The permanency planning hearing is a special type of court proceeding designed to reach a decision concerning the permanent placement of the child. Possible permanent placements include the child’s return home and the child’s adoption. We found two key problems to varying degrees in all five states we visited: (1) a lack of cooperative working relationships between the courts and other participants involved in the child welfare system, including conflict over how courts and child welfare agencies resolve issues, and (2) difficult personnel and data management issues, such as inadequate numbers of judges and attorneys to handle large caseloads; frequent turnover among judges and attorneys; inadequate training of judges and attorneys in the area of child welfare; and a lack of efficient, automated information systems for tracking case data. Despite this shared involvement in handling child maltreatment cases, the courts and agencies often do not work well together. These reforms can be divided into two categories: those that seek to improve the overall operation and infrastructure of the courts, such as convening multidisciplinary advisory committees and developing automated information systems, and those that target improving decision-making in individual cases, primarily by using information-gathering and dispute-resolution techniques in addition to formal court hearings. As a result, states and localities currently do not know which interventions have improved their courts and which have not. Circuit officials believe the juvenile dependency court system has become less adversarial and that the focus has shifted away from winning or losing a case. Finally, two of the five local sites we visited have increased the length of the preliminary protective hearing. During our field work, state and local officials that have undertaken reforms identified three ingredients that are key to successful reform efforts: (1) the presence of judicial leadership and collaboration among child welfare system participants, (2) the availability of timely information on how the court is currently operating and processing cases, and (3) the availability of financial resources to initiate and sustain reform. For example, in 1995 the ABA reported on reforms undertaken in the Kent County, Michigan, juvenile dependency court. Similarly, the ABA’s 1995 report on the model juvenile court in Kent County, Michigan, found that the court’s interdisciplinary efforts to resolve individual cases as well as systemic problems was a key element in its successful reform. The high level of animosity between the court and the child welfare agency has diminished, and dialogue between court participants has increased. Concluding Observations

The juvenile dependency courts face numerous systemic problems that hinder their ability to oversee, monitor, and guide decision-making to protect children and ensure that they are placed in an appropriate, permanent home. To address these problems, states and localities have initiated reforms aimed at improving the quality and timeliness of judicial decisions, in order to minimize the amount of time children spend in the foster care system. Finally, for the states we visited, we reviewed assessments of foster care and adoption laws and judicial processes in child maltreatment proceedings.
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed states' and local agencies' efforts to improve the timeliness of judicial decisions concerning the permanent placement of foster children, focusing on: (1) the key problems in the juvenile dependency court system; and (2) state and local responses to these problems.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) serious systemic problems continue to plague the juvenile dependency court system; (2) states GAO visited reported a lack of cooperation between the courts and child welfare agencies as well as difficult personnel and data management issues that jeopardize the courts' ability to ensure that a child's stay in the foster care system is as brief as possible and that the permanent placement decided upon is in the best overall interest of the child; (3) despite their shared involvement in the child welfare system, courts and child welfare agencies often do not work well together; (4) for example, some judges mistrust the judgments of caseworkers and routinely order additional clinical assessments to compensate for what the judges perceive as professional inadequacies; (5) in addition, courts face numerous difficulties, including increased caseloads, short tenures for judges and attorneys assigned to juvenile dependency courts, insufficient training of judges and attorneys in child welfare law and concepts, and information systems that do not adequately track the progress of individual cases or monitor the courts' compliance with statutory timeframes for achieving permanent placements; (6) in response to these problems, some states have initiated court reforms that they believe reduce the length of time children spend in foster care and improve the quality of the decisions made by the courts; (7) these reforms generally fall into two categories: (a) reforms which are designed to improve the overall operation and infrastructure of the courts, including convening multidisciplinary advisory committees to resolve differences that exist between the courts and the organizations involved in court proceedings as well as developing juvenile dependency court information systems; and (b) reforms focused on improving the quality of decisionmaking on individual cases; (8) these reforms include holding mediation sessions in which all relevant parties meet to resolve issues in dispute in a non-adversarial setting outside the courtroom, as well as increasing the time allotted for specific hearings; (9) regardless of the nature of the reform, state and local officials at the sites GAO visited identified three ingredients that successful reform efforts have in common; and (10) these essential reform components are the presence of judicial leadership and collaboration among court participants, the availability of timely information on case processing performance, and the availability of financial resources to initiate and sustain reforms.