Child Welfare Summit

CIP Stories Podcast

Tune into the CIP Stories podcast to hear coordinators and directors share their stories about the Court Improvement Program, which aims to improve safety, permanency and well-being for children and families.

Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or RSS feed. Episodes will be released every other week.

Continuing Upward From the Summit

Due to overwhelming participation in this event, Summit partners held regional virtual meetings with Summit teams to allow for further discussion, peer networking and peer learning.

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Ensuring Justice in Child Welfare Virtual Summit

On August 10-11, 2020, the Ensuring Justice in Child Welfare virtual summit convened teams inclusive of leadership from the courts as well as from the child welfare agency to attend a series of online presentations focused on strategies to support racial justice in the child welfare system. Almost 500 team members attended, representing every state, three territories, and five tribes, in addition to several hundred observers.

The purpose of the Ensuring Justice in Child Welfare virtual summit was to energize teams comprised of court and child welfare system leaders and stakeholders around collaborative efforts to intentionally focus on racial justice by harnessing the power of judicial leadership and embracing strategies that strengthen families, prevent unnecessary removal of children, and provide equitable access to justice for all families.

Summit Resources

Ensuring Justice in Child Welfare Virtual Summit Day 1 Recording

Ensuring Justice in Child Welfare Virtual Summit Day 2 Recording

Other Resources

The Growing Role for Courts in Working with At-Risk Families- Details some preventative and upstream approaches that can decrease the negative impacts on children, decrease the load on formalized systems, and help families
stay together while they heal.
Courts, COVID and Permanency- Outlines ways that the judicial and legal community and its partners can promote positive permanency outcomes for children and families under their jurisdiction, during the COVID pandemic.

National Judicial Leadership Summit IV on Child Welfare

The National Judicial Leadership Summit IV on Child Welfare, was held in September 2019 and was intended to mobilize the legal and judicial community and other child welfare partners around a new national vision for ensuring the well-being of children with their families. We urge you to use the key principles to guide your work in your respective jurisdictions. We also urge other national partners and organizations to use these principles as a guiding vision going forward.

Summit IV Opening Video: What if?

Summit IV Materials

Summit IV Videos

Other Summit IV Resources

ABA Center on Children and the Law Adolescent Brain Research Toolkit developed by the Youth Engagement Project through support of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. It is designed to help practitioners apply adolescent brain science when engaging youth in their court hearings and case planning.
The Youth Engagement Project of the ABA Center on Children and the Law promotes youth engagement in the court process, transition and permanency planning for older youth, and extending foster care beyond age 18. Highlighted resources include:
- With Me, Not Without Me: How to Involve Children in Court
- Seen and Heard: Involving Children in Dependency Court
- Ex Parte Communications between Children and Judges in Dependency Proceedings
- Judge's Benchcards: Young Children 0-1, Toddlers & Preschool Age Children, School Age Children, Adolescents, Older Adolescents
- Seen, Heard and Engaged: Children in Dependency Court Proceedings
- Engaging Youth in Court: Sample Court Policy
- Considerations on Involving Youth in Court
- National Alliance for Parent Representation
  - Parent Know Your Rights Guides for every state
- Reunification Resources:
  - Reunification Heroes
    Each year we honor parents, youth, professionals, and volunteers as National Reunification Heroes. We also share valuable resources about reunification and guidance for collaborative efforts by birth parents and resource parents.

ABA Legal Representation Infographic highlights the importance of high quality legal representation for all parties in child welfare proceedings.
New Family Justice Initiative website gives individuals access to additional materials on supporting access to counsel for every child and every parent in child welfare proceedings.
One pager about the Family Justice Initiative, includes the approach to developing demonstration sites and evaluating models of practice around the country.
Family Justice Initiative attributes of high quality legal representation for children and parents in child welfare proceedings.
NACC Red Book Flyer
NACC Child Welfare Law Specialist Certification
Brochure for the QJC-ChildRep Initiative funded by the Children's Bureau 2009-2016
Commission on Parental Legal Representation - Interim Report to New York Chief Judge Janet DiFiore
Parent Representation in Child Abuse and Neglect Proceedings in Mississippi

ABA Child Safety Guide for Judge and Attorneys
Alia Research Brief 2019
A Cure Worse than the Disease? The Impact of Removal on Children and Their Families
Ignoring Reasonable Efforts: How Courts Fail to Promote Prevention
In the Supreme Court of the State of Montana, In the matter of: R.J.F. A Youth in Need of Care
Overcoming Barriers to Making Meaningful Reasonable Efforts
Reasonable Efforts as Prevention
Relative Placement: The Best Answer for Our Foster Care System
A Cure Worse than the Disease? The Impact of Removal on Children and Their Families
ABA Family Integrity Policy that passed before our House of Delegates in August 2019. In short, it provides:
- Children and parents have rights to family integrity and family unity;
- The legal community and state agencies should work to mitigate the trauma to children and families that separation and removal into foster care can produce;
- Prevention services, including quality legal services, can ensure children’s safety without removing them from their families;
- Government may interfere with children’s and parents’ rights to family integrity when necessary for the child’s health, safety or well-being and when procedural protections are followed;
- Decisions to separate a child from a parent to protect health, safety and well-being are subject to state and tribal authorities; and
- When children are in foster care, family connections should be safely maintained and supported with parents, kin, and siblings during the pendency of the case.

ABA Case Summaries Project.
Earlier this year, we launched a new project to better connect judicial decisions across the children’s law field by providing summaries of key state supreme court decisions on child welfare and related topics. In addition to summarizing the court’s holding and reasoning, each case will highlight the practical significance for the field. The following summaries have been released so far: