Two-Generation Approach for Workshops

How can we expect a child to succeed when the parent or caregiver is unequipped to assist the child? Children not only need assistance with homework and school projects, but also with social and emotional development.

Parents or caregivers who struggle with their own emotional, financial and/or mental problems often encounter challenges in addressing the needs of their children.  Children need a stable home and caregivers who are equipped with the skills necessary to be successful parents.   In order for children to reach their potential, it is useful to adopt a two-generation approach that focuses on a parent’s needs as well as those of the child.  By addressing  issues that affect parents, such as language barriers, financial problems, and educational need, we also help the child.

After all, how can we expect parents to help their children with homework, for instance, if they themselves cannot read?  Assisting a child without assessing the parents’ or caregivers’ needs is like putting a cast on a broken leg without resetting the bone. Eventually, the leg may heal, but it will never heal correctly.  The child’s needs  will be met best by involving his/her caregiver, as well.

So what do we do? How can we best help parents or caregivers? A two-generation focus looks at each situation separately to determine the needs of the child and caregiver.   The Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Courts (CFCC) understands the importance of parents and caregivers in the child’s life. CFCC Student Fellows are developing a parents’ workshop this fall to offer information to parents about student disabilities and where parents/caregivers can go for help within both the legal and education communities.  

What other workshop topics do you think would be helpful? Is it helpful to consider parents’ needs when addressing a child’s problems in school?

Why the Unified Family Court System in Maryland is a Model for Success

Last Wednesday, the Student Fellows with the University of Baltimore Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children, and the Courts (“CFCC”) took a “field trip” to the Baltimore City Circuit Court Family Division.  The Division’s coordinator, T. Sue German gave the Student Fellows a tour of the center and explained the role the Division plays in Baltimore City.  

Justice reform in Maryland was formally launched in January of 1998 when the judges of the Court of Appeals of Maryland, headed by Chief Judge Robert M. Bell, signed Rule 16-204.  Babb, Barbara A., Maryland’s Family Divisions: Sensible Justice for Families and Children, 72 Md. L. Rev. 1124 (2013).  Thus far, the focus of much of our CFCC seminar has been on looking at law reform through different lenses.  For example, Therapeutic Jurisprudence and Preventive Law together work to create a justice system that focuses on preventing future conflicts and resolving disputes in a more “client-centered” way.

The tour was an opportunity for us as students to see how these theories play a role every day in Baltimore City’s Family Division.  While much was discussed during our visit, one fact that stood out was that from July 1, 2011 – June 30, 2012 (Fiscal Year 2012), in eighty-nine percent (89%) of the cases in the Division, at least one of the litigants appeared pro se.   Circuit Court for Baltimore City, Annual Report of the Family Division Fiscal Year 2012 (Oct. 15, 2012).  Although unsure, I can imagine this is the case in most courts, as clients with family law matters are not afforded the same right to counsel as those in criminal. 

The Division has established many resources for represented and unrepresented clients and has seen tremendous success from these efforts, making Baltimore City a model for an effective “Unified  Family Court” System.  However, budget cuts impair the ability of the Division to reach its full potential.  With family law disputes making up such a large percentage of the cases in the Circuit Court system, budget cuts relate to the lack of resources available these clients.  Even in Baltimore City, where the State’s highest court has endorsed and supported the Family Division, they still struggle with budget issues.  

I pose a few reflection questions for you to think about:

• If these efforts are proven to be successful, why are they then not being incorporated into more legal systems?
• If justice is the goal, then why do we as a society allow so many clients to be unrepresented in family law cases, thus hindering their ability to receive the justice they deserve?

While the simplest answer is of course budget cuts, there is a lot of support showing that these models help to decrease repetitive appearances by the same clients over and over and are both more efficient and effective.  

