Volunteering with the Truancy Court Program

Last year, I volunteered as a tutor with CFCC’s Truancy Court Program (TCP) and it was a wonderful experience.  I believe this is a great opportunity for all law students.  Many of us come to law school with some vision to serve the public interest.  Because law students are limited in their amount of free time, the one-hour weekly time commitment with TCP is manageable and worthwhile.  In addition to tutoring students, law students can interact with school administrators, staff members from the Center of Families, Children, and the Courts (CFCC), and local judges and attorneys, who are all involved in the TCP with the goal to improve students' attendance and behavior.

During my first month of law school, I received an e-mail from CFCC, which was looking for volunteers to assist with the Truancy Court Program.  I attended a one-hour training at the Family Justice Building, a few blocks away from the University of Baltimore School of Law’s main building.  A few weeks later, I began attending the weekly morning sessions at New Era Academy in Baltimore.  I chose New Era because I did not have classes on Tuesday mornings, but I knew there was flexibility because other programs met on other days of the week.  The weekly sessions took place in the school cafeteria and on some occasions, I sat with the judge when he met with individual students.  It was interesting to learn the underlying reasons why students were absent from their classes.  There were several reasons, including not being able to wake up because the student didn't own a clock, not having the proper uniform, and simply not wanting to attend school.  Regardless of the reasons, however, everyone around the table provided assistance and incentives to the students so they could improve their attendance and classroom behavior.  There was always something positive that the judge would recognize for each student, and it was clearly important for the student to understand that.  This shouldn't be a surprise, but by the end of 10-week program, many of the students graduated from TCP.  I think an important part of the success of the Truancy Court Program is the individualized attention given to each student, providing them with direction during the course of the program.  Law students can help in this process by volunteering to tutor these students.

 There are also other ways for law students to be involved with the Truancy Court Program.  A UB law student can enroll in an experiential learning course called the CFCC Student Fellows Program and can participate as a law clerk in the Truancy Court Program at various local schools to assist the TCP  judge in the weekly sessions.  Student Fellows learn the concepts of therapeutic jurisprudence and preventive law and how they are incorporated into the Truancy Court Program. The 3-credit course is offered in the fall semester and offers opportunities to visit various courts, such as the Family Division of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, drug treatment court, and the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center.

I encourage all law students to take a look into volunteering with the Truancy Court Program and/or enrolling in the CFCC Student Fellows Program because the students and families in the community need our help.

Investing in Children’s Mental Health As a Preventive Law Approach to Juvenile Delinquency

Courts struggle with effective ways to deal with individuals whose mental health issues lead to criminal behavior. This is especially true for courts responsible for adjudicating juvenile delinquency. Childhood exposure to violence can impact children’s social and emotional development. It has been linked to poor social functioning and mental health issues, including depression, low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression. Some children repeatedly exposed to violence, particularly violence in the home, develop PTSD with symptoms such as re-experiencing, avoidance, numbing, attachment issues, and impulsivity and inattentiveness that mimic the symptoms of AD/HD¹. Children involved in the court system, both the delinquency and abuse and neglect systems, have higher trauma exposure rates than other children. They need access to mental health services and treatment programs that can provide appropriate intervention, and they need a trauma-informed court system that can work in tandem with these providers.

Yet as a CFCC Student Fellow examining Maryland’s delinquency system, I find myself wondering how effective our system is at meeting the needs of these children. The Maryland Department of Juvenile Services is charged with providing “individualized care and treatment to youth who have violated the law or who are a danger to themselves or others².” DJS treatment programs include Functional Family Therapy and Multi-systemic Therapy that provide services in both clinical settings and in the home. These interventions have the potential to help to positively impact children and their family unit as they address some of the underlying issues, including trauma, that lead to the child’s delinquency.

The problem with this model, however, is that children have to be adjudicated as delinquent before they have access to these services. This is especially problematic for poor families who cannot afford to pay for services on their own. Where middle and upper income families can afford to pay for private therapy programs to help their children who are acting out, families without these means must wait for the behaviors to worsen and the consequences to become more severe before intervention is available. By then, the intervention may be too little too late.

