With a Court’s Child Welfare caseload, the need for services that are effective, timely, and collaborative is essential. The reason for that is that federal and state laws required that when children are removed from their parents or legal custodians and placed in state custody, certain timelines for court action must be met. If a court fails to meet those timelines, the state or in some cases the local child welfare agency can lose federal funding to support their work.
How we got to where we are with regard to the above is a story too long to tell here; but without the timely cooperation and collaboration of service providers whether they are governmental, private, or nonprofit, there are potential and substantial financial consequences to a state. Early in my time on the bench, I was faced with this problem because the director of our mental health and substance abuse services program did not see why our cases required priority.
He had a full caseload of people who were coming voluntarily to get services, he said, and the cases I sent were people that were there involuntarily and often did not want services. After several meetings and opportunities to help him understand the legal requirements that our court and the city’s child welfare agency faced that could impact funding, he came to understand both my situation and his. As a result, we were able to work out a plan that helped to expedite screenings, evaluations, and services for parents in our child welfare caseload.
I saw in these first few years on the bench that ordering the drug screenings, evaluations, and treatment was the easy part. Implementing them successfully was not. While our agreement allowed for the timely screening, evaluations, and court reports for us to make our decisions, I then began to see child welfare cases returning to court for termination of parental rights because the parents had failed to attend the drug treatment that had been ordered.
We would have contested Termination of Parental Rights hearings that would be appealed by the parents when they lost for another trial in our Circuit Court. These were difficult cases to present, defend, and hear in a docket that was crowded with many other case types. There had to be another solution to this problem.
There are a variety of Drug Courts that exist around the country. They are efforts by court systems to therapeutically address the challenges of and consequences of people’s behavior that are related to the excessive use of alcohol and/or illegal substances. In many situations the drug court is in a criminal court and is run for the purposes of addressing illegal behavior by an individual with the court’s significant potential sanction of incarceration for those that fail to engage in treatment. The Drug Court concept and its implementation in most communities has been a success much of the time.
My experience with Drug Courts started with a judicial conference where I learned about them. As one of my challenges was the addicted parent in our child welfare caseload, I brought the idea of a Family Treatment Drug Court to our Model Court Team for consideration, but the idea was not met with enthusiasm. As I knew that I had to have the buy in of the team members, I waited.
About six months later, our team member from mental health and substance abuse services reported on a drug court training that she attended and suggested that we take a look at possibilities. The response was overwhelmingly in favor of the idea.
As we had no easily available data from our child welfare agency that gave us an information on drugs and alcohol as a contributing factor in the removal of children from their custody, I knew that we only assigned a CASA volunteer (Court Appointed Special Advocate) to our most difficult cases. So, we asked our CASA program to bring us their data on alcohol and drug involvement as a percentage of their caseload. They did, and we learned that it was in the 85-90% area.
Our drug court was one of the first in the country addressing child welfare cases and was a success because of the collaboration and cooperation among the service agencies in our community that worked with these cases. We decided as part of our effort that we would be a civil drug court and not a criminal one so that incarceration was not to be a part of our process except in the most extreme circumstance. It was reserved for those parents who had failed to participate in the program and were about to have the state move to terminate their parental rights.
The punishment was for a weekend in jail to give them the opportunity to think about what was next for them and their children and to give them the opportunity to write a good-by letter to their children in anticipation that our Department of Social Services would move forward with the Termination of their Parental Rights. While that ability to incarcerate was available to the judge who ran our Drug Court, he never had to use it.
The Family Treatment Drug Court turned a negative into a positive. We began seeing more parents engage in drug treatment as more effective and responsive services were provided to them. We saw parents engage sooner and more fully in treatment. During the court hearings, the judge hearing these cases learned from the other drug court clients who they believed was trying. We were able to tell what parents had a chance at having their children returned to them and what parents would allow the drugs to win. We knew that at least six months earlier than before. We were able to get children to permanency with their parents, relatives, or through adoptions much sooner. We were able to have more uncontested Termination of Parental Rights trials because the parents knew that they had been given every opportunity with many available services to turn their lives around.
Key to these kinds of successes and the potential success of any court program is the willingness to the local agencies and private or non-profit service providers to work together effectively and collaboratively with the clients, with one another, and with the judge. When that happens, the clients have a better chance for rehabilitation. The children have a better chance to return to their parents. The service providers will have a much greater pride in their work because they are seeing more of their clients change their lives. How can your community improve outcomes for those involved in your court system?
Thanks for Reading. If you would like to talk about what you are doing or would like to do to solve a problem in your community, please be in touch.
Judge Rideout is the former Chief Judge of the Alexandria, VA Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court (1989-2004). From 2004 until the present he has consulted in different states to support their efforts to improve their child welfare systems. From 2016 to early 2021, he was the Ward 1 Commissioner on the Cambridge City Council. Throughout his career, he has been an advocate for improving the lives of children in his and other communities. He can be reached at [email protected]
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