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New Hanover County helps to pilot a collaborative and less adversarial approach to family court

These are the 10 identified adverse childhood experiences.
CDC
/
WHQR
These are the 10 identified adverse childhood experiences.

North Carolina's Safe Babies Court was launched to expedite the safe and secure placement of children who enter the child welfare system once their home environment is determined to be unfit by the Department of Social Services. New Hanover County is one of five counties that have been helping to pilot the program.

New Hanover County is one of five sites hand-picked to pilot a three-year-long program under the direction of North Carolina’s Administrative Office of the Courts, to find out how this approach can be best implemented throughout the state.

The program was recommended by the Chief Justice’s Task Force on ACEs-Informed Courts, and the approach itself is derived from a model created by the nonprofit organization Zero to Three, which aims to mitigate Adverse Childhood Experiences during the stages of early childhood development. ACEs can include things like abuse, neglect, and a host of challenges like food and housing insecurity.

The Safe Babies Court (SBC) approach uses evidence-based interventions, such as child-parent psychotherapy, a proven method that helps reduce traumatic stress symptoms in children, according to SBC State Coordinator Kristin Stout.

While coordinators of the pilot program always strive to keep the children involved in these cases at the forefront, they recognize that it not only takes into account the child’s exposure to ACEs, but the parents’ as well, Stout said.

A different approach

Much of the SBC's approach is expressed at judicial status conferences, which are informal monthly meetings where parents can update the court on the steps they are taking to regain their parental rights, according to Stout.

“From the standpoint of our traditional system, it is so adversarial that it can be just overwhelming for any of us to go into court, and especially for our parents,” Stout said. “The judicial status conference is giving us the opportunity for our parents to speak first, and to speak in an environment where what they are saying isn't going to result in anything punitive on that day. And that is going to give them a voice that most of our parents have never had in court.”

J.H. Corpening, chief district court judge for New Hanover and Pender counties, explained how SBC is structured differently than a traditional court setting.

“We're not even going to be in a courtroom. We're going to be in a training room one floor down. We'll be seated in a circle. I will not be wearing a robe. It's going to be loosely based on the restorative justice circle process, with the parents taking the lead and talking about their successes, focusing on their strengths, talking about their needs, talking about what else we can do to help them, updates about their baby and how their baby's doing. I'm excited about having those conversations on a more regular basis,” Corpening said.

Corpening believes these cases are not all about making a final decree, but instead rebuilding the connection between the parent and their child, stating, “I want families to know how much they mean to me.”

Additional resources

Through the SBC program, parents can voluntarily participate and receive additional support, including parenting classes, transportation, and psychological counseling, to help them reach permanency — the establishment of a safe, permanent living situation for a child that is deemed viable by the court, whether with their biological parents, legal guardians, or through adoption.

Normally, when a petition is issued by DSS alleging neglect, abuse, or dependency of an infant or toddler, the child may be placed in foster care or with a DSS or court-approved relative for the duration of the case.

Families are then required to participate in a string of court proceedings — pre-adjudication, adjudication, disposition, and review. During these processes, the court, attorneys, DSS, and a Guardian Ad Litem (a court-appointed volunteer who represents the interest of the child in dependency cases) come up with recommendations and benchmarks that parents must meet to determine whether or not it is safe for the child to return to their care.

These court proceedings are typically about a month or two apart.

Asia Prince, the court programs director for North Carolina’s Administrative Office of the Courts, explained that while the standard process is necessary to determine the health, safety, and stability of the children involved, it can be an added stress on families.

“When we started looking at this, the average time for permanency across the state was about three and a half years for this age group. So that was a very, very long time,” Prince said.

State Director for SBC, Polly Handrahan agreed.

“If a child's removed at birth, that's their whole lifetime,” Handrahan said. “We've got to get them where they need to be. They'll do so much better developmentally.”

Handrahan said it really is all about the change in approach, and some of the main areas of focus for the program are enhanced oversight and collaborative problem-solving.

“In that family team meeting, we'll be talking about the case plan that DSS has developed, and we're going to try and break the steps down into really simple steps for the parent to be able to accomplish,” Handrahan said.

Rolling out the ACEs-informed program

The Center for Disease Control found that exposure to ACEs at a young age increased the risk for health problems over a lifetime. That is the reason Handrahan, Prince, and Stout champion this collaborative approach.

Stout said one of the important features of SBC is the development of the Active Community Teams, which brings together existing community partnerships offering family-oriented resources.

These teams are assigned to each pilot site to ensure parents can easily access them in their communities.

“We really wanted to be careful with families, because during that initial time when DSS has filed a petition alleging abuse, neglect or dependency, that's a really chaotic time for a family. There's a lot of stress,” Stout said. “Here's an opportunity for us to work with this family in a different way.”

Ruthie Norwood, the community development manager at Blue Ridge Partnership for Children — a Smart Start affiliate that covers Avery, Mitchell, and Yancey counties, began working as part of the active community team for Mitchell and Yancey counties’ pilot sites in 2023.

Norwood said her community suffered a lot of damage when Hurricane Helene hit in September and says an event of this caliber demonstrates parents' real need for community resources.

“We had a hurricane in the mountains, and that has delayed the start to our fall programs for parent education. So, you know, that's moved court dates back, it's moved all this stuff back, and so all of those things combined to be a challenge,” Norwood said. "It can be hard to commit to an eight-to-10-week class that may last two hours once a week. Transportation can be a challenge. Childcare and meals can be a challenge, but we've worked very hard to remove that barrier when life in general happens.”

The partnership offers six different parenting classes, including ones for Spanish-speaking families and for parents of children with special needs.

In New Hanover County, the Active Community Team is revving up to start working with SBC families, according to an email from Tiffany Salter, the Child First Clinical Supervisor for Coastal Horizons. Their first meeting was held in early November, Salter said.

Other SBC pilot sites are in Yancey and Mitchell counties. This year, more pilot sites have been expanded to Durham and Brunswick counties.

The pilot program began in July of 2023 and is expected to run through June of 2026, with the possibility of a one-year extension if the program receives more funding, Prince said.

SBC is still in the early stages of the pilot, however, these SBC administrators say they look forward to seeing how much of an impact this approach has on families in this state.

Aaleah McConnell is a Report for America corps member and a recent North Carolina implant from Atlanta, Georgia. They report on the criminal justice system in New Hanover County and surrounding areas. Before joining WHQR, they completed a fellowship with the States Newsroom, as a General Assignment Reporter for the Georgia Recorder. Aaleah graduated from Kennesaw State University with a degree in journalism and minored in African and African-American Diaspora studies. In their free time, Aaleah loves roller-skating and enjoys long walks with their dog Kai. You can reach them at amcconnell@whqr.org.