Perhaps it is not DJS’s role to provide access to mental health and family therapy services before youth are adjudicated as delinquent. The agency is after all charged with the care and rehabilitation of juvenile offenders. If DJS cannot provide these services, I think the state should provide access through another agency. While it is true that in the current economic climate funding for such programs is scarce, the state ends up paying the price down the road in the form of juvenile detention. Maryland spends $22.6 million each year to detain youth.³ According to one study, 2/3 of young people in juvenile detention would meet the requirements to be diagnosed with a mental disorder.⁴ Furthermore, Maryland continues to move forward with plans to spend $70 million building a 120-bed jail to house youth who have been charged as adults. Juvenile detention is expensive and arguably ineffective. Looking at these statistics, I believe that more investment at the front end to provide children and families with better access to mental health services could lead to lower rates of offenses. Our current system is reactionary. A proactive preventive approach would likely be a better use of the state’s limited resources.

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1 Lisa Pilinik & Jessica R. Kendall, The Safe Start Center Series on Children Exposed to Violence Issue Brief #7: Victimization and Trauma Experience by Children and Youth: Implications for Advocates (2012) available at www.safestartcenter.org.
2 Maryland Department of Juvenile Services, DATA RESOURCE GUIDE FISCAL YEAR 2011 (2012)
3 STOP BALTIMORE YOUTH JAIL: OPPORTUNITY NOT DETENTION, www.stopbaltimoreyouthjail.com.
4 Just Kids Partnership, JUST KIDS: BALTIMORE’S YOUTH IN THE ADULT CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM. A REPORT OF THE JUST KIDS PARTNERSHIP TO END THE AUTOMATIC PROSECUTION OF YOUTH AS ADULTS (2010) available at www.justkidsmaryland.org.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?

Every Wednesday afternoon, mentors, professors, and Student Fellows from the Center for Families, Children, and the Courts at the University of Baltimore School of Law meet to speak about our weekly Truancy Court Program (TCP) sessions. We discuss ways in which we can prevent truancy. Over the past few weeks, a question has been raised as to who is responsible for the students' truant behavior. Should parents or teachers be held responsible for their students’ absenteeism and academic performance? Parents are the ones caring for the children at home and making sure they attend school each morning, while teachers ensure that students learn at the appropriate grade level and are in class each day. If a teacher realizes that a student has been absent excessively, perhaps they should report that to a higher authority who could contact the student's guardian. In our weekly meetings, some have argued that teachers should not be held responsible. Teachers should be concerned only with teaching the students who are present that day. I believe, however, that if parents do not encourage their children to attend school, the teacher is the next best person to look out for a student's education and future.

In the New York Times article "Whose Failing Grade Is It?," Lisa Belkin explains how several bills have been proposed in Florida that would punish parents when their children had excessive absences. Belkin believes that parents should be targeted for their child's absences. By looking at schools that have success rates for students in both attendance and graduation, it is clear that parents are a contributing factor. Belkin suggests that schools with low success rates should focus on gaining parent involvement. One bill proposed in Florida requires parents to spend three hours volunteering throughout a semester at a school-related function. Based on my experience with the TCP, I do not believe parents would be willing to take three hours a semester to devote to their child's school. We encourage parents to attend our ten minute session once a week to discuss their child's truant behavior, and I have yet to have one parent attend one of my sessions. Another bill introduced in Florida has parents receiving a letter grade depicting the parent's involvement that semester on their child's report card. If parents are not interested from the start, I do not believe placing a grade on their child's report card will change their mentality.

Parents are the best role models for students. Rather than punish parents, we need to find ways to instill in parents an interest in their child's education. I do not believe we should have to force parents to play a role in their child's education, but it should be something they choose to do. The TCP provides parents with that exact opportunity--the chance to meet with judges, mentors, school personnel, a social worker, and Student Fellows to provide the family with appropriate resources to ensure their child receives a proper education and has the opportunity to succeed in the future.

