New Blue Ribbon Foster Care Report

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/jc/tflists/documents/blueribexecsum.pdf

15-minute hearings to decide living situations of vulnerable foster children

Foster children underserved by courts, report finds
A California commission recommends smaller caseloads for social workers, lawyers and judges serving the 80,000 kids in the system statewide
Therolf, Garrett. Los Angeles Times, Aug. 16, 2008.

California's 80,000 foster children -- nearly 27,000 in Los Angeles County -- are underserved by deeply stressed courts and government agencies, and the hearings that decide their living situations often last no more than 15 minutes, according to a report released Friday.

The report is the result of two years of work by a blue-ribbon commission established by California Chief Justice Ronald George and makes dozens of recommendations to the judicial system, the Legislature and the counties that operate the foster care system.

Key among the recommendations was a call to replace with judges the referees and commissioners who oversee dependency cases.

"This was not to put down referees or commissioners who have labored in those courts for a long time, but by using judges, it would indicate that the court considers this work to be at the top in terms of seriousness and importance," Carlos Moreno, commission chairman and a state Supreme Court associate justice, said in an interview.

The report also recommended smaller caseloads for all authorities involved, including social workers, attorneys and judges.

The entire juvenile court system has fewer than 150 full- and part-time judges and commissioners working on foster care, with caseloads averaging 1,000 each. Lawyers for these courts average 273 cases apiece -- in some counties 500 to 600 -- and often do not meet the children and parents they are representing until moments before hearings.

Jasmine Smith, a 20-year-old Inglewood resident in foster care, said in an interview, "I'm not usually able to say anything when we go to court. I usually speak with my lawyer for maybe five minutes just before the hearing. Nothing is taken care of because no one is prepared. It's always, 'Let's make another appointment.' "

Although Smith remains in foster care, many children are released from the system at 18. The commission recommended that the age for foster care assistance be extended in all cases to 21.

"I don't think any parent would allow a child to go into the world without any support at 18 years of age, and we shouldn't either," Moreno said. "There is a high moral and financial cost because so many of our foster children become homeless or incarcerated."

At a meeting of the California Judicial Council on Friday, the report's recommendations were unanimously endorsed, and Moreno predicted swift reforms within the court system.

The commission's other recommendations focused on preventing the need to take children from their parents; placing a new priority on dependency cases within the court system; improving coordination between the courts, attorneys and social service agencies; and providing more resources and money to the juvenile courts.

Moreno acknowledged that his commission's recommendations would be a hard sell in some cases this year as the state contends with a $15.2-billion budget deficit, but he said he remains hopeful.

"We emphasized recommendations that require no money at all -- it doesn't take more money for people to talk to each other more, for example -- but when it comes to the recommendations that do require additional funds we think we will find receptive ears," Moreno said. "Assembly Speaker Karen Bass and the governor have made foster kids a priority."

Massive reforms to California juvenile dependency courts

Judges vow to fix state's foster-care court
Judges approve reforms - can state pay for them?
de Sá, Karen. San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 16, 2008.

The California courts approved massive reforms on Friday to the state's troubled juvenile dependency courts that would ease the overwhelmed system and ensure fairness for those who are "literally and legally the children of the state."

Finding unconscionable the overloaded dockets that leave only minutes for hearings that determine critical issues for 75,000 California children in foster care, the state Judicial Council approved measures that would include more judges to hear dependency cases and more lawyers to represent impoverished family members.

"Children are our future, and I can't imagine any more effort that's as integral to society and our judicial system," said Chief Justice Ronald George, who led the council in calling for change.

The vote of the Judicial Council - the governing body for the state courts - adopts the recommendations of a statewide commission that George appointed in 2006 to study the problems of the dependency courts, which operate largely in secret and are often treated as the less-prestigious stepchild of the court system.

