Steps and Strategies in Developing a State Court Plan for Improvement

Mark Hardin, ABA Center on Children and the Law
Permanency Partnership Forum II
June 5, 1997
 Copyright 1997, American Bar Association

I. BASIC PREMISES OF A COURT REFORM STRATEGY

A. Improvement in the courts' handling of child abuse and neglect cases is challenging and involves real change.

The Resource Guidelines, endorsed by the National Conference of Chief Justices, National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, and the American Bar Association set forth a good framework for how child abuse and neglect cases should be handled.

The Resource Guidelines articulate standards to ensure a thorough, fair, and timely court process administrated by highly skilled judges, advocates, and court staff.

Very few courts in the United States currently have a legal process approaching the quality and timeliness as is described in the Resource Guidelines.

While every particular of the Resource Guidelines need not be replicated in every state court to achieve high quality and timely court proceedings for abused and neglected children and their families, approaching the standard of quality represented by the guidelines represents a major challenge.

B. Achieving major improvement in the courts' handling of child abuse and neglect cases requires strong support.

Real improvement in the court process requires judges, advocates, staff, child welfare agencies and others to change the way they handle court proceedings.

Real improvement in the court process requires a more well organized approach to handling child abuse and neglect cases including, among other things, caseflow management, a more highly disciplined process of reviewing cases, notice to additional parties, timely submission of court reports, and better court findings.

While court improvement ultimately will reduce the length of stay of many foster children, it requires some additional resources, such as for additional staff, training, and educational materials.

Real court improvement requires strong support to overcome resistance to change and to secure needed resources.

C. Real court improvement requires support that is broad based.

Major improvements in the judicial handling of child abuse and neglect cases involves not only the courts themselves, but also the state's child protection agency, members of the state bar, key witnesses who frequently appear before the court (e.g., doctors, psychologists, etc.), and the legislature (because it makes appropriations to the courts).

Other groups that are strongly affected or deeply concerned about court improvement can lend either powerful support or powerful opposition to court improvement efforts.

Once the possibilities of court improvement are properly explained to interested groups, they will provide strong support.

Therefore, it is crucial that court improvement efforts seek out and obtain wide support from key groups.

D. Successful court improvement requires wide input and involvement from a range of organizations and individuals throughout the state.

Court improvement is complex and requires considerable time, energy, and insight to accomplish.

Court improvement requires a wide group of supporters not only to gain needed support, but also to develop plans for change and then to implement actual changes.

A wide range of groups have experience and useful insights in the operations of the courts in child abuse and neglect cases, such as child protection agencies, foster and adoptive parent groups, GAL organizations, child advocacy groups, pediatrician groups, and organizations of mental health professionals.

Effective court reform requires the ideas, insights, and active support from such groups.

To gain the support of key organizations that may be interested in court improvement, it is essential to give them a sense of having participated in the development of improvement plans.

Therefore, it is crucial to provide a wide range of organizations and individuals the opportunity to provide suggestions for court improvement efforts and later to provide actual help.

E. How should the courts seek out input and build support for court improvement efforts?

Is the court improvement committee the best vehicle for court improvement efforts?

Assuming that the court improvement committee's should retain its role in coordinating court improvement efforts, how can the committee's role be maintained at the same time that wider input and involvement is sought out?

For example, should the court improvement committee form a subcommittee that will devote fuller and more frequent attention to court improvement?

II. KEY STEPS IN COURT REFORM

A. Listing the possible areas for reform

Taking each general topic addressed by the assessment, what are the key improvements that you would like to see? Do not be limited to those recommendations that already have been developed or proposed.

Identify all of the changes that would be desirable, whether or not they are practical. Imagine what you would like the court to be like in 10 years. At this point, do not limit yourselves to minor changes that are politically attainable. Focus on fundamental changes that would help your courts to achieve excellence.

When you follow the remaining steps, you may discover that you can accomplish much more than you first thought.

B. Preparing a draft plan for improvement

Among the possible areas of change, your advisory group should identify those that are the most critical (setting aside issues of practicality). At the same time, consider which changes are necessary before others can be possible. For example, it may be necessary to demonstrate the effectiveness of certain court improvements within the state before attempting statewide changes.