October is Bullying Prevention Awareness Month

Last week during my Truancy Court Program (TCP) session at Walter P. Carter Elementary/Middle School I met a third grader who had recently been bullied.  She said that a boy in her class had been teasing her lately and had even spit on her.  She said that she told her teachers but that one of them did nothing.  This immediately sparked anger inside of me.  I thought back to the previous week when I had first met this elementary school student and remembered that she had been smiling and telling stories.  Just one week later she was depressed and quiet.

Right after my TCP session I read the news about 15-year-old Amanda Todd, another teen who took her life after being bullied. The teen posted a YouTube video, "My story: Struggling, bullying, suicide, self harm," on September 7 and was found dead in her home town of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, just over a month later.  Bullying also made headlines in Maryland this week when a 15-year-old in Frederick County was charged with assault after his act of bullying was caught on camera. 

It is fitting that October, 2012, is Bullying Prevention Awareness Month.  It should be brought to everyone’s attention that studies have shown that children who have been identified as a bully by age eight are six times more likely to have a criminal conviction by age 24. Children who are bullies may continue to be bullies as adults, and are more prone to becoming child and spouse abusers.  Thus, it becomes even more apparent that bullying needs to be stopped so that cycles like these can be stopped.
I hope by the time I see my third grader from TCP next week that her situation has been addressed and that the bullying has been stopped.  Baltimore City schools do have a system in place for bullying; that is, the parent can first call and report it to the school verbally, followed by filing a Bullying & Harassment Form.  If the parent is still unsatisfied, they can then contact the Office of Student Support through the Safety Hotline at 410-396-SAFE, which ensures that the incident is investigated within 2 school days.

Last week Baltimore held the Third Annual Bullying Prevention Conference where participants discussed the latest research and worked to develop solutions to tackle bullying in local schools.  I hope that throughout this month communities all over the country meet to discuss how they can best address the issues that bullying presents.  It may be helpful to look at the bullying situation through a therapeutic jurisprudence lens.  TJ looks at the law itself as a social force that can produce therapeutic or anti-therapeutic consequences.  By looking at bullying with a therapeutic jurisprudence perspective, insight might be shed on how to best implement anti-bullying tactics.  That is, it may be helpful to look at the bullying policies and rules in different schools and see how each one affects the students and the rates of bullying.  Through Therapeutic Jurisprudence it would be possible to analyze the different bullying laws utilized by each school and see how they may be affecting the children’s psyche in a negative or positive way, and how each rule effectively works to prevent bullying.

A Different Approach to Addressing Truancy

The Truancy Court Program run by the Center for Families, Children, and the Courts uses therapeutic jurisprudence and preventive law to address the issue of truancy. Through this approach, teachers (and/or other school officials), judges, volunteers, mentors, and parents work together to help students overcome obstacles that lead to excessive absences.  When we punish students, we don’t eradicate the reason behind their truancy, thus setting them up for an endless cycle of absences and punishments.

            Truancy programs are in effect in other states. However, the programs are run differently within each state to address the underlying problems that are unique to every school, district, or county. For example, Kanawha County, West Virginia has taken a very different approach, where a student who refuses to attend school can be removed from his or her home and put in a shelter. Placement in a shelter is a last resort, only used when a student refuses to attend school. Prior to that step, the circuit court system, school officials, social agencies, and parents work together to help students overcome attendance issues. In Kanawha County, after a student has had five unexcused absences, parents receive a legal notice from the school system, and a meeting is scheduled with the student, parents, and the County Magistrate. Then, the student has a court hearing and is put on probation. The student is only put in a shelter after all these steps are taken and the student has still refused to attend school.

            Not all students will benefit from the Truancy Court Program. Many might disregard the effort that others, such as parents, teachers, judges, etc., are putting in for them. Kanawha County’s answer to these students is taking them from their homes and putting them wherever space is available. Many problems can arise out of this situation: children who are in more need of shelters can be left out because truants are taking over the shelters’ resources, which is an issue within itself. Other problems occur when the truants are taken away from their families, communities, and schools and put in an unfamiliar environment. They may also fall behind in schools because of different curriculums – which may lead to more absences, placing the student in a never-ending cycle of truancy.

