New Evidence Highlights the Importance of Early, Targeted, Holistic Intervention for "At-Risk" Youth

We at CFCC believe strongly in the importance of studying social issues, like truancy and dropout, to determine risk factors and address problems at their root causes, thereby preventing them from escalating and potentially destroying lives. In fact, one of the reasons for our starting the Truancy Court Program (TCP) is the research that shows that truancy is a predictor of a number of social problems, from delinquency to dropout to teenage pregnancy.

The Baltimore Education Research Coalition (BERC) recently published a report about early warning indicators of dropout in Baltimore City Schools that highlights the importance of holistic, early intervention approaches such as the TCP in order to prevent dropout and improve our city’s dismal graduation rates. The researchers studied the cohort of students who were set to graduate citywide in 2007 and identified indicators from sixth grade (school year 2000-2001) that were strong predictors of future non-graduation. They were able to identify four sixth grade indicators that accounted for over two-thirds of the city’s non-graduates, and all four of them are issues that the TCP encounters on a regular basis.

Not surprisingly, chronic truancy was the most prevalent predictor of non-graduation, but the BERC results reflected a deeper truth: truancy often interacted with other risk factors to seal a student’s fate. The BERC study focused on absenteeism, not tardiness, when analyzing truancy. It categorized students based on sixth grade figures. The findings made clear the importance of middle school attendance. Seventy percent of city students who missed less than 10 days of school in sixth grade went on to graduate. In comparison, only 51.4% of students who missed 10-20 days during sixth grade graduated within one year of their expected graduation date. This was a huge drop, and it still did not include those student defined as “chronic truants.” For the chronic truants (those who missed twenty or more days in sixth grade), their eventual graduation rate was even dimmer – 28.6% of the students graduated within a year of their expected graduation date.

The other three predictors for dropout identified by the study were being over-age for the grade, failing core classes, and having multiple suspensions. The researchers noted that these predictors interacted for many students, and the more sixth grade predictors one applied to a student, the less likely it was that he or she would graduate. To illustrate, over one-third of students who were chronically absent in sixth grade also had failed a core course. For students like those, with two or more indicators, only 20.4% went on to graduate. Most devastating of all was the combination of chronic absence and being over-age for grade – only about one in ten of those sixth graders went on to graduate.

The challenge, then, calls for a multifaceted, holistic approach to truancy that addresses all of these factors so that we can provide the education that Maryland’s Constitution promises to our children and can lead them toward graduation.

Join us to celebrate CFCC’s 10th anniversary!

We at CFCC cannot believe that it has been ten years since CFCC’s launching, thereby implementing our vision to create a center to identify opportunities for family justice system reform. Beginning our work with a staff of three, we currently have a staff of eleven, including two senior fellows, six Truancy Court Program consultants, and more. Over the last ten years, we have been involved in a number of programs and reform initiatives, including:

• Planning and implementing statewide and national conferences on a wide range of issues and programs, including unified family courts, substance abuse and addiction, truancy, the child welfare system, and the practice of family law;
• Designing and operating the Truancy Court Program, which has served about 900 students in 28 schools over six years;
• Creating and teaching the CFCC Student Fellows Program, an experiential course for 2nd and 3rd year law students focused on cutting edge issues in family justice reform and therapeutic jurisprudence;
• Developing a comprehensive public outreach campaign that features media appearances and placements; publication of a national newsletter; creation of two e-newsletters, two DVDs, a website, and this blog; and production of nearly thirty reports, evaluations, and articles;
• Conducting over 29 trainings and workshops in a variety of areas related to court reform, truancy, substance abuse, and more;
• Consulting and technical assistance focused on the implementation and evaluation of family justice system reform in 10 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada.

On Thursday, March 3, CFCC will celebrate our tenth anniversary with a two-part special event at the UB Law School. Beginning at noon in the Moot Court Room, the law school with feature a joint “Lunchtime Law” lecture, “Therapeutic Jurisprudence: A Family-Friendly Approach,” by two of our most valued colleagues and leaders in the therapeutic jurisprudence movement, Judge Peggy Hora and Professor David Wexler. There also will be an evening celebration in the Moot Court Room from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. with distinguished speakers, followed by drinks and hors d’oeuvres in the law school lobby from 6:30 p.m. until 8 p.m..

Both events are free and open to the public, but we do request an RSVP for the evening portion. You can read more about the programs and RSVP for the evening festivities here.

A Troubling New Practice: For-Profit Businesses that Fund Divorce Cases

The New York Times recently published an article about a new trend in family law: for-profit businesses that invest money to support one party’s legal case in a divorce proceeding and then are paid on a contingent basis from the party’s recovery in the case. I am disturbed by this new development, as it seems to skirt long-established ethical rules in family law practice.

