NCJ Number
198661
Date Published
March 2002
Length
267 pages
Annotation
This status report for the time period between September 2000 and September/October 2001 details the work of the Permanency Planning for Children Department of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges' Child Victims Act Model Courts.
Abstract
Following a brief summary of the Child Victims Act and the Model Court Project aimed at meeting the increasing demands of the child welfare system, this status report discusses judicial training in permanency planning in order to ensure that issues of children's safety and healthy development are considered and implemented by trained professionals with an agenda for facilitating systems change. The bulk of this report is a presentation of the activities and achievement of the 23 Child Victims Act Model Courts that were active during 2001. Each Model Court profile represents a snapshot of child court improvement efforts by describing the Model Court Lead Judge and Court Liaison, through presenting a background on the model court itself, and by describing each city's past accomplishments and goals for the next year. Court and agency demographic information and child abuse and neglect case processing time lines are also presented for each of the 23 participating cities. Various status report matrices describing alternative dispute resolutions, representation, and selected fundamental best practices of resources guidelines are presented for each city in an extensive table following the Model Court profiles. This status report for 2001 concludes with a presentation of graphic depictions of meeting materials from the Child Victim Act Model Courts All-Sites Meeting held September 5-7, 2001, in Redondo Beach, California.