Family Drug Courts

Project Overview

Family Drug Courts (FDC) oversee cases of child abuse and neglect involving parental substance use disorders. Their purpose is to protect child safety, ensure permanency in caregiving environments, and promote the wellbeing of children through family recovery. The court operates collaboratively, drawing on community partners’ expertise in child welfare, substance abuse treatment and other community services to address the needs and build on the strengths of each family member. The partners ensure timely access to substance abuse treatment and other needed services through better communication and efficiencies across service systems. In comparison with standard services, FDC outcomes have shown that parents achieve faster access to substance abuse treatment, increased reunification rates and decreased re-entries to child welfare services that can result in cost savings to the child welfare system.

The Center for Children and Family Futures (CCFF) offers a comprehensive Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) Program that builds on its extensive, award-winning experience to improve outcomes for children and families. In 2009, CCFF won the award from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to implement their Family Drug Court Technical Assistance and Training Program. The programs supports training and technical assistance that helps States, state and local courts, local government and Tribes to build the capacity to develop, maintain, and enhance family drug courts. There are approximately 322 FDCs currently operating. CCFF’s mission for the FDC Technical Assistance program is to improve outcomes for children and families by providing TTA that targets key practice and policy components: developing cross-system collaboration, implementing efficient practice, conducting needs assessments, providing staff training and development, conducting research and evaluation and developing sustainability plans. At present, CFF has worked as a technical assistance provider for over 300 technical assistance requests made by more than 60 FDCs across 26 States.

The FDC program uses a variety of technical assistance and training methods to engage FDC teams from across the country. These include web-based learning communities, on-site expert consultation, off-site consultation and support, policy analysis and focused resource and product development on specific Family Drug Court issues.The FDC Learning Academy consists of a series of web-based trainings to enhance, expand and sustain FDCs. Launched in 2010, the Learning Academy is comprised of three levels of learning communities that is responsive to the developmental stages of FDCs: Planning Community, Early Implementation, and Enhanced Community. Thus far,The FDC Learning Academy has hosted a total of 15 webinars with 30 hours of content and 1048 attendees across 42 states. In 2012, the Academy will launch a new webinar series geared towards established FDCs. Topics will focus on institutionalizing FDC innovations for wider community impact.

CCFF, in cooperation with OJJDP, has announced the Family Drug Court Peer Learning Court Program. Recognizing the need to highlight national best practice models for Family Drug Courts and to further the exchange of learning through peer-to-peer technical assistance, this program will identify and disseminate best practice models and create five mentorship sites across the nation. In addition, CCFFs’ FDC Program has partnered with other Federal and State stakeholders to craft a guidance document on best practices and principles for developing performance standards for FDCs. The recommendations and sample guidelines will be based on research, previous publications, standards that have been adopted by various States and expert panel review and consultation. . This will be an invaluable resource tool for States to create their own standards that reflect the uniqueness and the needs of the FDCs in their State, while creating uniform benchmarks for what constitutes FDC best practices.