National Judicial Leadership Summits on Child Welfare

Continuing Upwards from the Summit 2023
The National Judicial Leadership Summits and all follow-up events are intended to mobilize the legal and judicial community and other child welfare partners around a national vision for ensuring the well-being of children with their families. The summits are focused on 5 themes:
  1. Incorporating the Voice of Families in the Court Process
  2. Delivering High Quality Legal Representation to Families in Child Welfare
  3. Safely Preventing the Unnecessary Entry of Children into Foster Care Through Meaningful Initial Hearing
  4. Courts Ensuring Procedural Fairness, Equity and Access to Justice for All Families
  5. Leading Child Welfare Reform from the Supreme Court and AOC
Review past summit recordings and resources

This  Summit event took place June 6-7th and served to allow teams to revisit the action plans they developed over the course of the Summit’s presentations and discussions, which centered around five themes. The Summit will included numerous “Summit Spotlights” from around the country, and a renewed call to action.

Summit Resources
Day 1:

Day 2:

Other Resources:

Setting the Stage for the Summit

This meeting provided information about  the Continuing Upward from the Summit event. We provided an overview of what to expect at Continuing Upward from the Summit on June 6-7, discussed suggestions to maximize the return on time and energy investment, and answered questions.

Post summit Meetings

To continue the forward momentum, and with the support of the Summit Partners, Summit attendees were encouraged to meet with their teams to revisit the Summit Action Plan(s) (from the August 2020 event and following the 2019 Summit in Minneapolis) to identify action items and next steps for their jurisdiction around the Ensuring Justice in Child Welfare themes:

  1. Reducing racial injustice in the child welfare system;
  2. Reducing the number of children unnecessarily entering foster care, including strategies specifically designed to disentangle poverty from neglect; and
  3. Improving high quality legal representation upstream and with a multidisciplinary team approach, including constituent voice.

National partners hosted a series of virtual small group meetings in early October 2020 to allow teams to connect with other teams around Summit themes. These meetings allowed for networking and sharing of ideas around challenges, strategies and innovations.

Ensuring Justice In Child Welfare Change Collaborative Meetings

In a moment of unprecedented change, this series of collaborative meetings provides space for peer sharing around progress, barriers and concrete steps to elevate, understand and implement strategies related to Family Voice, Racial Justice Data and Quality Legal Advocacy.

The Collaboratives were designed to respond by the local community to:

  1. Harness the collective power among peers;
  2. Access subject matter experts and those with lived experience;
  3. Dedicate time to work through these issues with team and community members; and
  4. Provide a direct conduit for Technical Assistance.

Resources

States’ Experiences with Claiming Title IV-E - This document provides an overview of the states claiming IV-E funds for representation in Child Welfare cases. The document also provides findings from a survey taken by child welfare agency administration and finance staff, attorneys, and Court Improvement Program (CIP) representatives, asking about a state’s current status regarding drawing down of Title IV-E funds.

Video Recordings

Continuing Upwards from the Summit 2021 Year End Event.

During this meeting, attendees reflect on their jurisdiction’s efforts on central issues in child welfare, share reflections with peers, and set for the foundation for 2022. The meeting gave attendees a refresher of content and resources provided through the Family Voice, Quality Legal Advocacy, and Racial Justice Change Collaboratives.

Family Voice Change Collaborative Meeting Recordings

This kickoff meeting for the Change Collaborative on Family Voice introduced participants to the purpose and values of the Collaborative. The meeting featured a presentation from My Community Cares on their multi-tiered, multi-disciplinary, and community-driven approach to build the capacity of communities to connect Louisiana’s most vulnerable children and families to supports and services they need. Participants were asked to think about how similar programs work in their jurisdictions and start planning for how they might incorporate what they learned from the presentation, into their current efforts.

Family Voice Change Collaborative Kickoff Meeting

Family Voice Change Collaborative Meeting #2

Family Voice Change Collaborative Meeting #3

Racial Justice Data Change Collaborative Meeting Recordings

This kickoff meeting for the Change Collaborative on Racial Justice Data introduced participants to the purpose and values of the Collaborative. This Collaborative meeting featured presentations from Kathryn Genthon, Senior Court Research Analyst at the National Center for State Courts, and Melissa Sickmund, Director, National Center for Juvenile Justice at the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges. The presenters highlighted reasons why it is important to consider the historical context of data and systemic inequities, collect detailed race data, and provided recommendations for how data should be collected.

Racial Justice Data Change Collaborative Kickoff Meeting

Racial Justice Data Change Collaborative Meeting #2

Racial Justice Data Change Collaborative Meeting #3

Quality Legal Advocacy Change Collaborative Meeting Recordings

This kickoff meeting for the Change Collaborative on Quality Legal Advocacy encouraged participants to dream big about the way legal services are delivered to families involved in child welfare. The meeting featured a panel consisting of Prof. Vivek Sankaranrom, University of Michigan School of Law; Judge Edwina Mendelson, Deputy Chief Administrative Judge, NY State Unified Court System; and David P. Kelly, Children’s Bureau, ACYF, DHHS. The panel shared why it is so important to advance quality legal advocacy, shared their experiences and successes, and noted the importance of promoting the inclusion of family voice in the design and development of legal advocacy efforts.

Quality Legal Advocacy Change Collaborative Kickoff Meeting

Quality Legal Advocacy Change Collaborative Meeting #2

On August 10-11, 2020, the Ensuring Justice in Child Welfare virtual summit convened teams inclusive of leadership from the courts as well as from the child welfare agency to attend a series of online presentations focused on strategies to support racial justice in the child welfare system. Almost 500 team members attended, representing every state, three territories, and five tribes, in addition to several hundred observers.

The purpose of the Ensuring Justice in Child Welfare virtual summit was to energize teams comprised of court and child welfare system leaders and stakeholders around collaborative efforts to intentionally focus on racial justice by harnessing the power of judicial leadership and embracing strategies that strengthen families, prevent unnecessary removal of children, and provide equitable access to justice for all families.

Summit Resources
  • The Growing Role for Courts in Working with At-Risk Families- Details some preventative and upstream approaches that can decrease the negative impacts on children, decrease the load on formalized systems, and help families
    stay together while they heal.
  • Courts, COVID and Permanency- Outlines ways that the judicial and legal community and its partners can promote positive permanency outcomes for children and families under their jurisdiction, during the COVID pandemic.
Day 1:

Day 2:

The National Judicial Leadership Summit IV on Child Welfare, was held in September 2019 and was intended to mobilize the legal and judicial community and other child welfare partners around a new national vision for ensuring the well-being of children with their families.  Jurisdictions and other national partners and organizations were urged  to use the key principles to guide their work going forward.

Summit Resources
Summit Opening Video: What if?

Summit Session Recordings:

Other Resources:

Theme #1: Incorporating the Voice of Families in the Court Process

Theme #2: Delivering High Quality Legal Representation to Families in Child Welfare

Theme #3: Safely Preventing the Unnecessary Entry of Children into Foster Care Through Meaningful Initial Hearings

Theme #4: Courts Ensuring Procedural Fairness, Equity and Access to Justice for All Families

Theme #5: Leading Child Welfare Reform from the Supreme Court and AOC