Video Presentation: Reasonable Efforts And Court Improvement

Organizations Focusing on Child Welfare: This video is taken from a presentation by Judge Edwards in Washington. It describes the different governmental and private efforts to improve outcomes for foster youth.

Model Courts: This video taken from a presentation by Judge Edwards describes the Model Court project of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.

Reasonable Efforts:  This video taken from a presentation by Judge Edwards explains the reasonable efforts provision of federal law, how it should be implemented and how critical it is for oversight of social services actions in child welfare proceedings.

Building a Better Court and Judicial Leadership:  This video taken from a presentation by Judge Edwards explains the importance of consistent judicial leadership in order to improve juvenile court operations.  Judicial rotation is identified as a structural problem that prevents some courts from making significant improvements.

Family Drug Treatment Court Discussion:  This video clip also taken from a presentation by Judge Edwards includes questions from the audience about Family Drug Treatment Courts and how they operate.

Group Decision Making:  This video clip discusses group decision making models and how families can and should be included in addressing child welfare issues.  The article entitled “The Transition to Group Decision Making in Child Protection Cases: Obtaining Better Results for Children and Families,” is a useful companion piece to this video.

Best Practices in Juvenile Dependency Court: This video identifies a number of best practices that have proven effective in juvenile dependency courts across the country.

Videos – Programs That Work

Wraparound Services

Wraparound services are a new and important approach to working with children who have mental health difficulties.  These services have spread quickly throughout the country.  This film explains what wraparound services are and how they work with children and families.  EMQ Families First of Campbell, California, has spearheaded the development and growth of wraparound services.  The staff at EMQ Families First is featured on the video.

Mentor Parent Program

The Mentor Parent Program of Santa Clara County hires graduates from the local Family Drug Treatment Court as mentors to parents entering the treatment court.  It is an expansion of the Mentor Mom program started in Santa Clara County over 10 years ago.  Through the voices of mentor parents, this video explains why the program has been so successful.

Dependency Mediation

Dependency mediation is one of the best practices that many juvenile dependency courts have used over the past 20 years.  Santa Clara County, California, Jefferson County, Kentucky, and San Francisco County, California, are featured in the video along with national experts on mediation.