Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee:

I am Eva J. Klain, an attorney with the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law, where I serve as Director of Court Improvement. On behalf of Martha W. Barnett, President of the American Bar Association (ABA), I am pleased to submit this statement to express our strong support for reauthorizing programs that are working to achieve systemic improvement of our nation's juvenile dependency court systems, so that all children who have been the victims of abuse and neglect can achieve safety and permanency and enjoy the stability and love of family.

The ABA has for many years devoted considerable attention to improving court processes affecting children in foster care. In 1980, the ABA House of Delegates adopted a resolution in support of passage of the federal Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, P.L. 96-272, 42 U.S.C. §§ 620-629, 670-679. In 1988, the ABA House of Delegates further called for substantial amendments to that Act to strengthen the role of the legal system and ensure more consistent services for children, including creation of federal fiscal incentives to courts to reduce or limit delays in foster care litigation and improve court rules governing foster care cases. In February 1997, the ABA House approved a recommendation supporting federal legislation to remove barriers to adoption.

The courts are vital to achieving permanency for children in foster care and other out-of-home placements, and especially to the expeditious adoption of children who cannot return home. Our statement addresses the progress being made as a result of the federal court improvement grants­appropriated by Congress under the 1993 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act to the highest courts in each state and reauthorized under ASFA­and the opportunities they provide for systemic improvements.

By enacting the Court Improvement Program (CIP), Congress recognized that improved state court proceedings in foster care and adoption cases is critically important to abused and neglected children and their families. The court improvement grants enable each state to develop and implement its own plan for systemic court reform. All 50 states and the District of Columbia have chosen to actively participate in the Court Improvement Program. This is a testament to the need for the Program and to its initial success.

The American Bar Association urges the Subcommittee to recommend that Congress extend Title IV-B, Subpart 2 of the Social Security Act, with an increase in the $10 million annual set aside for court improvement under the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program. The funding of Title IV-B, Subpart 2 overall has increased considerably since its enactment in 1993. Expanding the court improvement set aside would allow courts, which have not seen an increase since 1994, to further improve their processes for the benefit of the children and families that come before them. Such an increase would also correspond well with the President’s request for more funding in the budget for Title IV-B, Subpart 2.

The Importance of the Federal Court Improvement Program (CIP)

CIP is essential to the safety and well being of children in foster care. On any given day in our nation's juvenile dependency courts, judges are called upon to decide issues of vital importance to thousands of children and their families. Court decisions in abuse and neglect cases are often of a "life and death" nature because courts must determine whether children will be safe at home or in specific placements. Courts must also at the same time think of the long-term and make difficult decisions about whether children’s ties with parents, siblings and other relatives will be maintained or forever severed. Moreover, they must evaluate the provision of services, including medical, psychological and educational services, to children in foster care to ensure that permanency plans can be implemented quickly.

Unfortunately, juvenile courts continue to need specific, directed assistance to improve their functioning. In numerous courts throughout this country, judicial and attorney caseloads continue to be so high that emergency removal hearings, foster care review hearings, and other pertinent court reviews too often last no longer than five or ten minutes. Overcrowded dockets, inefficient case scheduling systems (causing social workers and others to waste precious time waiting for cases to be heard), overburdened or unprepared attorneys, and frequent rotation of judges who may or may not have expertise or interest in child welfare law, all contribute to significant delays in achieving permanency for children in foster care and are a primary obstacle to the placement of children with adoptive families.

Without well-functioning court systems, otherwise effective case plans or the provision of social services alone cannot bring about the timely adoption of abused and neglected children who are unable to return home. Well-functioning courts are essential to achieving good results for abused and neglected children. When a child protection agency seeks to remove a child from a dangerous home situation, the agency cannot make this decision on its own. It is ultimately the judge who must hear and weigh the evidence and decide what steps are necessary to keep the child safe. Similarly, when parents ask for a child in foster care to be returned home, the agency alone cannot ensure the child’s safety. The court must decide whether and when the child will return. Finally, when a child cannot safely return home, the agency itself cannot achieve a timely alternative permanent placement such as adoption. The court must decide whether to terminate the parents’ rights and approve the child’s adoption. All these decisions must be carefully considered and made on a timely basis that serves the needs of vulnerable children.