Develop a fairly short list of key (top priority) reforms, consolidating issues where possible to avoid losing your audience.

C. Deciding who is to be consulted in identifying a plan for improvement

To develop your plan for improvement and to build support, go beyond your existing advisory group and identify a wider range of community organizations that are active on the local and state levels. Examples might be the junior league, the league of women voters, school organizations, service providers, and a wide range of charities and foundations -- or any other group that may be interested in improving the lives of abused and neglected children.

In addition, include core groups that were involved in the assessments such as judges, court clerks, attorney organizations, members of the public agency, foster parent organizations, GALs, etc. Consider briefing groups of legislators and their staff concerning the results of the assessment and your draft plan for improvement.

D. Determining when and how consultation should occur

Develop an approach to soliciting the opinions, suggestions, and support of others. For example, you might choose to hold a series of meetings around the state with selected organizations. You may choose to conduct public hearings after the release of the report. You may choose to widely distribute and request comments on a rough draft of a plan for improvement

E. Preparing presentations about the state court assessment

To convince other organizations about the importance of court improvement and how it can contribute to the lives of children, prepare brief written and oral presentations designed for a general audience. Develop charts, slides, and a very brief executive summary of the assessment or a handout summarizing the assessment results and possible ideas for a plan for improvement.

F. Identifying long and short range changes in the plan for improvement

After you have consulted with a wide variety of groups, refine the plan for improvement. Those whom you have consulted should help you determine what can realistically be accomplished, decide upon a time line, and develop a strategy. The revised plan should set out specific goals, tasks, and timetables for each goal with estimates of associated costs.

G. Implementing the plan for improvement

For different aspects of the plan for improvement, assign work groups that add persons not previously involved in court improvement to your existing teams. For different recommendations in the plan for improvement, there should be an identified work group or set of individuals responsible for its implementation. Each group should have a chair or leader. For example, there might be a caseflow management and court calendar workgroup, legislative work group, a court rules and forms work group, an information system work group, a training and education work group, an attorney standards work group, etc.

Work groups should begin by developing details of their portion of plan for improvement, including more specific goals, tasks, and timetables than those that appeared in the plan for improvement. Court improvement staff should assist the groups in this process.

H. Identifying uses of federal funds to implement plan for improvement

Develop a budget and, where possible, set goals to match particular expenditures. Consider other sources of funds beyond the federal grant, including monies under the Children's Justice Act and legislative appropriations. Possible uses of the funds might include: Demonstration projects to try to create one or two "high functioning" courts like those of Cincinnati and Grand Rapids. However, demonstration projects are appropriate only if (a) there are resources adequate to really develop high functioning local courts and (b) there will be a sound evaluation which will really describe the outcome of the demonstration. If the demonstration projects are successful, the next step may be to implement the achievements throughout the entire state.

Evaluation of demonstration projects. This should include with descriptions of court improvement efforts, successes, and barriers. Evaluation should also begin with "baseline" (beginning) measures of performance (where not already available through the assessment report) so that later it will be possible to measure project results (e.g. timeliness in court proceedings) after implementation efforts have had a chance to take effect .

Development of a regular long-term training curriculum for new judges, to teach them about child welfare law, basic principles of child development, and to create a legal manual for judges. A video taped module could be prepared. There would be mandatory attendance of such training. (Don't waste resources on one-time-only training programs.)

Development of manuals for attorneys or bench books for judges.

Development of materials to explain the court process to parents, older children, and foster parents, including booklets and videotapes.

Training programs for attorneys and GAL volunteers, if mandatory and attendance monitored. Including videotaping to make available to new attorneys and volunteers.

On-site technical assistance on improving their court calendars and caseflow management.

On-site technical assistance on making sure that the new judicial information system measures court performance in child protection cases (e.g., the speediness of decisions and how often children are reabused after the court allows them to go home). This might include, for example, a monthly reporting system that would summarize the current timeliness and recidivism statistics and would compare the performance of different judges. However, beware of high costs without firm deadlines for completion.