The measures approved by the council would address many of the critical problems identified in the February Mercury News series "Broken Families, Broken Courts," which revealed an overburdened system that too often poorly serves both the children it is designed to protect, and the parents accused of abuse or neglect. The series documented a system in which overloaded attorneys routinely meet with clients minutes before their hearings, if at all, and often fail to properly investigate or present their cases.

The next question will be funding changes to the system - the state Legislature is already at an impasse over how to solve its $15.2 billion deficit. As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed one bill last month that sailed through the Legislature in response to the newspaper articles - a measure designed to make sure that children are aware of their hearings and given the chance to attend - he expressed concern over the costs at a time when the state is strapped for money.

But the chief justice Friday said a "golden opportunity" exists to enact the 79 specific measures - many of which do not involve significant costs. Court officials intend to push implementation of the widespread measures both at the state and county levels in the coming months.

Among the 42 members of the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Children in Foster Care that drafted the recommendations is newly named Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, who has focused her career on improving the state's foster care system.

Smaller caseloads
The Judicial Council's newly approved list of reforms calls for attorney caseloads of no more than 188 clients, although in some counties, lawyers for children and parents attempt to juggle as many as 600 cases. The council called for all dependency cases to be heard by judges, although in many counties referees and commissioners serve as substitutes for judges. In great swaths of the state, judicial officers are assigned upward of 1,300 families at any given time - hundreds more than the 250 recommended by national experts. The Judicial Council will now seek to lower judicial caseloads, but in return will ask for minimum three-year assignments.

William Vickery, administrative director of the statewide court system, said California became too reliant on lower-level judicial officers in the critical, but low-status dependency courts. For judges, he said, "it's never been on the radar screen. It's something that's been in the back room or the cellar."

In calling for more judges and more reasonable caseloads, blue ribbon commission members told the Judicial Council that it is the only "ethically defensible" position to take, given that "dependency cases represent the most intrusive form of governmental intervention."

Friday's Judicial Council vote embraced the commission's list of proposed reforms, in some cases with strengthened language.

Attorneys' competence
The council is seeking a system to ensure attorney competency and effectiveness, and the appointment of attorneys for all children when their cases are appealed to the higher courts.

The Judicial Council also is seeking action to address the longstanding problem that hearings to remove children from their homes disproportionately involve families of color. The council approved steps to reduce the number of African-American and American Indian children in the system, while increasing the diversity and cultural competence of the courts' workforce.

To highlight the need, Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno pointed to San Francisco, where African-American children are 9 percent of the city's population, and 70 percent of those in foster care, he said.

Central to the reform efforts ahead is a plan to prevent the removal of children from their homes whenever possible, and to call on federal authorities to grant more money for child abuse prevention and reunification services.

But California dependency system reformers believe the courts can do a better job whittling down the number of cases in which children must be removed from homes - which, they say, will lower the costs of caring for children in foster care. Those savings should be reinvested in supports for troubled families before they enter the court system, the commission reported, resulting in a long-term savings "by reducing the number of former foster children who become homeless, dependent on welfare, and incarcerated as adults."

Children Have A Right to Attend Court Hearings

Santa Clara County foster-care court struggles to adjust to kids' larger role
de Sá, Karen. Mercury News, April 5, 2008.

After years of being largely left out of proceedings that decide their fates, more children are now joining the flurry of parents, attorneys and social workers churning each weekday through the Santa Clara County Juvenile Dependency Court.

A February memo to social workers titled "Children Have a Right to Attend Court Hearings" - coupled with new efforts by children's lawyers - jogged the local system that decides whether to remove children from their homes following allegations of child abuse and neglect.

The change began within days of a Mercury News series highlighting systemic flaws in California's dependency courts. But the results - while pleasing many participants - are roiling San Jose's ill-equipped garment-factory-turned-dependency-courthouse.

The influx of child clients has fed an already tense and chaotic scene outside the three bustling dependency courtrooms handling 13,000 hearings a year for more than 2,500 children.

