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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
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Results for family courts
7 results foundAuthor: Harwin, Judith Title: The Family Drug & Alcohol Court (FDAC) Evaluation Project: Final Report Summary: This report presents the findings from the evaluation of the first pilot Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) in England and Wales. FDAC is a new approach to care proceedings, in cases where parental substance misuse is a key element in the local authority decision to bring proceedings. It is being piloted at the Inner London Family Proceedings Court in Wells Street. Initially the pilot was to run for three years, to the end of December 2010, but is now to continue until March 2012. The work is co-funded by the Department for Education (formerly the Department for Children, Schools and Families), the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, the Department of Health and the three pilot authorities (Camden, Islington and Westminster). The evaluation was conducted by a research team at Brunel University, with funding from the Nuffield Foundation and the Home Office. FDAC is a specialist court for a problem that is anything but special. Its potential to help break the inter-generational cycle of harm associated with parental substance misuse goes straight to the heart of public policy and professional practice. Parental substance misuse is a formidable social problem and a factor in up to two thirds of care cases. It is a major risk factor for child maltreatment, family separation and offending in adults, and for poor educational performance and substance misuse by children and young people. The parents’ many difficulties create serious problems for their children and place major demands on health, welfare and criminal justice services. For these reasons, parental substance misuse is a cross-cutting government agenda. FDAC is distinctive because it is a court-based family intervention which aims to improve children’s outcomes by addressing the entrenched difficulties of their parents. It has been adapted to English law and practice from a model of family treatment drug courts that is used widely in the USA and is showing promising results with a higher number of cases where parents and children were able to remain together safely, and with swifter alternative placement decisions for children if parents were unable to address their substance misuse successfully. The catalysts for the FDAC pilot were the encouraging evidence from the USA and concerns about the response to parental substance misuse through ordinary care proceedings in England: poor child and parent outcomes; insufficient co-ordination between adult and children’s services; late intervention to protect children; delay in reaching decisions; and the soaring costs of proceedings, linked to the cost of expert evidence. Details: London: Brunel University London, 2011. 197p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 5, 2011 at: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/centres/iccfyr/fdac Year: 2011 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/centres/iccfyr/fdac Shelf Number: 117329 Keywords: Alcohol CourtsDrug Courts (U.K.)Family CourtsProblem-Solving CourtsSubstance Abuse |
Author: Harwin, Judith Title: Changing Lifestyles, Keeping Children Safe: an evaluation of the first Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) in care proceedings Summary: This report presents the findings from an independent evaluation of the pilot Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC). FDAC is an innovative approach to care proceedings where parental drug or alcohol misuse is a key feature of the case. The FDAC pilot began in January 2008 at the Inner London Family Proceedings Court in London. The pilot was funded by the Department for Education, the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, the Department of Health and three inner-London local authorities (Camden, Islington, and Westminster) - the pilot local authorities. Since April 2012, when government funding came to an end, the FDAC specialist team has been funded by a consortium of five London authorities, including Southwark and Hammersmith & Fulham as well as the original three. The specialist team is provided by a partnership between the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust and the children's charity, Coram. Parental substance misuse is a formidable social problem and a major risk factor for child maltreatment. It is a factor in up to two-thirds of care applications and parents with substance misuse problems are often involved in repeat care proceedings in relation to subsequent children. There has also been a rise in the number of care proceedings since 2008, so the scale of the problem is substantial. FDAC has been adapted to English law and practice from a model of Family Treatment Drug Courts (FTDCs) that is used widely in the USA and shows positive results. The US national evaluation of over 2,000 cases found that, compared to proceedings in the ordinary court, more FTDC parents and children were able to remain together safely, and there were swifter alternative permanent placement decisions for children if parents were unable to stop misusing, all of which meant savings on the cost of foster care during and after proceedings. The catalysts for the UK pilot were the encouraging evidence from the US evaluation and concerns about the response to parental substance misuse through ordinary care proceedings in England. These concerns were about poor child and parent outcomes; insufficient co-ordination between adult and children's services; late intervention to protect children; delay in reaching decisions; and the soaring costs of proceedings, linked to the length of proceedings and the cost of expert evidence. Details: Uxbridge, UK: Brunel University, 2014. 