            Students who have excessive absences may fall behind in school or drop out altogether. Those who drop out of school can end up becoming involved in illegal activities or in jail.  Therefore, truancy programs are important and helpful to students in most situations. Unfortunately, there are students, such as the ones being addressed in Kanawha County, West Virginia, who will not want to or be able to benefit from truancy programs. Placing them in shelters may scare them into changing their habits, but doing so may also harm other children (who are in need of shelter services), as well as put more obstacles in the truants’ paths, preventing them from attending classes and undermining the objectives of the truancy program.

West Virginia has implemented a statewide effort to battle truancy. A 2012 survey report from the state (link below) shows that the truancy initiatives have resulted in a reduction in the number of absences from school and an improvement in school achievements, among other successes.

Read about West Virginia’s Truancy Program & the survey report:

http://www.courtswv.gov/court-administration/truancy/truancy.html

Read about Kanawha County’s truancy initiative:

http://wvgazette.com/News/201210060093?page=1

Using Therapeutic Jurisprudence to Protect the Rights of Homeless Children and Their Families

A few days ago NPR profiled a young woman named Tierra Jackson, now a junior in college, who had struggled in high school as her family experienced homelessness. She recalled being frequently punished by school administrators for her tardiness, but being too embarrassed to tell them that her lateness was caused by a long bus ride from a homeless shelter across town.  Ms. Jackson's story is a prime example of how therapeutic jurisprudence and the Truancy Court Program can help homeless children.

The U.S. Department of Education estimates that there are nearly 1 million school-aged children in this country who are homeless, and the National Center on Family Homelessness believes even that estimate is low. The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 provides special protections for these children, with the goal of ensuring minimal disruption to a child’s education during a time of family crisis.  For example, if a child’s family loses their housing mid-year and moves into a shelter across town, the parents have the right to enroll the child in a local school or keep the child enrolled in the school of origin. If the family feels it’s in the child’s best interest to stay in the original school, the school system is required to arrange and pay for transportation to and from school.

But how do we identify homeless children to ensure that their rights are protected and that their needs are being met?

As the case of Ms. Jackson shows, the stigma and embarrassment of being homeless can be a significant barrier to school attendance for children and teens. Therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ), combined with a holistic approach to problem solving and emphasis on empowering individuals, may be the best way to break down these barriers. A TJ mindset calls on lawyers and other actors in the legal system to look at the big picture.  For homeless children who fail to attend school, we have to look at both the psychological effects on the child and a host of other reasons why a homeless or unstably-housed child misses school. It could be due to a lack of clean clothes, inadequate transportation, or staying home to take care of younger siblings. Homeless children who do attend school may be frequently late or have trouble concentrating because they didn’t have breakfast. These issues can affect any school-aged child, but they impact homeless children the most.

CFCC’s Truancy Court Program (TCP) is proof that this approach can yield results in identifying the root causes of truancy (and homelessness is just one of the many). By providing an opportunity for an entire team of caring adults - a judge, a TCP coordinator, a CFCC Student Fellow, a TCP mentor, and school representatives – and giving the student the personalized attention he or she needs, we can create a safe, non-judgmental  environment where students can talk more freely about their problems than they otherwise might with their teachers or peers. Once we understand the full spectrum of a child’s barriers, we then can take the necessary steps to help that child succeed.