While some attorneys ethically are permitted to charge their fees on a contingent basis (think of the classic personal injury attorney), matrimonial lawyers cannot. The public policy reason for this is that a lawyer has a first duty to advocate for the client’s interests, and there is so much more at stake in a family law case than just money. Sometimes, the best decision for the parties in what begins as a divorce case is reconciliation. Further, there may be times when a smaller total monetary recovery for one party may be used as a bargaining chip for other interests, like obtaining sentimental property. There also are times where litigating for the top recovery possible would require the parties to engage in a very contentious process that would cause more pain for the family than the monetary recovery would be worth. Thus, if an attorney has a stake in the monetary recovery, she could encounter a conflict of interest and could influence a client to make decisions that would harm the client because of the attorney’s desire to profit.

The problem with these new for-profit businesses investing in divorce is that they can have the same harmful influence on a client, resulting in many of the same problems and concerns that undergird the ethical rule preventing attorneys from charging contingent fees in matrimonial cases. Unfortunately, however, the conduct of these businesses is not regulated in the same way as a lawyer’s. The for-profit business’ offer of assistance comes at a person’s most vulnerable and helpless time and can influence that person to make very bad decisions—for example, dissipating assets that rightfully belong to the recently split family or even pursuing a divorce more aggressively instead of considering reconciliation or other options. With no professional ethics governing this kind of for-profit business, there is no end to the damage it can do in a person’s life while seeking to increase the business’ contingent fee recovery. From both a public policy and a moral perspective, then, it is imprudent to allow these businesses to influence individuals in pain who are experiencing a family breakup and are enduring an extremely difficult time.

As the article points out, this kind of business does allow a person to secure counsel to recover assets that may not be recovered without immediate funding to pay an attorney, and it could potentially help the individual to avoid being disadvantaged by a former spouse. The family justice system, however, already has a way to address this problem without resorting to for-profit businesses that are founded on such questionable ethical grounds. The justice system allows a party to ask for attorney’s fees from the person with money, which is done routinely and granted frequently.

I know that new practices like the for-profit businesses raise complex issues, and I am interested to hear how others perceive this new trend. Do you share my concerns? Are there other considerations you would address? Are these for-profit businesses more justifiable than I believe they are?

Families Matter: Reforming the Family Law Process

It is hard to believe it already has been almost six months since CFCC and the ABA Section of Family Law co-sponsored the Families Matter Symposium. We at CFCC are excited about the work that has been done since the symposium to expand the Families Matter initiative. Because of the partnerships that this initiative created – among CFCC, the ABA, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC), and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ), to name a few – we are able to tackle the issue of family law reform from every angle, something that has been a struggle in the past.

In the coming months and years, we will work together with our partners to ensure that therapeutic reform touches legal and court structures, relevant service providers from across disciplines, and the lawyers and other legal actors who work so closely with families. It is our hope that family law horror stories – from cutthroat attorneys who seemingly care nothing for the havoc wreaked on their clients’ lives to disjointed, overtaxed systems that extend the time, agony, and unpredictability of already explosive situations – will dwindle and eventually become a thing of the past as this comprehensive, nationwide effort takes its hold.

CFCC currently is involved in many projects relating to the Families Matter initiative:

• In the coming months, CFCC plans to publish and share a final report from the Families Matter Symposium – complete with insights into the problems underlying family justice system dysfunction across the country, proposed solutions, and concrete action steps that interested parties can take to help ensure that the reform vision becomes a reality.
• In a similar vein, CFCC has devoted an entire issue (forthcoming in January) of its Unified Family Court Connection newsletter to the Families Matter Symposium, with select symposium participants writing in-depth about their involvement in and reflections about the symposium.
• CFCC will support the ABA Families Matter Committee in preparing a presentation for all state bar presidents on the goals of Families Matter and the steps they can take to support the initiative and be catalysts for change at the local level.
• CFCC will work with the ABA Section of Family Law to plan and prepare for its national Continuing Legal Education (CLE) conference in Amelia Island in April, 2011, which will approach each of its topics from the Families Matter perspective, training attorneys on how each aspect of family law practice can be handled in a manner that supports the resilience and well-being of families.
• CFCC will chair a working group with members from the ABA, AFCC, and NCJFCJ to generate and compile “best practices” in family law.
• CFCC is working with the ABA to explore funding streams for the creation of a national clearinghouse for family justice reform information.
• CFCC and the ABA will spearhead a national public awareness and education campaign centered on the need for and types of family justice system reform.

We at CFCC are always looking for new ways to support meaningful family justice system reform at the local, state, and national levels, and we encourage all of our readers to join us in this process. What changes would you like to see in the family justice system?