On a recent weekday at the Terraine Street facility, a toddler threw his sippy cup across a crowded bank of plastic chairs in a court waiting room. A shell-shocked teenager stared dully around her, and a small girl leaned against her caregiver, practicing her reading on a SpongeBob SquarePants coloring book.

"I am really happy to see kids in court. It's important that they are there because it's their lives we are deciding," said Supervising Judge Katherine Lucero. "I just want to be responsive and make a way for this trend to be continued. We're concerned that the court experience for children is not as easily facilitated as it might be if we had better accommodations."

Memo's result
Although there are no hard numbers available, dependency judges and lawyers confirmed they've seen an increased number of children at hearings in the last two months, following a Feb. 6 Department of Family and Children's Services memo. Officials say children were offered the opportunity to go to court even before the memo, but acknowledge there were "inconsistencies" in practice among social workers.

"Under no circumstances should a social worker tell a child they cannot or should not come to court," states the memo. ". . . if a child asks to come to court, then the child's request must be honored. One of the major complaints from former dependent children who emancipated from foster care is that they never knew they could come to court and talk to the judge."

Among lawyers for children, there also have been changes as a result of the memo and the newspaper series, said Nick Muyo, spokesman for the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office. In an unusual arrangement, Santa Clara County uses prosecutors to represent children in dependency court; those lawyers receive information from investigators who interview child clients.

"One thing we are doing now is we're making it a point when the investigators meet with the kids to ask them whether they want to go to court," Muyo said. "And if they do want to go to court and for whatever reason cannot make it, we make it a point to continue the case."

Deputy County Counsel Michael Clark, who helps direct the legal office representing social workers, said judges too have played a role, by requesting that teenagers with "high-risk behaviors" come to court to discuss their cases.

Kids' crucial role
Children's active participation in dependency court is seen by experts as vital to good decision-making. It allows them to weigh in on their futures and gives an overloaded court system the opportunity to connect a face with a file.

State lawmakers are now considering the issue as well, with a new bill, AB 3051, sailing through a key Assembly committee this week on a vote of 10-0. The bill, by Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, the chairman of the Assembly's Judiciary Committee, requires willing children to be active participants in court, and emboldens judges to push lawyers for explanations when child clients do not appear.

But courts statewide, as in San Jose, may struggle to make the adjustment.

The dependency court boasts a small children's waiting room, with toddlers' toys and Disney movies. But the space does not serve older children braving the often hours-long wait for court. The congested main waiting room places foster children alongside parents and relatives - even relatives the court may be seeking to separate from the children.

"I'm a big proponent of kids coming to court and being able to participate, but we don't have a place for them to wait," said Jennifer Kelleher, directing attorney for the non-profit Legal Advocates for Children and Youth. "We need to make sure they are physically and emotionally safe when they're going to attend a hearing. We need to make sure that court is a positive experience."

Dan Weidman, a longtime social worker and union officer, said the tedious wait for court - in a building with little to occupy them - turns children off to the whole experience.

"The kid gets frustrated and then the next time you're going to want to bring them to court they're going to put up real resistance," Weidman said

The Santa Clara County court is now searching for a new building, and looking for ways to set dependency hearings at specific times to cut down on the wait.

"We need to conform ourselves to this trend and accommodate children in court and not in any way give a message that they have created a problem for us to solve," Lucero said. "We need to make it as child-friendly as possible."

California dependency courts in need of reform

Commission calls California dependency courts 'overstressed, underresourced'
By Karen de Sá, San Jose Mercury News, March 14, 2008.

A state commission concluded its two-year study of California's juvenile dependency courts Friday by calling for sweeping reforms to make sure children and parents caught in the system are better informed and better served.

The Blue Ribbon Commission on Children in Foster Care recommended critical changes to ensure that lawyers meet with their clients well in advance of their hearings, that judges preside over all court cases and that children are present and active when their life in foster care is being decided.