188p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 17, 2014 at: http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/sites/default/files/files/FDAC_May2014_FinalReport_V2.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/sites/default/files/files/FDAC_May2014_FinalReport_V2.pdf Shelf Number: 1322487 Keywords: Child Abuse and NeglectChild MaltreatmentChild ProtectionDrug Abuse and AddictionFamily CourtsProblem-Solving CourtsSubstance Abuse |
Author: Henderson, Emily Title: Expert Witnesses Under Examination in the New Zealand Criminal and Family Courts Summary: This is a qualitative empirical research project examining the experiences of experts who testify in both the criminal and Family Courts in New Zealand regarding child abuse and neglect and sexual assault generally. The study considers whether there is truth in the anecdotal accounts of widespread reluctance amongst experts and it also examines lawyers' and judges' suspicions of bias amongst experts. It considers the areas of the court process which experts find most difficult and proposes a number of solutions. The study group was limited to experts in the field of child abuse and neglect and of sexual assault generally. However, we believe that our findings will be relevant to other areas of expert evidence. This report is divided into three parts: the remainder of this chapter summarises the literature on expert witnesses to date, describing, first, the problems various researchers and commentators have found with expert evidence and, second, outlining the main reform proposals those same writers have put forward. This is not a discussion of the law pertaining to expert evidence, as many legal analyses already exist. The second section contains the empirical part of this project: Chapter Two sets out the project's methodology; Chapter Three describes the findings of the interviews with expert witnesses; Chapter Four describes the smaller companion study of lawyers' opinions. The final chapter recaps the findings of the previous chapters and sets out a number of recommendations for reform. Details: Auckland, NZ: School of Psychology, University of Auckland and New Zealand Law Foundation, 2013. 169p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 4, 2014 at: http://www.lawfoundation.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Final-Research-Report-Henderson-Seymour-Expert-Witnesses-Under-Examination.pdf Year: 2013 Country: New Zealand URL: http://www.lawfoundation.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Final-Research-Report-Henderson-Seymour-Expert-Witnesses-Under-Examination.pdf Shelf Number: 132874 Keywords: Child Sexual AbuseCriminal CourtsExpert Witnesses (New Zealand)Family CourtsSex CrimesSex OffendersSexual Assault |
Author: U.S. Department of Justice. Civil Rights Division Title: Investigation of the St. Louis County Family Court, St. Louis, Missouri Summary: Following a comprehensive investigation, the Justice Department today announced its findings regarding the Family Court of the Twenty-First Judicial Circuit of the state of Missouri, commonly known as the St. Louis County Family Court. The Justice Department found that the family court fails to provide constitutionally required due process to children appearing for delinquency proceedings, and that the court's administration of juvenile justice discriminates against Black children. The investigation was conducted under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which gives the department the authority to seek a remedy for a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the constitutional or federal statutory rights of youths in the administration of juvenile justice. "The findings we issue today are serious and compelling," said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Civil Rights Division. "Missouri was at the forefront of juvenile corrections reform when it closed its large juvenile institutions and moved to a smaller, treatment-focused system and we are hopeful that Missouri will rise to this challenge to, once again, be a leader in juvenile justice reform. This investigation is another step toward our goal of ensuring that children in the juvenile justice system receive their constitutionally guaranteed rights to due process and equal protection under the law." Since opening this investigation in November 2013, the Civil Rights Division has analyzed data relating to nearly 33,000 juvenile cases, including all delinquency and status offenses resolved in St. Louis County Family Court between 2010 and 2013; and has reviewed over 14,000 pages of documents, including family court records, transcripts, policies, procedures and external reports. In June 2014, Justice Department attorneys and its consultants-a law school clinical professor and experienced juvenile defense attorney and a nationally-recognized expert on measuring juvenile justice disparities through statistical analysis-visited the family court and interviewed a number of court personnel, including all of the judges and commissioners as well as the heads of many of family court programs and services. They also