This program furthers the Department's mission by providing grants and cooperative agreements for training and technical assistance to organizations that OJJDP designates.
The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) has a rich history of training judicial and court personnel and this experience has been shown to improve court processes, services provided, and ultimately outcomes to children and families who enter the juvenile and family courts. The NCJFCJ will use their experience and expertise to make system improvements in court processes that will lead to better outcomes for children and families involved in child abuse and neglect cases including cases of children who are victims of commercial sexual exploitation, sex trafficking and families impacted by opioids.
The NCJFCJ will accomplish this by: increasing the expertise of the judiciary and court professionals, implementing evidence-based practices, and improving court professional and stakeholder collaboration by building on the successful work of the Model Courts and Implementation Sites; providing for increased coordination of information and services modeled after judicially-led collaborative teams in the demonstration sites; guiding system administrative reforms in these cases; and utilizing $1,000,000 of the award to deliver specialized training for juvenile and family court judges on handling families impacted by opioids. The NCJFCJ will also work with courts to better coordinate cases involving the same children and families in child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, divorce cases, and other related cases.
These system reforms will be directed at the local, state, and national levels with a concentration on a system change collaborative and will be achieved by: training courts and court personnel, including tribal court judges; providing in-depth onsite technical assistance; engaging in research and evaluation; and nationally disseminating strategies to improve court practice. The NCJFCJ also has the ability to provide direct onsite technical assistance to ensure that learning is translated into practice.
The NCJFCJ, with the assistance of OJJDP and its partners, has a proven track record of successful projects that have led to improved practice, collaboration and outcomes. The NCJFCJ demonstration sites continue to pioneer system reform efforts as laboratories for systems change, and they stand ready and available as training sites for other courts across the nation. The NCJFCJs approach to training and technical assistance has yielded numerous positive reforms, and it will continue to do so under the current proposed project.
CA/NCF
