Jackson County Family Treatment Court

The Family Drug Courts program builds the capacity of states, state and local courts, units of local government, and federally recognized tribal governments to either implement new drug courts or enhance pre-existing drug courts for individuals with substance abuse disorders or substance use and co-occurring mental health disorders, including histories of trauma, who are involved with the family dependency court as a result of child abuse, neglect, and other parenting issues. Category 1: Implementation grants are available to jurisdictions that have completed a substantial amount of planning and are ready to implement a family drug court. These are for jurisdictions where either no family drug court currently exists or a family drug court has been operational for less than 1 year.

Jackson County proposes to implement two collaborative Family Drug Courts (FDCs) to expand its already unique drug court model to address native and non-native families through an evidence-based holistic approach. The format Jackson County already has in place will be mirrored to form two collaborative but independent FDCs that will use the same bank of ancillary services. Currently, the Jackson County Adult Drug Court and Ho-Chunk Nation (HCN) Healing to Wellness Court are post-conviction, post sentencing hybrid (alcohol and other drug) courts run by separate nationally trained teams following the ten key components. Because the HCN does not have a criminal code, the HCN Healing to Wellness Court operates independently with continuing support, cooperation and collaboration from the necessary State court attorneys, probation agents, and the Jackson County Circuit Court Judge. The FDCs will target families which come under court jurisdiction, through a family members participation in adult drug court, domestic violence court (for those not excluded by Federal violent offender prohibitions), CHIPS, Juvenile in Need of Protection or Services (JIPS), delinquency, co-occurring disorders and mental health referrals. Currently, these families are unfortunately often late-intervention cases with a history of child protection reports. Parents with charges sufficient to support a CHIPS finding or with charges related to AODA may seek support services through deferred prosecution agreements or consent decrees. The primary goal is to target families for early intervention, and treat families in a holistic manner, taking into account all issues which are causing the family structure to break-down. As soon as an eligible family can be identified, they will first be approached to engage in voluntary services through a CST team. If this fails, and court intervention is unavoidable, then the entire family will be assessed by the FDC Case Manager using the Global Appraisal of Individual Needs (GAIN) to determine eligibility for FDC and also to identify those who are likely to have a mental health and/or substance use disorder and who should be referred for further assessment or treatment.

CA/NCF