Reflecting on the Unified Family Court Structure

As someone who has interned at a Family Law firm, it came as quite a shock to hear about the concept of a unified family court for the first time this semester. It seemed with all the benefits a unified family court could provide, one would think this type of court would be offered everywhere. A unified family court is a single court system composed of highly trained, specially assigned judges who preside over cases addressing the issues relating to children and families. This type of court implements a one case to one judge or one team type system.

With this system in place, a judge will be assigned to a family law case and handle all their related family legal needs. This allows one judge to become quite familiar with a case and family assigned to them. Instead of having several judges assigned to different issues, one judge would stay with the same family throughout the case. This prevents conflicting orders being issued by different judges. If more than one judge was assigned to a separate issue for a family, it would be possible for that court to issue an order that conflicts with another judge’s order. Overall, having this one judge to one case model is more efficient and personal for families in their time of need. 

However, with all the benefits a unified family court can offer, there are bound to be some flaws. In a divorce case for instance, one parent may feel like the judge is being biased against them. In a case like that, the parent would prefer to have a different judge assigned to several legal issues rather than being stuck with the same judge throughout their entire legal process. That parent may feel like the judge is out to get them and side with the other parent regardless of the issue. 

The main question comes down to: Do unified family courts have the potential to do more good or exacerbate possible harm?  What do you think?

A Team Based Approach to Tackling Family Conflict

 

How The University of Baltimore’s Truancy Court Program Integrates Unified Family Court Principles Into Its Problem-Solving Team Strategy for Students and Families in Need 

This week marks the beginning of many of my classmates’ placements in CFCC’s Truancy Court Program (TCP). Unlike several of my colleagues, I’m new to the TCP this year and have not yet had the benefit of seeing this program in action. However, as I learn more about the TCP’s team-oriented design, I can’t help but notice how closely this parallels the style adopted by Unified Family Courts.

The TCP takes a holistic approach to family problem-solving, much like a Unified Family Court system. Like Unified Family Courts, the TCP focuses not only on the legal problems a family faces but also on the underlying causes of those problems. A TCP team consists of a qualified and dedicated group of individuals from varying backgrounds who work closely with the TCP families, helping them achieve ALL of their goals (not just the legal ones). A TCP team typically consists of:

• District or Circuit Court Judge or Master 
• Law Student 
• Social Worker 
• School Principal or Administrator 
• TCP Coordinator 
• TCP Mentor 
• Teacher 
• Family Members 

This list is by no means exhaustive. Similar to a Unified Family Court, the TCP team provides the individualized attention to connect families with necessary resources. This is in sharp contrast to traditional court settings, where underlying family problems are seldom addressed.

On a more personal level, I am, by no means, a stranger to many of the challenges that our local families face. Like many of the students who participate in the TCP, I was the child of a single mom, whose resources were stretched far beyond their limits. The reality of life for us was deciding which utility would be paid and which would be cut off, or how we would put food on the table each night. I truly empathize with the needs of many Baltimore families but also understand that a family’s needs today have become even more complex than those of my childhood. Reflecting back on my own experiences reminds me of the truly life-changing “network” of people that helped my family to become what it is today. The opportunity to share that experience with another family is rewarding, to say the least.

Today’s modern parent often has a lot to contend with: childcare, transportation, behavior issues, mental health, substance abuse, financial struggles, and homelessness, to name a few. The team-based method used in Unified Family Courts and in CFCC’s TCP is an efficient mechanism for addressing those interwoven issues. It’s this team-based holistic approach to the TCP that I am most excited about as we begin a new semester. We have the opportunity to be a part of something that can be a life-changing experience for students and their families and I’m thrilled to see what the semester brings.

How do you think a team-based approach to problem-solving may help or hinder our TCP families? I’d love to read what you think below.

