Palm Beach County Family Drug Court Program

The purpose of the Family Drug Courts Program is to build the capacity of states, state and local courts, units of local government, and federally recognized Indian tribal governments to develop and establish drug courts for substance-abusing adults involved with the family dependency court as a result of child abuse and neglect issues. The program must provide services to the children of the parents in the program as well as to the parents. The program provides seed money, not long-term support. OJJDP expects successful applicants to develop and implement a sustainability plan during the grant period to continue operation of the family drug court when the grant ends. The program is authorized under 42 U.S.C. 3797u, et seq.

Palm Beach County seeks to address their leading cause for children entering out-of-home care, child maltreatment linked to parental substance abuse, by the implementation of a Family Drug Court. The targeted population is identified as Palm Beach County residents who are the parent(s) of children in new dependency petitions wherein an evidenced-based screening tool has identified substance abuse as an issue. Activities that will be implemented to achieve the project's goals and objectives are provision of immediate and continuous court intervention that requires participants to participate in evidence based treatment, submit to frequent random drug testing, appear at regular court status hearings, and comply with other court conditions geared to accountability, rehabilitation, long-term sobriety and cessation of criminal activity. Palm Beach County will build upon an existing network of well established collaborations to ensure provision of wrap-around custom tailored services for parents and children, cross agency and interdisciplinary training for the Family Drug Court Team and ongoing data sharing and analysis. Progress toward reaching the project's goals will be measured by systematic data collection, an enhanced Management Information System, ongoing feedback from participants and stakeholders, pre-and post test surveys and well-developed outputs and outcomes.

CA/NCF