Supporting the Nation's Judicial System & the Public it Serves
SJI Grantee Spotlights
FEATUREDNovember 1, 2024
Keeping Families Together: Preserving and Reunifying Families with Substance Use Disorder Through a Family Recovery Court – University of Texas at Arlington
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.”
In 2020, the Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) received a SJI grant to assess the court’s access to and use of mental health and substance use recovery services within the community. Funding allowed the Crime and Justice Institute (CJI) to conduct an assessment of strengths, opportunities and challenges that judges, court personnel and …
The emergence of COVID-19 has had widespread effects throughout the court system and quarantine orders slowed operations. The Supreme Court of Ohio anticipated an influx of evictions and foreclosure filings in Ohio’s trial courts, as well as a backlog of civil cases. Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor directed the Office of Court Services to convene stakeholders …
King County, Washington, was ground zero for the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The Washington State Supreme Court suspended most court operations in all courts on March 18, 2020. Acknowledging access to justice is of critical importance, King County Superior Court (KCSC) leadership vowed to continue to hold matters on all …
Juvenile court judges are the most important public figures in the juvenile justice system–their decisions impact whether hundreds of thousands of youth each year become court involved and for how long, whether they are involuntarily removed from their homes and communities, and the services they receive. Despite the importance of these judges, states and locales …
Each county in Mississippi contains its own Justice Court where community members bring legal actions to settle local, small-dollar disputes. Court regulations and policies vary in each county, and they can be incredibly confusing for Mississippians to navigate, almost all of which are pro se litigants. The COVID-19 pandemic created more variation as judges and …
Participating in the judicial system can be traumatic and stressful. Mediation is a tool used for resolving many judicial matters, thus mediators often encounter disputants experiencing the worst time of their lives. With this in mind, Texas Dispute Resolution System™ (TDRS) began a process to enhance their mediators’ skills and knowledge when engaging disputants during …