The recommendations address several of the critical problems highlighted by the series "Broken Families, Broken Courts," a Mercury News investigation published last month that exposed widespread problems in the courts that oversee 75,000 California children in foster care.

The report of the commission, appointed by Chief Justice Ronald George, echoed the newspaper series with this dire warning: "California's dependency courts are overstressed and underresourced, burdened by crowded dockets and inadequate information."

California's dependency courts decide which children should be returned to their families and which removed permanently following allegations of child abuse and neglect.

The report was posted online Friday, launching a 60-day public comment period. In August, the state's Judicial Council - the policy-making body of the California courts - is expected to consider adopting reforms.

Confirming the Mercury News findings, the commission reported that children and parents afforded court-appointed lawyers "do not meet their attorneys until moments before their hearings." The typical time for hearings is as short as 10 minutes, a far cry from the 30- to 60-minute hearings recommended.

"If we truly are intent on doing better by children and families, we can't ignore the courts and the legal process," said Myriam Krinsky, a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission and a state courts consultant. "The commission's recommendations acknowledge that we have to do business differently, and that children and families will continue to pay the price if we don't start to turn the corner."

The commission is the first of its kind in California, focusing on the court's role in the child welfare system. Commissioners included judges, attorneys, legislators, child welfare directors, foster youth, child advocates, tribal leaders, academics and philanthropists.

The recommendations in the commission's 20-page report aim at reducing the number of children in foster care, a system believed to poorly serve the children it is designed to protect. Key recommendations include:

• Removing children from their homes should be a last resort, and children temporarily separated from parents should be returned home by the courts as quickly as possible. If the state does take custody, children in long-term foster care should receive financial and other support through age 21, rather than ending foster care at age 18 as is the current practice.

• Local trial courts should prioritize the often-shunned dependency courts. All dependency cases should be heard by judges, not the court-appointed referees and commissioners who now hear most cases.

• All court clients - including children - should have an opportunity to participate in their hearings; with the exception of cases in Los Angeles County, children are routinely absent. Clients should get help with rides to court, and hearings should be set at specific times, so that school and work conflicts for parents can be accommodated.

To improve the quality of representation in dependency court, the commission calls for attorneys to meet with clients "before the initial hearing and in advance of all subsequent hearings," a basic communication now lacking in most courtrooms.

The commission also wants higher pay and lowered caseloads for lawyers who now carry as many as 600 cases in some regions. This is hundreds more cases than competent attorneys can reasonably manage, experts say.

What's more, new attorneys should be encouraged to enter a field too often shunned, the report stated: Juvenile dependency law should be a mandatory area of study for the California Bar Exam and student loans should be forgiven for those entering the field.

Some dependency court insiders viewed the long-awaited report with some disappointment, fearing that the language is too vague to have an impact. Others fear the state's dire fiscal crisis will be an obstacle to the legislation and resources needed to make lasting change.

Jonathan Pearson a 25-year-old former foster youth who serves on the commission, said he hopes the recommendations will be strengthened and improved following public comment.

Pearson, removed from his drug-addicted mother at age 3, lived in nine different court-ordered placements. Going to court often meant a four-hour wait, before a minutes-long hearing with a lawyer he had just met.

For the commission to have the impact Pearson and others desire, "I think that we have more work to do," he said. "We need to make sure that not only is the report politically viable, but there's a clear way to implement every recommendation."

Commissioner Darrell Steinberg - who is incoming president pro tem of the state Senate - said the state's fiscal crisis makes it impossible to implement reforms that cost money. But the Sacramento Democrat is hopeful there will be future opportunities to spend money on desperately needed change.

"If we don't help children and families during these most difficult times," Steinberg said, "they will bear the consequences and so will we."

IF YOU'RE INTERESTED

The commission report may be seen at: www.courtinfo.ca.gov/jc/tflists/bluerib-rec.htm