Portland Model Court Expanded Second Shelter Hearing Process: Evaluating Best Practice Components of Front-Loading

• NCJ Number: 197522
• Author(s): Sophia I. Gatowski Ph.D.; Shirley A. Dobbin Ph.D.; Melissa Litchfield
• Date Published: July 2002
• Length: 123 pages
• Grant Number(s): 96-CT-NX-0001
• Sponsoring Agency: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
• Corporate Author: Permanency Planning for Children Dept
• Sale Source: NCJRS Photocopy Services; Permanency Planning for Children Dept
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Technical Assistance Bulletin, Volume VI, No 3, July 2002.

Annotation

This report summarizes findings from research conducted on the Portland, Oregon Multnomah County Juvenile Court’s second shelter hearing process.

Abstract

Focusing on research conducted in Portland, Oregon between April 2000 and August 2001, this report details findings from the Multnomah County Juvenile Court’s second shelter hearing process. Following a summary of this report’s major findings, the authors discuss the implementation of the second shelter hearings, in Multnomah County, to improve the preliminary shelter hearing process. After presenting a brief outline of the National Model Courts Project that seeks to improve court processing of child abuse and neglect cases, the authors describe the Portland Model Court in Multnomah County. Becoming a model court in October 1998, Multnomah County Juvenile Court implemented a system of scheduling dependency, neglect, and abuse cases for a second shelter hearing in order to have judges, referees, caseworkers, defense attorneys, and district attorneys present at both initial and second shelter hearings. After describing the research design and methodology used in this report, the authors outline pre- and post-second shelter hearing implementation case findings. The authors found that the implementation of the second shelter hearing process led to increased judicial continuity across the initial hearing process from shelter hearings through jurisdiction. While only 29 percent of pre-implementation cases had the same judicial officer from the shelter hearing to the judicial hearing, post-implementation cases yielded the same judicial officer 61 percent of the time. Furthermore, more mothers and fathers were documented as appearing in the post-implementation sample cases than in the pre-implementation cases. The heightened continuity of the second shelter hearing process also resulted in shorter times for necessary child welfare determinations to be made. An example of a second shelter hearing evaluation pre-implementation sample case file review form completes this report.