NCFA News : Current News

Performance Measures for Family and Juvenile Courts:
An Idea Whose Time Has Come

In June, 2005, the National Council For Adoption released a new report, “Performance Measures for Courts: The Next Step in Foster Care Reform.” The report is a product of NCFA’s Adoption Leader Engagement Project, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. The Adoption Leader Engagement Project will educate policy makers, judicial leaders, the media, and the general public about the importance of establishing performance measures for juvenile and family courts, promoting judicial leadership, and allowing states greater flexibility in federal foster care funding.

According to the Children’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there were 119,000 American children in foster care waiting to be adopted as of September 2003. Despite the efforts of many dedicated judges and court officials, juvenile and family courts are often not living up to their responsibility to ensure right and timely placement of these children with loving, permanent families. A crucial next step for foster care is court improvement through performance measures that provide guidance for court-improvement strategies and promote greater court transparency and accountability.

“Performance measures provide strategic information for court improvement,” says Thomas Atwood, president and CEO of NCFA. “First, they enable courts to evaluate themselves and develop effective strategies for improvement on their own. Second, performance measures for courts enable policymakers, adoption and child welfare advocates, and the public to monitor their courts, promote successful models for court improvement, and publicize the need for reform when courts do not serve foster children well.”

NCFA’s report presents four aspects of court performance that should be measured: timeliness, permanence, due process, and safety. Particularly useful measures for evaluating court performance include:

• number and percentage of permanency placements, by type;

• length of time from entry into state care, to exit from state care;

• time in foster care, for children currently residing there;

• time between termination of parental rights and the conclusion of
any appeals;

• number and percentage of children who age out of foster care;

• total and average number of continuances;

• number and percentage of children who have been the subject of another substantiated abuse or neglect petition, either while in foster care, or after exiting the system;

• number and percentage of re-entries into the foster care system after reunification, adoption and guardianship.

“Too often, juvenile and family courts are bottlenecks that prevent, rather than promote, right and timely placement of foster children with loving, permanent families,” says the report’s co-author, NCFA research associate Virginia Ravenel. “Performance measures can achieve a better process for foster children by providing information that courts need to guide their improvement strategies and that policymakers and the public need to fulfill their roles of monitoring the courts and exercising accountability.”

NCFA plans to issue two additional policy briefs in the coming weeks, addressing the importance of judicial leadership in family and juvenile courts, and the need for federal foster care financing reforms. To meet the goals of the Adoption Leader Engagement Project, NCFA will employ its full range of communications tools to reach key policy makers, judicial leaders, adoption professionals, the media, and the general public – including policy briefs, fact sheets, the upcoming Adoption Factbook IV, op eds, articles, expert testimony, conference presentations, and educational meetings. If youare an adoption or child welfare advocate who is interested in helping NCFA in this important effort on behalf of children and families, contact our national office at 703-299-6633.

The time has come for focused, multidisciplinary efforts to improve the performance of juvenile and family courts in fulfilling their responsibility to provide right and timely placements with loving, permanent families for foster children. The National Council For Adoption adds its voice and offers its resources to promote the vital cause of court improvement through performance measures that highlight successful models for reform and provide greater court transparency and accountability, for the sake of America’s deserving foster children.

Click here for an executive summary of NCFA's brief, "Performance Measures for Family and Juvenile Courts: An Idea Whose Time Has Come."

Click here to view the entire report.