system to push them further into instability. For many, that meant incarceration. For those with children, it meant foster care: their children placed in unfamiliar homes, in new schools and with families far from the parents they knew.
For most parents, the circumstances that brought them into contact with the child welfare system rarely involved abuse, but rather neglect linked to crises like housing insecurity, substance use, illness or job loss. This gap between what families face and the help they receive drove Clegg to dedicate her career to family advocacy.
Now, as Director of The Oklahoma Office of Family Representation (OFR)—administered by our grantee, Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma (LASO)—Clegg seeks to help court systems see the full picture of each family’s situation. By providing parents with interdisciplinary teams of lawyers, social workers, parent mentors, youth mentors and investigators, OFR ensures both parents’ and children’s voices are valued in decision-making and works toward reuniting families as the primary goal, whenever it is safe.
“The heart of family defense is centering client-directed representation,” Clegg explains. “Children in Oklahoma have a right to express interest in representation, meaning children as young as five get to tell their lawyer what to say in court about the outcome of their child custody case. That needs to be lifted up. Children know what they want.”
Clegg recalls one case that shows what’s possible when families receive this kind of support. A family had lost their children to the child welfare system for three years and faced termination of parental rights. With two OFR-trained attorneys at their side, they fought long and against the odds. They won a jury trial, preventing permanent separation. With the added support of a parent mentor, and despite resistance from the system, the family finally brought their children back home.
This is what great, supportive, and well-compensated lawyering does. It centers the family, it lifts up the family’s voice, and it fights zealously for their preservation.
In conversation with Bright Spots host Maya Rupert, Clegg reflects on this case along with others that make her proud of her team and hopeful for Oklahoma’s families. And, the future looks bright: since becoming operational in July 2024, OFR has expanded* to more than half of Oklahoma’s counties. While right now, OFR is one of the only programs of its kind, Clegg sees a future in which the program is adopted across the country, providing even more families the chance to stay together.
Listen to the full podcast episode to hear more from Gwendolyn Clegg on how OFR works to reshape the child welfare system on behalf of families across Oklahoma.
*Note: OFR's expansion is made possible by the Oklahoma legislature's adoption of the Family Representation and Advocacy Act, the oversight of the Administrative Office of the Courts, program administration by Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma, and the dedication of OFR staff and contracted attorneys who support children and parents every day.
Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies welcomes the expression of personal thoughts and reflections in Toward, our digital magazine. Each post reflects the opinion of its author and does not necessarily represent the views of our organization or our partners.
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