Maryland’s Juvenile Justice System: Year in Review

CFCC’s 2012 Urban Child Symposium (UCS), entitled "The Urban Child in the Juvenile Justice System: The Beginning or the End?," focused on the  juvenile justice system.  Symposium panelists identified several priorities for juvenile justice system reform (more information is in the Unified Family Court Connection Winter 2013 Issue, which featured articles from several UCS presenters):

• Direct juveniles toward community and family-based treatment rather than incarceration;
• Address racial and ethnic disparities on a system-wide basis;
• Abandon laws that require or allow juveniles to be tried as adults; and
• Include all stakeholders in reform efforts.

In the past year, the juvenile justice system has received significant local and national media attention for improvements in policy and practice: 

• A Baltimore Sun op-ed praised the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services (DJS), under Secretary Sam Abed’s leadership, for making progress in diverting youth from confinement, decreasing overcrowding, and providing more community-based, evidence-supported alternatives to detention for youth offenders.  The Sun op-ed, based on a report by the independent Juvenile Justice Montoring Unit, announced that conditions and safety in Maryland’s youth detention centers have improved, with reported decreases in violence, injuries, group disturbances, and use of restraints.  
•  Longstanding plans to build a $100 million, 180-bed jail for juveniles charged as adults were scrapped, with $70 million allocated instead to renovate smaller facilities and build a desperately needed new treatment center.   A promising part of this plan includes placing youth who have been charged as adults but are eligible for waiver into the juvenile system in special juvenile pre-adjudication facilities.
• Mandatory sentences of Life Without Parole for juveniles, including for murder, have been abolished by the Supreme Court (see Bernadine Dohrn’s  article in the UFC Connection at page 5).
• An  Annie E. Casey Foundation national report  concluded that significant gains have been made in the last decade in reducing the youth prison population while also improving public safety, with Maryland showing some of the greatest improvements.  

These changes represent a sea-change from the highly punitive and largely ineffective practices of the 1990s toward evidence-based and holistic reforms that focus on alternatives to detention and improved outcomes for youth.  Capitalizing on the progress made in the past decade, the juvenile justice system should consider the following reforms, among others:

• Increase the availability of treatment programs and community and home-based alternatives to detention.  According to the Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit report, hundreds of youth were held in detention centers for more than two months (with one youth waiting 217 days) last year while awaiting placement in treatment or other community-based programs .  DJS has already made significant progress in this area – the Baltimore City Juvenile Detention Center showed a 36 percent reduction in the number of youth who waited over two months for placement in a treatment program.  There is still room for improvement, given the risks of high-security detention for non-violent and low-risk youth.
• Improve conditions and expand availability of alternatives to detention for girls.  Programs and services for girls, who are generally low-risk and high-need, lag well behind those for boys.  Very few alternatives to detention in Maryland accept girls, and there is a dearth of programs and services available in the all-girls treatment facility (the Carter Center) and the detention facility (the Waxter Center), where numbers have remained nearly the same as last year.  The staff at Carter has been trained in the Attachment, Self-Regulation and Competency (ARC) model of trauma-informed care, a practice which should be continued and expanded to address other gender-specific needs of girls throughout the juvenile justice system.  DJS and its partners should continue working to bring the progress seen for boys to girls in the system and should consider racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation sub-populations to ensure that progress is equally helping meet their needs.
• Schools, social services, the courts, the police, DJS, and community-based resources should adopt promising practices to prevent youth involvement in the justice system and to end the “school-to-prison pipeline” or, more comprehensively, the cradle-to-prison pipeline.  Youth should have access to programs and services before they end up in the juvenile justice system. 

Policymakers and advocates must continue to work together to ensure that recent progress represents a new beginning, and not the end, of our efforts to improve outcomes for our youth.

Sneak Peak of CFCC’s Full Court Press – Issue IV

CFCC will soon release its e-newsletter, Full Court Press, which reports on family justice system reform around the country. Here is a sneak preview from an article about a national task force on childhood trauma:

National Task Force Calls Childhood Exposure to Violence a National Crisis

Calling for a massive overhaul of the nation's approach to exposure to violence, the Attorney General's National Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence has issued what United States Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. describes as "a wake-up call and warning bell for all of us."

