The Keeping Families Together: Preserving and Reunifying Families with Substance Use Disorder (KFT) project was established to refine and test a Family Recovery Court (FRC) model for child welfare-involved families with substance use disorders. In collaboration with the Williamson County Family Recovery Court, Dr. Catherine LaBrenz and her team at the University of Texas at Arlington (Dr. Hui Huang, Dr. Philip Baiden, and Dr. Yeonwoo Kim) partnered to manualize the FRC model, assess ongoing barriers and facilitators of implementation, provide continuous quality improvement, and examine the effectiveness of the model in increasing recovery and reunification. Through interviews with key stakeholders, they identified four key pillars that differentiate the FRC from traditional courts: 1) trauma-informed and non-adversarial approach; 2) family-centeredness; 3) accountability; and 4) community connectedness.
Through a shared vision and active collaboration, the FRC providers have increased community infrastructure to support parents and ensure thriving families. This includes provider participation in bimonthly meetings, trainings, and biweekly staffing to enhance a trauma-informed community approach to work with child welfare-involved families. Since the start of this project in 2023, 20 parents have been accepted into the program: of these, six have graduated, four had their cases transferred or were expelled, and the remaining 10 are currently in the program.
“I was offered recovery court after multiple CPS cases. I just wasn’t ready to get clean and I actually ended up going to rehab on my own. They offered me family recovery court afterwards and that was probably the family recovery court saved my life. I don’t think that I would have succeeded without it. Just going to rehab alone, probably would not have done it for me. I will be two years clean in November and that’s thanks to all the support with family recovery court, the accountability that they [have], they hold you accountable. You know, you have to go to court dates and see coaches and therapists and all those things combined. Without it, I wouldn’t’ have been able to be here today, I don’t think.”
-Parent Graduate
“I definitely see us involving more community partners, which is exciting. As we meet new families, we start identifying things we don’t know how to handle, or we are able to better identify the need outside of the recovery piece.”
Seeking Applicants! Application Deadline: December 16th, 2024, at 5:00PM EST.
We are seeking individual practitioners or cross-sector teams from the same community or region interested in adopting bold solutions and reimagining how diverse organizations and agencies with different missions can engage with one another to address the persistent challenge of substance use and misuse in rural communities.
The Reaching Rural Initiative is designed for rural agency leaders or mid-level professionals working in counties, cities, or tribes as justice, public safety, public health, or behavioral health practitioners. Applicants may apply to participate in the Reaching Rural initiative as an individual practitioner or as a member of a cross-sector team from the same community or region.
#RegistrationNowOpen! The Academy of Court-Appointed Neutrals (ACAN) has just opened registration for the 20th Anniversary Celebration and 2025 Annual Meeting at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. from March 5th-8th, 2025. Registration for this event will be limited to 250. Take advantage of the early bird rate and register now!
Funded by the State Justice Institute, the National Center for State Courts, in partnership with Rulo Strategies LLC, launched the Rural Justice Collaborative (RJC) to showcase the strengths of rural communities and highlight the cross-sector collaboration that is a hallmark of rural justice systems. These strengths include strong professional networks, deep ties to the communities they serve, resiliency, and ingenuity. The Rural Justice Collaborative is guided by an advisory council of rural practitioners representing the judiciary, public safety, behavioral health, public health, child welfare, victim services and other stakeholder-focused justice systems. The advisory council guides the initiative and has focused initial efforts on advancing innovation, promoting collaboration, and raising awareness of rural justice system needs.
SJI is joining our federal partner agencies in raising awareness of domestic violence (DV) throughout our nation. SJI promotes court-based solutions for the myriad of civil case types, such as domestic relations, which are overwhelming court dockets. SJI is committed to addressing #domesticviolenceprevention, treatment and recovery for survivors.
Courts must also be prepared for cyberattacks on #court systems, such as denial of service and ransomware attacks on court case management systems, websites, and other critical information technology infrastructure. SJI supports projects that assist courts in preparing for, and responding to, these attacks, and share lessons-learned to courts across the United States. Read about our cybersecurity projects here: https://www.sji.gov/priority-investment-areas/cybersecurity/
Cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility. Stay secure, stay smart.
The State Justice Institute is proud to support #NationalSubstanceUsePreventionMonth, funding and cross-collaborating in a significant amount of #substanceuse, mental health and behavioral health projects. To learn about these programs and projects funded by SJI, please visit: State Justice Institute (sji.gov).
The National Association for Court Management (NACM) is now accepting proposals for the 2025 Midyear and Annual Conferences. If you know someone who would be perfect for these conferences, please encourage them to submit a proposal. Midyear and Annual proposals are due by October 4th, 2024.
The Assessment Center Outcome and Reporting Network (ACORN) initiative was established to create a more consistent performance and outcome measures for Assessment Centers (AC) nationwide. The National Assessment Center Association (NAC) in collaboration with the National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ) and Dr. Jeff Kretschmar, worked to support a cohort of six ACs (listed below) to assess data capacities and capabilities to identify opportunities to align AC performance and outcomes to the AC Framework. The development of more consistent performance and outcome measures allows us to assess AC impact on prevention, diversion, and early intervention and is a necessary step prior to broad scale assessment of the AC Framework.
This project first conducted a wide-scale assessment of Assessment Center’s (AC) information systems and data capacity. It then identified six ACs with varying capacities to participate in trainings and technical assistance, identify gaps in data collection, and create an “action plan” that identifies enhancement and improvement goals. The TTA Team worked with the cohort to complete mock ACORN reports. Following the completion of each section, the cohort convened to discuss challenges, successes, and actionable ways to improve data collection. With the cohort ending September 2024, plans are being made to continue the use of ACORN and scale it’s use to other ACs across the country.
ACORN Cohort:
1. The Harbor Juvenile Assessment Center (Clark County, Nevada)
2. Multi-Agency Resource Center (Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana)
3. Family Resource Center (Ashtabula County, Ohio)
4. The Bridge (Ada County, Idaho)
5. Juvenile Assessment Center (4th Judicial District, Colorado)
6. Assessment Center (Delaware County, Ohio)
“The most helpful for me was being able to look at what type of information was important for us to capture. It also was a great opportunity to be able to organize some things that we hadn’t organized before with data collection specifically. Being new to the Assessment Center, it gave me an opportunity to learn more about what other AC’s do which was very helpful.” – Sara Miller; Director, Delaware County Assessment Center, Ohio
“Sustaining support for the emerging peer network the SJI-funded demonstration assembled is a wise investment in juvenile justice system improvement, particularly as research supports the effectiveness of robust diversion and the national network of AC expands.” – Hunter Hurst, Director, National Center for Juvenile Justice
Court data are in higher demand than ever before. A growing number of users—both within and outside of courts—seek #data that are accessible, accurate, and easy to understand. To support courts’ data-sharing and data-use efforts, the National Center for State Courts has created the National Open Court Data Standards (NODS).
Join the NCSC on Thursday, October 10th, 2024, at 3:00PM EST.
