Court Performance Measures in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases: Key Measures

• NCJ Number: 223567
• Author(s): Victor E. Flango Ph.D.; Neal Kauder
• Date Published: April 2009
• Length: 44 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2003-JS-FX-K008; 90XW0008
• Agencies: OJJDP
• Publication Type: Policy/Procedure Handbook/Manual

Annotation

This volume of the toolkit outlines nine measures that have been identified as key to determining court performance in child abuse and neglect cases and discusses the goal of each measure, data requirements, calculation and interpretation, and important related measures.

Abstract

The key set of performance measures proposed in this toolkit, supported by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), are intended to (1) increase national awareness of the importance of court performance measurement in child welfare cases, (2) improve data sharing between courts and child welfare agencies to enable performance measures to be generated, (3) increase general understanding of court performance measures, and (4) encourage the development of technology that would produce court performance measures as a part of regular case management system reports. The nine key court performance measures presented and outlined in this volume include: (1) child safety while under court jurisdiction, (2) child safety after release from court jurisdiction, (3) achievement of child permanency, (4) number of judges per case, (5) service of process to parties, (6) time to permanent placement, (7) time to adjudication, (8) time to first permanency hearing, and (9) time to termination of parental rights. This volume is one of five in a toolkit designed and tested to provide practical and comprehensive guidance to the critical task of measuring court performance in child abuse and neglect cases. List of terms and endnotes