The Task Force held four public hearings (Baltimore, Albuquerque, Miami, and Detroit) and three "listening sessions" (Anchorage, Oakland, and Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside Tacoma, Washington) during which members heard personal testimony from survivors of violence, young people, social service providers, medical personnel, researchers, and advocates, among others.

The Task Force's report, "Defending Childhood: Protect, Health, Thrive," finds that exposure to violence is a national crisis that affects approximately two out of every three children in the U.S. The task force, co-chaired by Robert Listenbee, Jr., Chief of the Juvenile Unit of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, and Joe Torre, Chairman of the Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation and Major League Baseball's Executive Vice President for Baseball Operation, makes 56 recommendations divided into six areas: ending the epidemic of children exposed to violence, identifying children exposed to violence, treatment and healing of exposure to violence, creating safe and nurturing homes, community involvement, and "rethinking our juvenile justice system."

The Task Force notes that by the time children come into contact with the juvenile justice system, they have almost always been exposed to several types of traumatic violence over a period of many years. For example, the Task Force cites a study conducted at a juvenile detention center in Cook County, Illinois, where 90 percent of the youth reported past exposure to traumatic violence. This included being threatened with weapons (58 percent) and being physically assaulted (35 percent). According to an article last year by Julian D. Ford, John Chapman, Daniel F. Connor and Keith R. Cruise, “Complex Trauma and Aggression in Secure Juvenile Justice settings,” youth in detention were three times as likely as those in a national sample to have been exposed to multiple types of violence and traumatic events. 

Sign up for CFCC’s e-newsletters or check back on CFCC’s website to view the entire article. Other articles in this issue report on advances made by CFCC's Truancy Court Program; a look into CFCC's recent Urban Child Symposium, "A Holistic Approach to the Urban Child's Trauma: From the Eyes of the Beholder;" and a landmark report by the Maryland Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) Access to Justice Commission, which finds that civil legal services significantly boost the state's economy.

The Inner City Family Structure and its Impact on Child Development

Many parents face an uphill battle in raising their children to succeed because their families and role models – their parents, friends, celebrity influences, and so on – do not adequately prepare them for this responsibility. Consequently, parents foster the development of unhealthy behaviors in their children that negatively affect nutrition, social support, and emotional and intellectual development. For example, parental drug abuse and addiction can result in a chaotic and unpredictable home environment in which a child is abused or neglected.

Growing up in Baltimore, I saw firsthand many young children and teens assembling in the late night and early morning hours with their older siblings, friends, and neighbors as they engaged in smoking, drinking, and extreme profanity. Even more disturbing were the values and upbringing that they received from their young parents. For example, many children in my neighborhood grew up on the greasy cheese steaks, french fries, and chicken boxes available at the local corner store. Their parents mostly ignored them while they entertained their own friends, sold or used drugs, engaged in promiscuous behavior, and used profane language. I even saw these same young parents introduce their children to illegal drugs, finding it “fun and cool” to watch their young children act out. Did they realize that early exposure to harmful substances could lead to lasting physical and mental disorders in their children?

This parenting environment, combined with the stress, the widespread abuse of drugs and alcohol at a young age, and the constant exposure to violence that too often define urban life, can result in a lack of emotional maturity and intellectual development in children and teens. This emotional and intellectual stagnation impairs their ability to succeed in school and afterwards. They do not develop the emotional reserves needed to overcome adversity. Ultimately, when these children become parents, often at a young age themselves, the cycle is repeated – a new generation of parents who lack the skills, the emotional capacity, and the stability to provide a healthy environment and stable home for their children.

The time has come when we, as a community, must break this cycle of “fun and cool” activities and promote education, healthy habits, consistency, and stability. Young children and the children of young children must learn about the importance of honesty, respect, sacrifice, and commitment. Most important, they will then be prepared to provide positive guidance, leadership, and love to the next generation.