EXAMINATION OF THE IMPACT OF INCREASED COURT REVIEW ON PERMANENCY OUTCOMES FOR ABUSED AND NEGLECTED CHILDREN |
| |
| Authors: | Mark E Courtney Joan Blakey |
| |
| Institution: | Mark E. Courtney is the director of the Chapin Hall Center for Children and an associate professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. Before moving into academia, he worked for several years in various capacities, providing group home care to abused and neglected adolescents. He has served as a consultant to the federal government, departments of social services in several states, and local public and private child welfare agencies around the country. His research has focused on outcomes of out-of-home care placement, including family reunification, reentry to out-of-home care, adoption, and postdischarge well-being of youth who aged out of foster care.;Joan Blakey, M.S.W., is a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration. Before pursing her doctorate, she worked on child welfare services and policy issues in Minnesota. |
| |
| Abstract: | This article provides a brief history of a federally funded court improvement program, describes the Dane County Court Improvement Project, and discusses the implications of the project evaluation's findings. As part of Wisconsin's efforts under the federally funded state court improvement program, Dane County developed and evaluated a form of accelerated review of selected juvenile court cases. The accelerated review intended to expedite permanency outcomes for abused and neglected children in out-of-home care. The evaluation's findings of the initiative suggest that more frequent court reviews than those mandated by law may increase the likelihood of adopting children entering out-of-home care with no decrease in the likelihood of family reunification. However, because many of the children whose parental rights had been terminated had yet to be placed for adoption at the time of the study's conclusion, the encouraging early findings of the initiative should be regarded with some caution. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
|
|