The Law in a Vacuum: How Exposing Students to the Theory Behind CFCC’s Mission Might Be the First Step Toward Reform

The Center for Families, Children and the Courts’ focus on promoting court reform is based on the belief that families would benefit most from a legal system which addresses underlying issues (such as substance abuse, domestic violence, mental illness etc.) as part of an effective and therapeutic judicial process¹ In a state where half of court filings involve family law cases, the notion of a “user-friendly” court shouldn’t seem so far-fetched, since research has shown that “the very processes of the family and juvenile justice systems inadvertently create and inflame problems for adults and children alike.”² Treating complex family problems like a string of separate incidents litigated in different venues causes unnecessary delay and cost, duplication of effort, and often results in conflicting orders from judges.³ Many of these decisions are made with little regard for their therapeutic outcome on participants or their impact on other pending cases or hearings; perhaps just as importantly, these experiences negatively impact participants’ view of the legal system.⁴

CFCC’s Student Fellows Program offers UB law students an opportunity to work on projects addressing court reform and truancy issues in Maryland.  Studying therapeutic jurisprudence⁵ and preventive law⁶ lets students view the law as a peacemaker, a significant departure from the adversarial model we are constantly reminded of. It puts the law in a broader context by showing how it can be combined with insight from other disciplines (like psychology and sociology) to produce more effective outcomes while staying true to principles of justice and other constitutional values. It also teaches us that the legal system will inevitably have a lasting effect on the people who walk through its doors, thereby increasing the importance of considering how effectively our current processes address not only the matter that brought the family to court but also any underlying non-legal issues as well as access to services and alternative dispute resolution.⁷

But what is also magnified by the study of the scholarship advocating family court reform is the lack of exposure of law students to these realities of the profession. A curriculum which focuses almost entirely on providing the “correct” answer to theoretical disputes or debating the virtues of controversies long-since settled provides law students with little practical training in problem-solving or unearthing our clients’ underlying problems. It does not teach us how to tailor solutions to a family’s legal and emotional issues, or how to ensure that issues relating to the well-being of children receive proper attention in our courts.  It doesn’t prepare us for the lack of interest some colleagues or judges may have in family law, the lack of attention to the needs of poor and unrepresented litigants, or how to explain the time-consuming, expensive, cumbersome, and duplicative court process to our clients. And yet as a third year student, I can honestly say that the classes with the most impact are the few that put the law in a greater context because they speak to the profession’s more noble values while also acknowledging its limitations. This, in turn, requires us to either take part in a system we know is flawed, or to play a role, no matter how small, in reforming it. While certainly not every student who is exposed to some of the flaws of our legal system will turn into a zealous advocate for change, it is nearly impossible to imagine these changes occurring without some prodding from the profession’s rank and file.

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1.What is the Center for Families, Children and the Courts?

The University of Baltimore School of Law, http://law.ubalt.edu/centers/cfcc/whoweare/ index.cfm (last visited September 18, 2012).

2. Catherine J. Ross, The Failure of Fragmentation: The Promise of A System of Unified Family Courts, 33 Rev. Jur. U.I.P.R. 311, 314 (1999) (quoting Barbara A. Babb, An Interdisciplinary Approach to Family Law Jurisprudence: Application of an Ecological and Therapeutic Perspective, 72 IND. L.J. 775, 798 (1997)).

3. Id. Ms. Ross argues that these delays are compounded by the fact that legal proceedings which drag on a year or more represent a significant part of a young child’s life, resulting in a “multiplier effect” when measuring the impact on a toddler. Id. at 315.

4. Id. at 314-16.

5. “Therapeutic jurisprudence is the study of the role of law as a therapeutic agent. It is an interdisciplinary enterprise designed to produce scholarship that is particularly useful for law reform. It proposes the exploration of ways in which, consistent with principles of justice and other constitutional values, the knowledge, theories, and insights of the mental health and related disciplines can help shape development of the law.” See Dennis P. Stolle et. al., Integrating Preventive Law and Therapeutic Jurisprudence: A Law and Psychology Based Approach to Lawyering, 34 Cal. W. L. Rev. 15, 17 (1997).

 6. “Preventive law provides a framework in which the practicing lawyer may conduct professional activities in a manner that both minimizes his or her clients' potential legal liability and enhances their legal opportunities. In essence, preventive law is a proactive approach to lawyering.”  Id. at 15.

7. Ross, supra note 2, at 314-18.