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Court News Ohio
Ohio Supreme Court
Addresses Child Welfare Safety
By Anne Yeager
April 27, 2018
The Ohio Supreme Court’s Children and Families Section invited judges,
prosecutors, child welfare agencies, and experts to a recent forum to
try to improve collaboration in child welfare cases.
This was the annual multi-disciplinary training hosted in collaboration
with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
“We started the day looking at the child safety decision-making
process,” said Veronica Burroughs, court improvement program analyst
for the Children and Families Section. “We are addressing how all of
the players in these cases are able to communicate effectively.”
One challenge is that courts and child welfare agencies sometimes speak
two different languages.
“It’s really important for us to have opportunities like today to come
together to develop a common language,” said Carla Carpenter, deputy
director of the Office of Families and Children in the Department of
Job and Family Services. “It’s about creating a shared understanding to
do collaborative planning together and really lay the groundwork for
what we do together on behalf of children and families every day.”
One suggestion? Experts say it’s critical to ask six key questions to
determine whether a child is safe to return to the home:
What is the nature of the maltreatment?
What are the circumstances?
What is the child’s day-to-day functioning?
What is the parental discipline?
What are the parenting practices?
What are the parents’ life management skills?
“They talked about the six concepts and the six questions to ask with
regard to removal,” Franklin County Magistrate Michelle Edgar said. “We
are definitely going to incorporate those into our entries and the
information given to us by our child protective service workers.”
Another challenging issue is substance abuse in Ohio counties.
The group has teamed up with the non-profit Children and Family Future
to help parents with mental health and substance abuse disorders
maintain hope of achieving recovery and family stability so they can
care for their children.
Jennifer Foley, senior program associate, spoke to the participants
about the effects of substance use, evidence-based treatment, and how
collaborative practices can help engage families for better outcomes.
“We’re looking at how recovery and that timeline works with the child
welfare timeline in these cases,” Burroughs said.
Another focus of the day was effective representation for the families
in child welfare cases.
Michele Cortese, from the Center for Family Representation, spoke to
participants about the four cornerstones of representation:
Family visitation
Child placement
Services for the family
Out-of-court meetings
Many participants walked away with ideas on increasing community-based,
family visitation.
The important takeaway for these partners was to find one thing from
the conference and implement it in their courts, or their systems.
But it takes a team effort.
“Collaboration is critical to the work that we do with children and
families,” Carpenter said. “Courts can’t do it alone, and child welfare
agencies can’t do it alone. We need to work together. It’s important to
get opportunities like the one today.”
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