collected information from both the state and local public defender's offices, private attorneys with experience in the family court and the parents of youth who had been involved in delinquency proceedings with the family court. The Justice Department found a number of constitutional violations, including: -Failure to ensure youth facing delinquency proceedings have adequate legal representation; -Failure to make adequate determinations that there is probable cause that a child committed the alleged offense; -Failure to provide adequate due process to children facing certification for criminal prosecution in adult criminal court; -Failure to ensure that children's guilty pleas are entered knowingly and voluntarily; -An organizational structure that is rife with conflicts of interest, is contrary to separation of powers principles and deprives children of adequate due process; and -Disparate treatment of Black children at four key decision points within the juvenile justice system. The department has opened four cases examining whether juvenile justice systems comply with children's rights since 2009. In 2012, the department settled its first investigation of this kind, reaching an agreement with the Juvenile Court of Shelby County, Memphis, Tennessee that calls for comprehensive due process, equal protection and facility reforms. On June 19, 2015, the Justice Department announced a partial settlement of its lawsuit alleging violations of children's due process rights in Lauderdale County, Mississippi. In March 2015, the department announced its investigation of due process and disability discrimination issues in the Dallas County Truancy Court and Juvenile District Courts. Details: Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, 2015. 60p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 16, 2015 at: http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2015/07/31/stlouis_findings_7-31-15.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2015/07/31/stlouis_findings_7-31-15.pdf Shelf Number: 136300 Keywords: Child ProtectionDue ProcessFamily CourtsJuvenile Justice SystemsJuvenile OffendersProblem-Solving CourtsRacial BiasRacial Disparities |
Author: Harwin, Judith Title: After FDAC: Outcomes 5 Years Later Summary: This report presents the findings from a continuation study of outcomes of cases heard in the first Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) in England. It builds on earlier findings reported in 20142 . It provides information on child and maternal outcomes at the end of the care proceedings using a larger number of FDAC cases than before. It also has a longer followup period, reporting on outcomes up to five years after the end of proceedings. This is the first report in which the longer term outcomes of non-reunified FDAC mothers and their children five years on are also presented. The FDAC evaluation team has been following up the same cohort of cases that entered the London FDAC between 2008 and 2012 and similar cases entering ordinary care proceedings in the same court over the same period (140 FDAC and 100 comparison). It provides a unique opportunity to track cases with the aim of finding out whether the FDAC approach achieved better substance misuse and family reunification outcomes than ordinary court and service delivery. Details: Bailrigg, Lancaster, UK: Lancaster University, 2016. 89p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 25, 2017 at: http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/cfj-fdac/files/2016/12/FDAC_FINAL_REPORT_2016.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/cfj-fdac/files/2016/12/FDAC_FINAL_REPORT_2016.pdf Shelf Number: 145423 Keywords: Child Abuse and Neglect Child Maltreatment Child Protection Drug Abuse and Addiction Family Courts Problem-Solving Courts Substance Abuse |
Author: Forty, Rachel Title: Using family court data to explore links between adverse family experiences and proven youth offending Summary: Risk factors linked to adverse family experiences such as family conflict, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect are some of the strongest predictors of youth crime. This report presents analysis conducted to explore proven youth offending rates of those in contact with the family justice system as a child. It has a specific focus on children that have been named in a public law case, where the local authority has intervened to protect their welfare. Findings from this analysis are associations and do not necessarily represent causal links between contact with the public law system and offending, nor can they tell us about the direction of any relationship. This analysis, conducted by Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Analytical Services, uses linked data, matching extracts from the Police National Computer (PNC) and the family justice case management database (FamilyMan) for the first time. An evidence review of the related international literature was also conducted to place the results within the wider research context. This project is part of a broader programme of work to link large-scale administrative datasets from both within the department and across government, drawing out further insights on the drivers and patterns of offending behaviour to inform policy development and practice. Key findings - Those in contact with the public law system were more likely to offend and commit multiple offences between the ages of 10 and 17 than those of the equivalent age group in the general population. They also, on average, started