By Elvin Gonzalez,
Family Division Administrator, Berrien County Trial Court
It was the fall of 2016.
The e-mail from Judge Mabel J. Mayfield, our Presiding Family Division
Judge, said, “Here is an interesting grant opportunity we may want to pursue.” Her e-mail was the beginning of a great
adventure for our family division and all those in Berrien County with an
interest in the child protective system.
The timing of this opportunity
could not have been better for our court.
Over the past 15 years, the Berrien County Trial County-Family Division has
implemented several progressive, evidence-based reforms on the delinquency side
of our juvenile division. Almost half of
all of the delinquency petitions that are filed are being diverted to informal
proceedings. We have implemented a wide
range of treatment options for our youth on probation, from short-term group/family
therapy classes to home-based therapy.
We are very proud of the work we have done in these areas and the
positive performance outcomes we have accomplished and felt poised to turn our
sights to the child protective side and see what improvements could be made there. The Implementation Site Project gave us a perfect
opportunity to do this. With the
encouragement and assistance of our lead judge, Judge Brian Berger, we
completed the application form and were selected as an implementation site.
Once chosen as an implementation
site, we became part of a three-year partnership with the NCJFCJ for the
purpose of implementing best practices in our child protective
proceedings. We have been assigned a
liaison from NCJFCJ to assist us in our efforts, as well as various technical
assistance expert consultants and the ability to network with other model sites
across the country. The first year of
the project was dedicated to assessing our current performance and setting our goals. In the second year, NCJFCJ is working with us
to do trainings on topics such as becoming trauma-informed and providing us
with opportunities to align our practices, policies, and procedures with
nationally recognized best practice standards. The third year will be utilized to implement a
“dream project” that we would like to achieve, as well as continue overall
improvement of our processes.
The assessment process began in
March 2017 when our NCJFCJ liaison came to Berrien County and observed our
child protective courtroom proceedings, met with our stakeholders, and reviewed
files for three days. The liaison issued
a report of her observations that was very helpful to us in identifying our
strengths and the areas that needed improvement.
Next, Judge Berger convened a
group of representatives of all our stakeholders in the child welfare process
in Berrien County. The group includes:
prosecutors, Department of Health and Human Services representatives, parents’
attorneys, guardians ad litem, attorney referees, court administrators, deputy
registers, private providers, foster parents, community mental health
representatives, court appointed special advocates (CASAs), and local
university experts in the field of trauma and child welfare. We continue our efforts to have a parent and
youth representative on the group, to have client voices at the table.
This group has been meeting
monthly for over a year now. Judge
Berger started us out by developing a “wish list” of items we would like to
improve in our system. We then took that
list and broke it into categories. As a
result, we ended up with the following agreed-upon goals:
1)
improve services for our families;
2) provide
mediation in our child protective proceedings;
3) become
a trauma-informed court;
4) enhance
performance measures data collection;
5)
improve court proceedings.
We have subgroups for each of
these areas, and work within these subgroups is proceeding diligently.
This has been a great adventure
for all of us. Bringing us together to productively
tackle tough issues and problems has opened up communication and collaboration
between the various stakeholders. In the
past, communication barriers and silo mentalities have kept groups from working
well together – even though our goals are the same: providing safe and
supportive homes for children and the best opportunities for success to our
families.
We have already accomplished
some important things. With the
partnership of the State Court Administrative Office and Lakeland Hospital in
St. Joseph, Michigan, we hosted a regional trauma training on April 19, 2018. A number of nationally-recognized speakers
presented at this training, and registration was at full capacity. We have evaluated our data collection methods
and begun collecting additional data variables that will be helpful in
assessing our outcomes. Subgroups are
working to gather information to move forward in the other areas we have
identified: using mediation, having children in court, and enhancing the
assessment and trauma-informed resources for children and parents.
Perhaps most importantly, there
is a sense of excitement and optimism around the project that is infectious and
contributes to our progress and commitment to success.
We are about halfway through
this project now and want to acknowledge our judges for being great “seed
planters,” encouraging taking risks and being open to change.
We also appreciate our community partners who
have demonstrated a willingness to ask tough questions and explore
possibilities of reform and alignment with national standards. And we are appreciative of the excellent
technical assistance provided by our NJFCJ partnership and look forward to the
successful implementation of the changes that ultimately benefit the families
we serve.
Mr. Gonzales has more than 30 years of experience working
in the juvenile justice field, including detention facilities, residential
treatment, intensive probation services, and management of Probation and Court
Services Departments in DuPage County, Illinois, and in Michigan.
He has served as a progressive leader in organizational
change management in the juvenile justice field by championing evidence-based
practices and data-driven decision making.