Real improvement in the court system requires a better-organized approach to child abuse and neglect proceedings, including improved caseflow management, a highly disciplined process of reviewing cases in a timely and comprehensive manner, the appointment or election of judges who are educated on child welfare law and related concerns, the appointment of skilled attorneys for children, and sufficient numbers of judges to give cases the attention they warrant. The Court Improvement Program funded by Congress is designed to help states to accomplish these important goals.

The overriding principle underlying the Resource Guidelines is that child abuse and neglect cases must be a court priority if timely and thoughtful case decision-making is to occur in the cases of our most vulnerable children. Approaching the standard of quality mandated by the Guidelines presents a major challenge to all court participants involved with juvenile court improvement.

CIP is essential to the success of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA). Over two decades ago, Congress enacted the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act (AACWA) to combat the harm children experience when left "adrift" in the child welfare system. The Act clarified and expanded the role of courts and child welfare agencies in achieving stable, permanent placements for children committed to state care. It required courts to determine whether agencies made reasonable efforts to ensure that children are not unnecessarily separated from their families when appropriate services can keep them together, conduct foster care review hearings, and to hold decision making hearings to ensure that children are placed into permanent homes.

While the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act resulted in assuring accountability for children in foster care in many important respects, it did not achieve all of its goals. Since its enactment in 1980, the number of child abuse cases brought to the attention of state courts has greatly increased, as has the difficulty and complexity of those cases. While children’s average length of stay in foster care was reduced after the enactment of AACWA, much greater reductions are possible. While the number of adoptions increased, far more children should be placed into adoptive homes.

As a result of a growing consensus that AACWA needed to be strengthened, Congress enacted the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) in 1997. ASFA was meant to achieve greater safety and permanency for abused and neglected children. It did this, in part, by expanding and clarifying the role of courts. ASFA modified reasonable efforts requirements to increase the courts’ focus on child safety, health, and well-being, and to more strongly promote adoption for those children who cannot safely return home. It required a judicial "permanency hearing" to protect children from needless drift in foster care. ASFA set time limits for the filing of petitions for the termination of parental rights and required early filing of such petitions in some of the most extreme cases.

The intent behind ASFA, including the new requirements imposed on courts, was to decrease the amount of time children remain in foster care, thereby reducing "foster care drift," and to increase the speed with which decisions on permanency are made on behalf of the child. To help ensure that the new requirements for courts are implemented effectively, the court improvement grants are essential to the success of the Adoption and Safe Families Act.

As required by the federal court improvement grants, states completed detailed self-assessments to evaluate the quality of their court process and identify obstacles to achieving timely permanency plans for children. To collect data, states relied on written surveys, site visits, detailed interviews with court participants, court observation, case file review, focus groups and a variety of other information gathering methods.

All grant recipients established advisory committees to provide guidance to the projects. The Advisory Committees are composed of a wide spectrum of individuals involved in local court processes, including judges, judicial administrators, attorneys representing children and parents, foster parents, former foster children, Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASAs), members of citizen foster care review boards, and the staff of government social service agencies. Participation often requires a commitment of volunteer time and effort, as well as a commitment of resources from the state. The inclusiveness of the advisory committees provides additional strength to these projects by ensuring broad-based community involvement and the identification of unique, effective local court practices.

Many states implemented innovative approaches to reform. The following are several examples:

• Demonstration projects to create one or two "high functioning" courts within the state. When these projects are successful, the state may implement similar model systems throughout the state.
• Development of regular long-term training curricula for new judges, attorneys, case workers, and CASA volunteers to educate them about child welfare law and basics principles of child development. Training should be regular, continual (i.e., not one time only) and mandatory.
• Creation of legal manuals for judges, attorneys, and child advocates.
• On-site technical assistance on improving court calendaring practices, caseflow management and consistent information systems.

So far, most court improvement projects have instituted reforms that are both realistic and systemic. Some states have pursued and acquired additional funding through state legislative appropriations. All these reforms allow children to move through the court process more quickly, enabling courts to achieve permanency in the placement of foster children and adoption for those children who cannot return home.

One of the most valuable outcomes of the Court Improvement Program is the resultant ability for states to share information and replicate the successful reforms and innovative strategies implemented in other states. This process generates knowledge and energy among those who work in the court system and who often face difficult cases on a daily basis. It has revitalized the often-overwhelmed system itself.