CFCC Sets the Stage for “Kids and Theater:” A Student Fellow’s Personal Reflection on Arts Education

Attention actors, writers, stage managers, and directors. The Center for Families, Children and the Courts is proud to announce the première of the “Kids and Theater” project!! This project is part of CFCC’s broader initiative to promote arts education in the Baltimore City Public Schools. Currently, CFCC runs a “Kids and Cameras” project which has been very successful. “Kids and Theater” will be piloted in one lucky school next spring. The program will be a ten week course where students will learn how to write and perform their own plays. CFCC will be hiring a professional acting coach to direct the program, and I will be helping with producing the plays.

Our goal is to help students in our Truancy Court Program (TCP) become more engaged in their school through the arts. This program will help our TCP students develop their writing and acting skills and their team-working skills. These skills will enable our TCP students to become more confident with themselves and their academic abilities.

For me, the arts played a vital and integral part of my education and character development. When I first began school, my grades were terrible. I had trouble paying attention in class and learning basic concepts. When my parents got me involved in band and acting, my grades began to drastically improve. I moved from the Chapter I, a program helping slower students, to an honor roll student in the advanced class.

My problems in school stemmed from a lack of engagement. The arts allowed me to tap into my creativity which I was able to use in other subjects. For example, music involves rhythms and time signatures which are useful to mathematics calculation. Acting involves memorization and comprehending a character and storyline which are useful for reading comprehension.

The arts changed my life, but I'm not the only one. According to recent studies from the Dana Consortium , students who are engaged in arts education have enhanced brain cognition¹. Students in the arts score higher on IQ tests than non-arts students. Tests also show that arts students have enhanced attention spans, greater aptitudes with language and mathematics, and are more empathetic than non-arts students.

The highlight of my artistic career was in my senior year of high school. I was a member of the DeMatha Wind Ensemble which had just won the WGMS “Young Artist in the Community Award.” As part of the award, we got to perform at the Kennedy Center. When I walked on that stage, I was in awe and disbelief. How did I get here? When I started school, I was a failure and now I was standing at the Kennedy Center – weeks before my graduation and about to go to college. Then, I realized something – I may never perform at the Kennedy Center, but the arts helped me realize that I can do anything I want.

Now, I am in my last year of law school enrolled as a CFCC Student Fellow. At our CFCC team meetings, I hear about students struggling in school and can't help but think that I was like they are a few years ago. With this new program, I hope the TCP students will be able to overcome their problems in school like I did. Perhaps one day, some of our students will go on to become actors, directors, producers, set designers, or writers. Perhaps some of our students will get the extraordinary experience like I had to perform at the Kennedy Center. What is certain is that this program will help every student realize that anything is possible and with hard work they can reach their dreams. “Kids and Theater” break a leg!

1 See Gazzangia, Michael, Learning, Arts, and the Brain: The Dana Consortium Report on Arts and Cognition, The Dana Foundation Press 2008. www.dana.org.

Breaking the Cycle – Poverty, Truancy and Crime, Oh My

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation released a report entitled The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts in 2006. The report begins by stating

There is a high school dropout epidemic in America. Each year, almost one third of all public high school students – and nearly one half of all blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans – fail to graduate from public high school with their class....The decision to drop out is a dangerous one for the student. Dropouts are much more likely than their peers who graduate to be unemployed, living in poverty, receiving public assistance, in prison, on death row, unhealthy, divorced, and single parents with children who drop out from high school themselves.

Last week, shortly after arriving at the Baltimore City elementary/middle school where I serve as the Truancy Court Program's Student Fellow, I learned that three of our students had transferred to other schools. One of the students was a 7^th grade girl who had allegedly disrupted a class and verbally threatened a classmate. This young lady had our attention from the first day of TCP. She began the first 45 minutes of orientation with her head down for no apparent reason other than disinterest in what was going on. But there's always a reason. We later learned that she doesn't eat regular meals during the day, usually only breakfast. The lack of nutrition and energy causes her to drag and get regular headaches. She's more mature than many of her classmates and often feels like an outsider among her peers. She's had opportunities to be in modeling and accelerated programs, but either wasn't ready for the responsibility or failed to show up. She consistently comes to school out of uniform, because it's not clean or she doesn't feel like following the rules. She does well in school when she puts in the effort, but would rather do nothing. She wants to be a model, but that goal seems so far away that taking steps in that direction at this point seem futile. It appears as though most of these instances of acting out are this young lady's means of exercising control over her life, while living in an environment where she might feel she has none. From our conversations with this student, I was not under the impression that she desired to transfer. Now she finds herself in yet another unfamiliar situation in which she has no control. Was this the right answer?