offending earlier than offenders of the same age in the general population. - Findings from the evidence review suggest that the link between offending and public law may be explained to a large extent by shared risk factors, including family poverty and parental neglect or abuse. - Wider evidence indicates that when children have been taken into local authority care, placement type and instability have been linked to higher offending rates. There is, however, concern about unnecessary criminalisation of children in care homes and this may explain, in part, the higher offending levels for this group. - Results from this analysis suggest that children in contact with the public law system in their early teenage years for the first time were more likely to offend than those who were involved at any other age. - Wider evidence indicates that maltreatment and going into care as a teenager may have a stronger association with youth offending than maltreatment or care only experienced in childhood. Young people's offending may also be affected by the type and instability of the care placement experienced. That said, teenagers can have preexisting issues with offending that may have influenced placement decisions. - Results suggest that for females in their early teenage years, contact with the public law system was linked to a greater increase in likelihood of offending, prolificacy and violent offending than for males. However, young males in contact with the public law system still have a higher likelihood of offending than females of the same age. International research indicates that experience of out-of-home placement can be more strongly linked to offending for females. Details: London; Ministry of Justice, 2017. 15p. Source: Internet Resource: Analytical Summary 2017 : Accessed march 8, 2018 at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/653037/using-family-court-data-to-explore-links-between-adverse.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United Kingdom URL: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/653037/using-family-court-data-to-explore-links-between-adverse.pdf Shelf Number: 149325 Keywords: Children Exposed to ViolenceFamiliesFamily CourtsFamily ViolenceJuvenile OffendersYoung Adult Offenders |
Author: Backbone Collective Title: Seen and not Heard: Children in the New Zealand Family Court. Part One - Force Summary: Six months ago, Backbone released a report about how women who have experienced violence and abuse in their relationships are treated by the New Zealand Family Court. Our concluding remarks in that report were: 'With over 500 women saying that the New Zealand Family Court makes them and their children less safe, leaves them with multiple crippling health conditions and prevents them from rebuilding their lives (and those of their children) - surely those in authority will listen now?' Since then Backbone has made repeated calls for the establishment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Family Court. But sadly, those in authority haven't listened - or if they listened they took no action. We hoped that in writing and releasing the first report the Family Court would be open to the service user feedback we were providing. However, we fear that there has been backlash for some women as they have spoken out about dangerous practices happening in their own cases. Backbone decided to conduct another survey on the Family Court - this time to find out how the Family Court responds to children when they and their mothers have experienced violence and abuse. Through this latest survey we have collected a rich and powerful set of data that is deeply troubling. What we discovered is that children fare very poorly when the Family Court is involved in their lives. Many mothers go to the Family Court for protection upon leaving an abusive partner, some get taken to the Family Court by the abuser, and some are involved in CYFs/MVCOT proceedings. Regardless of their pathway into the court we can now see that the impact on their children is overwhelmingly negative. Not only are the survey results cause for grave concern, but they take the system failures that we identified in our first Family Court report to a whole new level. All of the children in the survey have experienced violence and abuse - by seeing, hearing or knowing about the abuse of their mothers and/or by also being directly physically, sexually and/or psychologically abused. In 95% of cases the abuser was the child/ren's father. We were told about a complex array of trauma these children had suffered from the violence and abuse prior to separation. We were told about the many fears the children had about having contact with their abusive father post separation - with good justification based on the ranges of things mothers described happening at his house. In more than half the cases either the children or their mother told professionals working in the Family Court about the worries they had at the abuser's house but in the majority of cases those worries were not reported accurately to the Court or taken into consideration when care and contact orders were made. Most children are ordered into unsupervised care and contact with the abuser but the range of care arrangements is vast. However, of incredible significance is that when we compared how much time the Family Court is ordering children into care and contact with abusers against how much time the children say they WANT to spend with him - there is a big difference. Children want control over how