National Quality Improvement Center  for Collaborative Community Court Teams

Funded By: Administration on Children, Youth and Families – Children’s Bureau

As the lead agency for the QIC-CCCT, CCFF brought over two decades of experience providing technical assistance to support tribes, states, regions, and communities to improve outcomes for children and families affected by substance use and mental disorders. Since 2014, CCFF has provided In-Depth Technical Assistance to respond to the needs of infants and parents or caregivers affected by prenatal substance exposure. This training and technical assistance focused on implementing the provisions of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act related to infants affected by prenatal substance exposure, including the development of Plans of Safe Care.

NCSC offered expertise in best practices for collaborative courts and extensive court-based networks for dissemination. AHP conducted a rigorous independent evaluation—providing expertise in Continuous Quality Improvement and applying research to practice. 

The QIC-CCCT also drew on a team of expert consultants including the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law, the Tribal Law and Policy Institute (TLPI), and other nationally recognized individuals. Consultant areas of expertise included attorney engagement, dependency courts, joint jurisdiction Tribal Healing to Wellness Courts, culturally appropriate services, prenatal substance exposure, early intervention and child development, collaboration with the medical community and practitioners, SUD treatment of pregnant women (including those with methamphetamine or opioid use disorders), and community collaboration with opioid-dependent pregnant women. 

NCSC has been working in the dependency court improvement arena for over 25 years, providing knowledge and information, research, consulting, TTAC, and court association support services to state and local courts. NCSC’s staff of 170 have substantive and operational knowledge, and direct court experience with CWS issues, including the evaluation of pilot programs, organizational reviews of current court structures, assessment of services provided to children and families, and improvement plans for service delivery. NCSC developed a nationally recognized set of court performance measures for child protection cases and developed data exchange efforts between child protection courts and CWS agencies to track child and family outcomes, make data-informed policy and practice improvements, and engage in CQI efforts.

With more than 35 years of experience, AHP brings an impressive combination of evaluation skills, subject matter expertise, objectivity, and real-world experience to this evaluation. As an independent research and technical assistance firm that translates “science to service,” AHP is a national leader that works with providers, communities, states, and the federal government to transform systems serving vulnerable populations. With contracts in the areas of CWS, substance use, mental health, homelessness, and criminal justice, AHP works closely with communitybased programs to assess, document, and disseminate promising practices to the field. Staff have extensive evaluation experience with federally-funded projects; designing, implementing, and analyzing mixed-methods process and outcome components; securing and working with CWS and other administrative data; training programs to collect and use data to improve results; and reporting findings in timely and innovative ways.

Website: http://www.home.tlpi.org/

Website: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/child_law.html

Demonstration site are further supported by the QIC-CCCT Subject Matter Experts, who are nationally recognized experts.

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