The other students who transferred were siblings; a girl in kindergarten and a boy in 2^nd grade. Apparently, the boy got into an altercation with another male classmate and ended up beating him up to the point of blood being drawn. As a result, our TCP student and his sister both had to leave the school. He's 7 years old! He was always very shy and quiet at the table. Where did this aggression come from, and why wasn't he given a second chance? How will changing schools resolve this child's emotional and anger-management problems? It seems as though the action taken sends the message that while his behavior will not be tolerated, no one cares enough about this child to help him – just as the criminal justice system removes “problems” from the street, locking them away without attempting to solve or fix them, this little boy was removed from the environment he was accustomed to in order to “protect the rest of the student population.” There is absolutely no way to guarantee that he will not run into the same problems at his new school, and ultimately in life.

All of the TCP students at my school are living in poverty. The link between truancy, poverty, and crime is a vicious cycle: children living in poverty, due to a number of external factors, are more likely than other children to exhibit truant behavior. Some causes of truancy are directly related to living in poverty, including inability to pay for transportation to school, not having enough school uniforms or money to wash clothes, children working to help feed their families, and homelessness, to name a few. Unfortunately, a common result of truancy and dropping out of school is that children will likely live in poverty as adults. And that’s not the worst-case scenario. Often, when students are not in school, there is a greater potential for substance abuse, juvenile delinquency, and involvement in gangs. In his October 2009 NY Times Article, Study Finds High Rate of Imprisonment Among Dropouts, Sam Dillon reminded us that “[o]n any given day, about one in every 10 young male high school dropouts is in jail or juvenile detention, compared with one in 35 young male high school graduates, according to a new study of the effects of dropping out of school in an America where demand for low-skill workers is plunging.”

Moreover, truancy can potentially serve as a gateway to the juvenile justice system. In her 2006 article about CFCC and the Truancy Court Program, Professor Barbara Babb elaborates, “[R]esearch has demonstrated that truancy is an early indicator of more serious potential delinquent behavior, social isolation, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, educational failure, and school dropout.”¹ School provides structure and consistency for students; they go to classes at particular times, see the same classmates and teachers every day, and are presumably in an environment that fosters learning and growth. Truant students are more likely to get into trouble while they are skipping school, and inability to find employment forces youth to resort to illegal activities and crime including dealing drugs and burglary, among others.² The more school they miss, the further students fall behind. It becomes harder to pay attention, grades drop, and then they no longer even see a reason to come to school. The cycle of poverty has a detrimental effect on self-esteem and forces students to look for alternative options to school. As a result, habitually truant students and high school dropouts are unable to become productive members of society.³ Is this what the future looks like for our TCP students? Hopefully not.


1.Barbara Babb, “A Truancy Court Program to Keep Children in School,” 39-JUN MDBJ 45, 45-49 (2006).
2.Id.
3.Id.

The Rising Issue of Cyber-Bullying

Due to the rise in popularity of social networks over the past ten years, cyber-bullying has been on the increase, and some social scientists believe bullying may be one of the most prevalent causes of teen suicide. As a result of cyber-bullying, teens’ personal, private situations are becoming public for the world to see, and some teens see no other way out. Imagine being a fifteen years old and your friends have been collecting pictures of you on the weekends. One evening the pictures are posted to Facebook and every picture displays you making intimate physical contact with male classmates. Each friend comments under the pictures making references about your sexual reputation. At fifteen this would be extremely embarrassing. The thought of showing your face in school Monday morning would be impossible. Your private, extra-curricular conduct is now the talk of the school. Seemingly, the only way out at such a vulnerable age is suicide.

Recently, Tyler Clementi, a freshman at Rutgers University, took his own life after his roommate streamed a video on the internet revealing an intimate encounter between Tyler and another man. As a result of the video being leaked onto the internet, Clementi took his own life by jumping off the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River. This story, sadly, is one of many.

In a recent class discussion, one of the CFCC Student Fellows mentioned that one of the Truancy Court Program participants was being bullied by her fellow peers, and the school seemed to brush off the situation. When situations like this occur, the school needs to play an active role in extinguishing the problem as soon as it is presented. The bully needs to be reprimanded for his or her actions, because if the problem persists, the bully will soon realize he or she can continue to bully his or her peers, fulfilling a sense of power and entitlement.

Bullying has been around for ages. It is nothing new; however, with the rise of social networks, the scope of bullying has broadened from merely in-school, to out of school, and children and young adults are being affected in a whole new way. This reaction may be due to a lag between school policies and new technology. Education begins with the students. Teens need to be educated on what is and what is not appropriate for the internet. The internet is a very powerful tool. Teen girls might not think the consequences a Myspace hoax played on their thirteen year old friend would ultimately lead to her taking her own life. Teenagers need to be supervised both at home, in the neighborhood, and at school. Parents need to get involved and speak to their children about both how to deal with a bully and the consequences of bullying. Schools need to implement strict policies on how to deal with bullying, including counseling sessions, providing protection for the victims of bullying, and providing for sanctions for bullies, whether or not their conduct falls within the scope of their education.