As a result of the Court Improvement Program, many more resources specifically addressing systemic court reform are now available. These include the ABA Center on Children and the Law’s bimonthly newsletter, Child CourtWorks; a yearly Court Improvement Progress Report, which includes all the state contacts for the CIP projects; a catalogue of resources, manuals and benchbooks produced by the CIP projects themselves; an active and informative "child-court" listserv discussion group; and numerous websites addressing court improvement. The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges has also produced many valuable resources on court improvement, including technical assistance bulletins on specific reform issues, a compilation of "Bragging Rights" of CIP accomplishments, and specific trainings and publications.

The process of assessing court practices has resulted in additional benefits as well. The ability to focus closely on this often-neglected area of court functioning has raised the visibility of dependency courts and children’s issues at the highest levels of the state court systems, including the highest appellate courts and administrative offices. The assessments provide statewide information that administrative offices can use to standardize proceedings and promote a consistent review of cases and provision of services.

The Court Improvement Program also has allowed many state’s administrative offices of the courts to establish protocols and procedures to better gather information of their own performance in the future. With improved computer technology and information management systems, courts will be able to track children through the system, determine whether they are being placed in permanent homes, match adoptive families with foster children, and identify where delays continue to exist in the court process. The involvement of social service agencies on the project advisory committees and as subjects of surveys, site visits and interviews is making those agencies rethink their own policies and procedures related to the court process.

An additional aspect of improved court proceedings is better treatment of individuals while they are in the courthouse. Families are not being served well when they must wait an entire morning or even a whole day for a five-minute hearing. Families are not served well when they have their case continued because a social worker or attorney is not present. Conversely, when courts hold timely and in-depth hearings and judges take the time to communicate clearly with children, families, and social workers, such actions convey the message that abuse and neglect cases are taken seriously, that children and families are treated with dignity, and that the court's orders are to be obeyed.

The Court Improvement Program is producing sound results across the country. These modest grants are causing States to intensify their focus on child abuse and neglect proceedings in a way that was previously impossible. Continued CIP funding is needed, however, to maintain the momentum of court reform efforts through continuing emphasis from the States’ highest courts. The funding would ensure that staff in each state’s Administrative Office of Courts, which are connected to the state supreme courts and through which most CIP grants are administered, are dedicated to this specific issue.

Furthermore, progress on reforms is incomplete in all states; that is, none has finished implementing all its recommended reforms. No state is yet strong in all areas of court functioning, and progress is often uneven within and among the states. Some states have high functioning courts in certain cities or counties but not in all, while some states have progressed much further than others on statewide reforms. Courts must continue to evaluate and improve the process by which they place children with loving and nurturing adoptive families, reunify children with their families, and achieve permanency for children who have often been shuttled from one foster home to another. Continued federal support is warranted and needed for these reforms to continue.

Congress has made only a very modest investment in helping courts perform their required role in dependency and foster care cases. The federal government currently spends billions of dollars each year to improve states’ protection of abused and neglected children. These funds help pay for needed services such as foster care, adoption, efforts to safeguard families, and reporting and investigation of child abuse and neglect. Yet the Court Improvement Program receives only 10 million dollars per year to strengthen court proceedings for abused and neglected children. It is clear that additional funding can help achieve significant court improvements.

While court improvement serves to reduce children’s length of stay in foster care and is operating in a highly cost-effective manner to reduce federal and state costs, it requires additional resources, for additional judicial staff, training and education, and enhanced judicial competence through better recruitment, training and judicial assignment practices. Implementation of the state-based court improvement recommendations can go a long way to achieving those goals. Much remains to be done. Most courts still need to readjust their levels of staff to allow more thorough hearings and further reductions in delays. Most courts still need to provide more consistent education for judges and lawyers on child welfare issues. And most state court systems still need to fund experimental pilot projects, with expert, neutral evaluators, to show the extent to which court performance can be improved and how such improvement can benefit children.

The American Bar Association urges the Subcommittee to recommend that Congress extend Title IV-B, Subpart 2 of the Social Security Act, including the court improvement set aside from the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program. We also strongly urge that the Subcommittee recommend a substantial increase in the current $10 million annual set aside for court improvement. Expanding the court improvement set aside would allow courts to further speed their decision making progress, more carefully oversee child safety, and implement more truly experimental programs. Increasing the monies for the Court Improvement Program will not require any increase in the appropriations for Title IV-B, Subpart 2, because CIP is a set aside from the appropriation for Subpart 2.

In closing, the ABA urges your strong support for reauthorizing and expanding the Court Improvement Program, to support the states as they move forward with their court system reforms so that all children who are victims of abuse and neglect achieve permanency and experience secure, stable and loving homes.