Kathleen Creamer

Kathleen Creamer is the Managing Attorney of the Family Advocacy Unit at Community Legal Services, which uses a holistic family defense model to represent parents involved with the child welfare system. In this role, she oversees all levels of trial and appellate practice, leads a multidisciplinary team representing parents, and advances policies that promote family integrity. Under her leadership, the Family Advocacy Unit has expanded its holistic defense model and achieved strong outcomes by helping keep families safely together, increasing kinship placements, and reducing the trauma of family separation.

In addition to individual representation of parents in dependency court, Kathleen has focused much of her advocacy on supporting incarcerated parents and their families. From 2011-2013, she served as a Stoneleigh Foundation Fellow dedicated to Improving Reunification Outcomes for Children of Incarcerated Parents. She also helped lead the coalition that developed and advocated for the successful passage of the 2010 Healthy Birth for Incarcerated Women Act, which curtailed the practice of shackling incarcerated women during childbirth in Pennsylvania’s jails and prisons. Kathleen also served on the Joint State Government Commission’s Statewide Legislative Advisory Committee on Children of Incarcerated Parents. She has trained case workers and legal professionals locally and nationally on best practices for engaging incarcerated parents in the child welfare system.

Ms. Creamer is the recipient of the 2011 Women’s Way Unsung Heroine Award and was recognized as a 2012 Legal Intelligencer Lawyer on the Fast Track. In 2026, she received the Community Legal Services Equal Justice Award.

Kathleen is a member of the Steering Committee for the American Bar Association’s National Alliance for Parent Representation and serves on the Governing Board of United Family Advocates. She also serves on the Editorial Board of the Family Justice Journal.

Prior to joining CLS as a staff attorney in 2006, Kathleen served as Director of Legal Services at Our Place, DC, a holistic reentry program for incarcerated women, and as a law clerk to the Honorable J. Michael Ryan of the D.C. Superior Court Family Court. She earned her J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law and her B.A. from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.