New civil court works to reunite families

Family Dependency Treatment Court “is for parents who have lost custody of their children because of issues related to their substance abuse,” said Lisa Street, FDTC coordinator with Greene County.

Selection of the first group of families is not yet complete, Street said, but it should be done by early August.

“Reunification is our goal for this program, so if there’s something where there’s a … determination in court that it is not in the child’s best interest, they would not be eligible for this program,” Street said.

Family Dependency Treatment Court is a formalized partnership between Juvenile Court, Child Protective Services and treatment providers, Street said.

“Those were all … agencies that were providing services, but this is a more coordinated response … where all of those parties meet each week and discuss how the family is doing and planning interventions together,” she said.

Family Dependency Treatment Court also is partnering with Burrell Behavioral Health, Carol Jones Recovery Center, CoxHealth Center for Addictions, Greene County Children’s Division, the Greene County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, Legal Services of Southern Missouri, private members of the Springfield Metropolitan Bar Association and Court Appointed Special Advocates.

In April, CASA announced that it had received a grant of $5,490 from the Visiting Nurse Association Foundation of Springfield to help pay for training of volunteers for Family Dependency Treatment Court.

Karen Mills, volunteer coordinator for the new program, said a CASA volunteer will be assigned to each case in the Family Dependency Treatment Court.

CASA volunteers represent the interests of abused and neglected children in court, and Mills said children nearly always want to be with their parents.

“No matter what these parents do to their children, either because they don’t know any better or because it’s a cycle of abuse, the majority of kids … they want to be a family,” Mills said.

Teamwork

The program’s team approach, which involves not only sitting down for weekly meetings with the partner agencies, but also with the judge, is very important to successfully reuniting families, Street said.

“We’re all going to have more information about safety planning for the children … a lot more coordinated efforts for family therapy and helping put that family back together,” Street said.

Weekly meetings will become bi-weekly and then monthly as participants advance in the program, which may take as long as 18 months for completion. Abuse cases usually take two years to resolve, but Street said the hope is that with FDTC intervention, the home life will stabilize faster.

Because Family Dependency Treatment Court is more of a problem-solving court that looks to treat an entire family rather than simply a drug-abuse problem, Street calls it “therapeutic jurisprudence.”

But that doesn’t mean it’s soft.

“It’s not all ‘Pollyanna’. There are consequences. For example, if they do not stay clean, they lose privileges, and they can be incarcerated,” said Judge Thomas Mountjoy, a driving force behind Family Dependency Treatment Court.

While there are incentives and rewards for doing well, “it’s not all just hugging them and sort of naively believing things will get better, because these people have had a long history and so you have to deal with that,” he added.

Mountjoy notes that families who are selected for Family Dependency Treatment Court do still have to deal with the abuse and neglect charges that led to the children being removed from the home.

Options

Family Dependency Treatment Court is a voluntary option for families that have an abuse and neglect case pending, said Mountjoy, who previously oversaw Greene County Family Court, but is now making a transition to a criminal assignment.

Judge Calvin Holden, who formerly oversaw Adult Drug Court in Greene County, will move into Mountjoy’s previous slot overseeing Greene County Family Court, and thus, the Family Dependency Treatment Court.

“Judge Holden … has more experience than anyone in this system down here – and in fact is recognized around the state as someone of the forefront of Adult Drug Court – (he) understands the concept and is a perfect fit to be a part of this process,” Mountjoy said.

Footing the bill

Family Dependency Treatment Court’s first-year budget of $19,000 comes from the The Missouri Drug Court Commission, with staffing and judge allocations coming from the Juvenile Division of Greene County Family Court. With the current budget, a minimum of 20 families will be helped during the court’s first year.

However, that’s a fairly low number in comparison to the number of families that are affected by drug abuse – although not all of those might be eligible for the new program.

“For the year 2002-2003, 48 percent of the dependency cases – and that’s where you file a petition for a child to be placed in protective custody – 48 percent of those had issues of parental substance abuse,” Street said. “And that was affecting 253 children … just in Greene County.”

A third of the drug-related cases in Greene County involved methamphetamine, and 19 percent involved the abuse of multiple substances, Street said.

Family Dependency Treatment Court also has applied for a federal grant of $448,000 over a period of three years from the Bureau of Justice, and that should be decided by early fall, Street said.

Impact

Helping people, and especially parents, with drug addiction, is important, Holden said.

“There are studies out there that say if you grow up in a home with addiction or alcoholism, you have a 70 percent chance that you will have that same issue in your life,” Holden said.

With Family Dependency Treatment Court, the hope is if the parents successfully end drug use and the family is reunited, the children will steer clear of drugs later in life, thus ending the cycle.

“It is actually the most rewarding work I have ever done as an attorney or as a judge, to be involved in Drug Court – to see somebody come in who is so wasted that they didn’t even know what day it was – and 18 months later, they’re standing there with their kids, working, not committing crimes or … selling drugs, but working at a regular job with their kids. Mothers will come in and say they’re glad to have their sons back,” Holden said.

“They are very powerful, moving experiences. … I don’t know these kids, but I would guess that most all of them never had a chance in their whole life to have a decent life, and you give them that shot. And to see them take that shot, that’s remarkable.”

The hardest part, Holden said, is that the judicial system needs more resources.

“Because you sit in these courts and you want to do so much, because these people who work on these teams care so much about who they’re trying to help, many times (even) more than the people they’re trying to help, until they can get them clean enough to see there is a better life,” Holden said.