The Colorado Family Drug Court System Reform Project

OJJDP's Juvenile Justice System Improvement Grants program was established to provide grants and cooperative agreements to organizations that provide programs and services critical to the mission of OJJDP, and organizations that OJJDP has selected for funds in prior years. This program will be authorized by an Act appropriating funds for the Department of Justice.

Colorado’s Statewide System Reform Program, known as the Dependency and Neglect System Reform Program (DANSR), relies on the partnership of Colorado’s Judicial Department and the Colorado Department of Human Services – in particular, the CDHS Offices of Children, Youth and Families and Behavioral Health. The three-year planning award will facilitate the infusion/integration of six effective best practices from family drug courts into all dependency and neglect cases statewide. The six practices are: 1) develop a protocol for identifying families in need of treatment; 2) ensure early access to assessment and treatment; 3) offer a continuum of evidence-based alcohol, drug, and mental health services; 4) increase the quality and/or frequency of judicial oversight; 5) encourage institutional data-sharing to measure goals and gauge effectiveness; and 6) cross-systems teams coordinate strategy at the case-level and participate in collaborative training. The award will also provide the opportunity to update Colorado’s substance abuse protocol that was collaboratively developed in 2004. Not only will this opportunity help Colorado develop an updated protocol for dealing with substance abuse in the child welfare system, it will allow for the development of an implementation plan for integrating key family drug court practices into the broader child welfare system to increase the state's ability to keep children safe and help families impacted by substance abuse.

NCA/NCF