NCFA News : Current News

NCFA Promotes Judicial Leadership to Ensure Sound Permanency Decisions For Children in Foster Care

Juvenile and family courts play the leading role in
ensuring right and timely placements of foster children
with loving, permanent families. These vulnerable
children have been removed from their families for their
own protection, through no fault of their own. They
deserve America’s best efforts to ensure their safety, permanence, and well-being in loving families. Juvenile and family court judges have the key responsibility for ensuring that America fulfills its obligations to these young citizens in need.

Juvenile and family court judges must in their own
hearts and minds have compassion towards the children in their charge, a strong sense of urgency to meet their family needs in a timely way, and a relentless insistence that all involved in the process serve the children well. Judges must promote collaboration and cooperation throughout the state child welfare and court systems, and create and oversee a plan of action that ensures each child’s safety, permanence, and well-being.

Perhaps the most important decision the juvenile and
family court judge makes is the determination of the
appropriate case goal and permanency plan for any given
child – reunification, adoption, or guardianship.
Constitutional protections for parents require judges to be
very careful in terminating parental rights, but the child’s
right to safety, permanence, and well-being is even more
important. Every state has enacted statutes that establish
criteria for removing a child from his or her parents and
the conditions that must be met before terminating
parental rights, and Congress has also enacted laws relevant to establishing a permanency plan, including circumstances in which reunification efforts are not required. Judges must be well-versed in relevant statutes to understand the matters over which state legislatures andCongress have prescribed decisions, and those over which judges may exercise their own discretion.

When determining case goals and permanency plans, a
family court judge must always engage in “child-focused
decision-making” and weigh the potential harms and benefits to the child. He must consider the nature of the abuse or neglect, the capacity of the child’s parents to change their behavior, and the likelihood that parents will make prescribed changes in a timely fashion. In the majority of cases, reunification will likely be the initial case goal, and parents will be allowed time to address the reasons that the state removed their child from their care. There are cases in which efforts to reunify are not required; in these cases, courts should take immediate steps to terminate parental rights and find another permanent placement for the child. Because adoption provides children permanent parents, adoption – by relatives of the child or by another family – should be the preferred permanency plan to be considered after reunification. There are also limited scenarios in which adoption is not the appropriate permanency plan and
legal guardianship may be preferable for foster children,
such as an older child who prefers to maintain relations
with his parent(s) and not be adopted, but can benefit from the legal provisions of guardianship.

There are some stages that are pivotal in determining
how soon a child will exit foster care. Judicial leadership
is the key to ensuring that sound and timely decisions are made throughout this process:

• Removal or emergency custody hearing: Held immediately prior to removal, or within 72 hours of
removal, to determine whether there is sufficient cause for removing the child from the home and where the child will reside until the adjudicatory hearing.

• Adjudicatory hearing: Held as soon as possible after
removal, to decide whether the state has proved that abuse or neglect of the child has occurred.

• Disposition hearing: Held no more than 30 days after the adjudicatory hearing, to establish the case goal,
assign temporary custody of the child, and plan ways to
eliminate the abuse or neglect, such as through services to the parents.

• Review hearing(s): Held regularly after disposition, to determine whether the parties are following court orders
and how parents are progressing toward possible reunification.

• Permanency hearing(s): By federal standards held no
later than 12 months after removal, sooner when possible
or required as in some states, to decide the permanency
plan for the child: reunification, adoption, guardianship, or long-term foster care.

• Permanency review hearing(s): Held regularly after the permanency decision, until permanency is finalized, to
monitor and ensure compliance with the permanency plan.

In the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, Congress funded
$100-million in new money over five years for two strategic court-improvement efforts supported by NCFA
and the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care: case
tracking, and training of judges and other court personnel. Case tracking supported by efficient data systems is vital to ensuring sound permanency decisions. Judges, court administrators, caseworkers, guardians ad litem, and attorneys all need ongoing training in permanency decisionmaking so they can perform their functions competently and collaboratively. A judge must be able to rely on all participants to provide accurate information as she makes critical decisions about a child’s future, and she must also be updated regularly on how the case plan is being implemented with respect to the child’s well-being. By holding regular meetings among caseworkers and managers, attorneys for all parties, guardians ad litem, families, and the courts, judges will be able to raise issues of concern before they become serious problems and spearhead a spirit of collaboration to guarantee that the best effort needed to find permanency for children is made. As the superintendents
of the child placement process, it is up to judicial leaders
to produce excellent results for children, no matter
what the challenges.

During the last decade, policies implemented at the
state and federal levels have ushered in positive changes for children residing in foster care. However, with more than half a million children in foster care, there is clearly much more work to be done. Judicial leadership is absolutely crucial to provide foster children with appropriate case goals and permanency plans, and to ensure a just and timely permanency process that incorporates all the necessary information for sound permanency decisions.

Click here for an executive summary of NCFA's brief, "Judicial Leadership to Ensure Sound Permanency Decisions for Children in Foster Care: Practical Guidelines for Juvenile and Family Courts."

Click here to view the entire report.