The National Evaluation of the Court Improvement Program is describing the many paths followed by state courts to improve their oversight of foster care and adoption cases and analyze the outcomes achieved. It is providing the field with important information on effective models for juvenile and family court reform.
Funded in 2004 by the Children's Bureau, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the five-year study is being carried out by a partnership of three organizations consisting of Planning and Learning Technologies (Pal-Tech, Inc.) of Arlington, VA; The Urban Institute of Washington, DC; and The Center for Policy Research of Denver, Colorado. Contact information for the National Evaluation of CIP is found here. A Technical Work Group of nationally-known experts and researchers has been assembled to provide input, ensuring that findings are based on sound research and are relevant to the field.
In the funding announcement, the Children's Bureau emphasized it wished to fund the most rigorous evaluation of the Court Improvement Program (CIP) possible:
"Although there is a widespread belief that CIP nationwide has been successful in improving Juvenile and Family Courts' handling of dependency cases and some states have undertaken evaluations of their pilot projects, there has been no systematic nationwide evaluation of CIP. Through this evaluation the Children's Bureau seeks to encourage States in continuous improvement through guidance in terms of the court reform activities and reforms found to be particularly effective in improving outcomes for children and families" (Children's Bureau, HHS, National Evaluation of the Court Improvement Program RFP, issued August 11, 2004, page 6).
The National Evaluation of the Court Improvement Program has four interrelated components:
Reviewing and synthesizing state and local court reform activities: This component describes the full range of CIP-funded court reforms undertaken by states. It provides insights into states' reform priorities and how these shift over time. Especially promising models of reform are highlighted. Finally, this component provides important contextual information for a separate study component - the in-depth evaluation of select reform models.
Reviewing and synthesizing existing court reform evaluations: This component identifies and synthesizes findings from research and evaluations conducted to date on family and juvenile court reforms. It provides important context for the study's in-depth evaluation component in two ways. First, it provides findings on reform activities beyond those captured within the study sites. Second, it helps inform evaluation within the study sites by providing information on previously conducted evaluation of similar reform models. Evaluations are prioritized for synthesis based on their methodological rigor.
Reviewing and synthesizing state reassessments: This component examines states' reassessments of progress since the initial CIP grants were awarded. It provides a description of which areas of judicial proceedings states have focused on improving, as well as successes and barriers related to achieving child safety, permanence, and well-being.
The three sites selected by the Children's Bureau for in-depth analysis are:
Connecticut's Case Management Protocol: Piloted in December 1997, the protocol involves a pre-hearing conference of professionals held early in the dependency court process coupled with expanded parent representation.
Delaware's Systemic Reform: Piloted in 2000, the three primary components of the state's comprehensive reform effort are:
One judge/one case assignment practice where one judge presides over all legal stages of a dependency case
Representation for indigent parents in child welfare proceedings
Texas' Child Protection Courts: Formerly known as Cluster Courts, these courts were piloted in 1997 to enable primarily rural counties to meet the state's strict permanency statute guidelines that were enacted January 1, 1998. Each court serves a clustering of counties, and a specially trained judge is appointed to travel to each county within a cluster on a given day to hear that county's dependency cases.
Collectively, findings from the four study components will capture the ongoing nationwide process of court reform supported by CIP and lessons learned.