much time they spend with the abuser and many want no contact at all. We were told that 54% of the children are being forced into care and contact arrangements that they do not want. These 'forced' children are significantly more worried about what happens at the abuser's house (sexual, physical and psychological safety issues) than children who were not forced. Similarly, we looked at the children who refused to attend care and contact visits with their abusive father - they had almost the same levels of worry as the 'forced' children. Therefore, the million-dollar question is why would the Family Court order/force children into the care of abusers with a known history of violence and abuse, when the children are scared of them and have told professionals working in the court that they feel unsafe when alone in the care of their abusive father? It appears that the Family Court is making care and contact orders in the absence of best practice in violence and abuse cases. For example, only 2.2% of mothers told us a risk assessment to determine the risk of dangerousness and lethality had been undertaken in their case. To be making care and contact orders for children who have experienced violence and abuse without any evidence based risk assessment is clear evidence of system failure - the Family Court is out of step with international best practice and the New Zealand Government's position on this: 'The government is committed to reducing family violence, keeping victims safe, and managing perpetrators more effectively so all New Zealanders can live free from violence. We know that identifying risk, intervening earlier and in a more coordinated way is critical to achieving this.'2 In the absence of any risk assessment the Family Court is characterising mothers who raise genuine safety concerns for their children as 'parental alienators'. Both this and our earlier Family Court survey found that professionals in the Family Court use 'parental alienation' or similar terms in nearly half of all cases. Children are not being believed about their experiences of violence an abuse, evidence of it occurring is being disregarded in the court and mothers are being blamed for their children's fears for their safety. Unfortunately, in many cases, the care and contact orders result in terrible health impacts for these children. We were told about a range of health impacts mothers attribute to Family Court proceedings and orders, including physical, psychological, social and behavioural impacts. The list of health impacts mothers detailed are heartbreaking. We found that the health of children of Māori mothers is impacted worse in some areas and this definitely requires further investigation. Backbone also found that the Family Court deems only a very small percentage of abusive men as unsafe to have contact with their children (or step children). Men who are most likely to be designated 'unsafe' by the Family Court are men with a Protection Order against this partner or a previous or subsequent partner, who have been charged with assaulting their child/ren physically or sexually or where the abuser was a step-father. For most of the 63 children involved in these cases the Family Court has ordered that they have no contact at all with the abuser, although some have supervised contact. Surprisingly we found that even though the fathers/step fathers of these 63 children are clearly very dangerous and these children have been exposed to some serious violence and abuse before their parents separated, once they separated and when protected appropriately by the Family Court, these children appear to have had far fewer damaging health impacts that those children whose abusive father was deemed as being 'safe' by the Family Court. Backbone is firmly of the view that the New Zealand Family Court is acting contrary to the legislation which should guide the way we respond to children. The Care of Children Act 2004 says that children MUST be protected from violence. Why then are hundreds of children being ordered by the Family Court directly into violent situations? These children are suffering at the hands of a largely tax payer funded system. These children are being ordered into dangerous situations by the very agencies and institutions that have been set up and funded by the state to protect them. New Zealand now has a new Government and Backbone's 1100 members hope they will see that constitutionally a Royal Commission of Inquiry is the only mechanism that can safely, effectively and fully investigate the practices of the Family Court. There is simply too much to lose by remaining silent on the issue of child safety in New Zealand. We rank the worst in the Western World in terms of violence against women statistics and child abuse and neglect. If we don't start improving the way we respond to these social problems we will only compound the damage done. Details: s.l.: The Collective, 2017. 57p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 20, 2018 at:https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57d898ef8419c2ef50f63405/t/5a3171c59140b743f5abbe36/1513189837189/Seen+and+not+Heard+Children+in+the+Family+Court+%281%29.pdf Year: 2017 Country: New Zealand URL: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57d898ef8419c2ef50f63405/t/5a3171c59140b743f5abbe36/1513189837189/Seen+and+not+Heard+Children+in+the+Family+Court+%281%29.pdf Shelf Number: 149531 Keywords: Child ProtectionChildren Exposed to ViolenceDomestic ViolenceFamily CourtsFamily ViolenceViolence Against Women |