Publications

For more resources on court improvement, visit our Court Improvement Project Webpage here and our Court Improvement Project Catalog here.

How to Work With Your Court: A Guide for Child Welfare Agency Administrators (2nd edition). Helps agency executives and judges set up effective agency-court meetings, addresses joint educational programs, improving federal law compliance, enhancing agency success rates in court actions, dealing with "problem" judges, and helping agencies obtain legal support. New edition covers challenges raised in federal Child and Family Services Reviews and Program Improvement Plans.

$15.99 Order # 549-0239 BUY

Learning Curves: Education Advocacy for Children in Foster Care. This book is a culmination of an article series that appeared in the ABA Child Law Practice and addresses numerous topics, including: General education advocacy strategies; Education rights and key federal laws; Special education process; Educational needs of young children; How school discipline policies impact children in foster care; and Creative approaches to address education barriers for children in foster care. It includes at-a-glance practice tips, commonly used psychological tests, education advocacy resources, and excerpts from key federal laws and regulations.

$15.95 Order #549-0441 BUY

Legal Ethics in Child Welfare Cases. This is also a culmination of an article series that appeared in the ABA Child Law Practice. It addresses ethical issues for lawyers representing parents, children, and child welfare agencies in child abuse/neglect and termination of parental rights proceedings. The National Child Welfare Resource Center on Legal and Judicial Issues (a program of the Center) offers free training and technical assistance on issues covered in the book. It addresses the following topics: Quality Representation; Protecting client confidences; Representing a client with diminished capacity; Handling conflicts of interest; Interacting with other parties; Ethical issues in litigation; and Special issues for Guardians ad Litem. The appendices include selected model rules with commentary and the status of state review of rules of professional conduct.

$15.95 Order # 549-0442 BUY


Making it Permanent: Reasonable Efforts to Finalize Permanency Plans for Foster Children. Cecilia Fiermonte and Jennifer Renne. Permanency Planning for children in the child welfare system is undergoing big changes. Foster children's needs for safety, well-being, and permanence are driving these changes. Creating a system that is more responsive to these needs is the aim of new requirements imposed by the federal Adoption and Safe families Act of 1997 (ASFA). ASFA requires that permanency plans for children are determined at permanency hearings. Judges must make findings that the child welfare agency is making "reasonable efforts" to finalize those plans. What this means and how to do it is the subject of this book.

$14.95   Order #549-0326 BUY

Court Improvement Progress Report: 2004 National Summary.

This reporet describes progess state court improvement porjects are making to enhance their dependency court processes. It describes new projects, programs, and strategies courts are using to implement system enhancement plans. This is an update of our 1998 through 2003 nationwide reports.

$9.95 Order #549-0342 BUY

Copies of Earlier Year "Court Improvement Progress Reports" are still available:

2003 Report

$ 9.95 Order # 549-0341 BUY

2002 Report

$12.95 Order # 549-0335 BUY

2001 Report

$12.95   Order # 549-0311 BUY

2000 Report

$12.95   Order # 549-0290 BUY

1999 Report

$12.95   Order # 549-0301 BUY


Making Sense of the ASFA (Adoption and Safe Families Act) Regulations: A Roadmap for Effective Implementation. Debra Ratterman Baker, Howard Davidson, Heidi Redlich Epstein, Cecilia Fiermonte, Mark Hardin, Veronica Hemrich, Molly Hicks, Eva Klain, Anne Marie Lancour, Mimi Laver, and Jennifer Renne. This book, developed by the Center's National Child Welfare Resource Center on Legal and Judicial Issues, consists of issue-by-issue summaries and analyses of important, and comprehensive, regulations of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) promulgated in 2000 to aid state and local implementation of Titles IV-B and IV-E of the Social Security Act, as amended by the 1997 federal Adoption and Safe Families Act. Twenty separate topics are addressed, such as reasonable efforts findings, judicial orders specifying a child's placement, foster/adoptive home safety requirements, permanency hearings, termination of parental rights, the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act, etc. Appendix material addresses key administrative and constitutional law issues related to interpretation and application of the regulations, including its preamble. Supporting legal authorities and a list of further readings are included. This book was produced through the work of 11 staff from throughout the Center reviewing the HHS regulations and writing various sections of the summary/analysis.

$14.95   Order # 549-0295 BUY

Representing Parents in Child Welfare Cases: A Basic Introduction for Attorneys.  Diane Boyd Rauber, with Lisa A. Granik, Mimi Laver (ed.).  Helps attorneys new to child protection cases understand their role as parents’ representative and advocate; reviews the various stages of the child protection case; and highlights other key resources that discuss and explore the child welfare system generally.



Available on-line.

 Foundations for Success: Strengthening Your Agency Attorney Office. Mimi Laver and Claire Sandt (ed.), 1999. Helps child welfare agency attorney offices focus on necessary changes in hiring practices, evaluation processes, standards of practice, and efficient use of resources to improve the level of representation.

 

$14.95    Order # 549-0111 BUY

 

State Court Assessments 1995-1998: Dependency Proceedings. Veronica Hemrich (ed.), Mark Hardin, Robert Lancour, and Diane Boyd Rauber, 1999. Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia completed assessment reports of court performance in child abuse and neglect cases. This series analyzes important findings, recommendations, and   implementation strategies from these reports.

 

Volume 1: Representing Clients.

$12.95 Order # 549-0300 BUY

 

Volume 2: Quality of Hearings.

$12.95 Order # 549-0288 BUY

 

Volume 3: Judicial Training and Working Conditions

$12.95 Order # 549-0302 BUY

 

Volume 4: Timely Judicial Decisionmaking

$12.95 Order # 549-0303 BUY

Making Differences Work: Cultural Context in Abuse and Neglect Practice for Judges and Attorneys. Karen Aileen Howze. 1996. Outlines ways to interact with litigants from different cultures and backgrounds and identifies key culture and subculture issues.

 

$15.99       Order # 549-0051 BUY

A Guide to the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 (as amended by the Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996). Joan Heifetz Hollinger and the Center’s National Child Welfare Resource Center on Legal and Judicial Issues, 1998. Helps states and child welfare agencies comply with federal mandates concerning the role of race, color, and national origin in foster care and adoptive placements.

 

$9.95   Order # 549-0285 BUY

Sharing Information: A Guide to Federal Laws on Confidentiality and Disclosure of Information for Child Welfare Agencies.  Alice Bussiere, Abigail English, and Catherine Teare, 1997.  This guide helps child welfare agencies identify their responsibilities and develop appropriate policies under the federal laws governing confidentiality.  Provides an overview of nine federal laws that affect child welfare agencies: child abuse prevention and treatment; foster care, adoption assistance and child welfare services; alcohol and other drug programs; education records; federal welfare reform; Medicaid; HIV/AIDS information; the national criminal history background check system; and the crimes against children and sexual offender registration programs.

 

$15.99 Order # 549-0274 BUY

A Second Court That Works: Judicial Implementation of Permanency Planning Reforms.   Mark Hardin, H. Ted Rubin, and Debra Ratterman Baker.  The Center’s second juvenile court study (Grand Rapids, Michigan) on child protection case processing.

 

$15.00 Order # 549-0266 BUY

The National Child Welfare Resource Center on Legal and Judicial Issues also contributes to numerous publications produced by the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law.  Resource Center staff frequently author articles publishes in Child Law Practice and Child CourtWorks, and serve as authors, co-authors and editors to books and monographs produced by the Center on Children and the Law. 

A catalogue of all the Resource Center and Center on Children and the Law publications is available on-line.  These and other ABA materials can be ordered from the ABA Service Center at 1-800-285-2221.

 



Center on Children and the Law

The Children's Bureau