The enforcement of child custody orders by contempt remedies

Family law statutes in every state govern the child-related issues that arise at the time of divorce. As a general rule, these statutes require the divorce courts to enter coercive orders that will govern the residential and decisionmaking aspects of post-divorce parent-child relationships. The laws in many states also set out the remedies, including civil and criminal contempt, available to enforce court-ordered parenting plans in the event of parental noncompliance. This area of statutory regulation, which touches the lives of millions of families every year, is in many ways sui generis. At the same time, the coercive nature of the court-ordered terms of post-divorce parenting plans, and the availability of enforcement by civil or criminal contempt remedies, place custody and visitation orders in a larger doctrinal context. This Article analyzed child custody and visitation laws against this backdrop of the law of injunctions and the law of contempt. The family law system assigns priority to the maintenance of established relationships between children and both of their parents following the parents' divorce. This priority leads to certain variations from the general model of injunctive remedies in many child custody cases. For example, divorce courts formulate the initial coercive parenting orders, which become immediately enforceable by contempt remedies upon violation by one parent, without making any determination of prior wrongdoing by either parent. Furthermore, the courts routinely enter coercive orders addressing the residential and decisionmaking aspects of post-divorce parenting, even though the anticipated period of judicial regulation is lengthy (until the children's ages of majority), and despite evidence of likely compliance problems. Finally, in the event of parental noncompliance, judicial enforcement via contempt remedies may involve the entry of orders that vary significantly from the classic contempt model, especially when the contempt remedy is civil rather than criminal in nature. Parenting plan orders typically set out specific responsibilities for both parents, to be performed over a period of years until the children become adults. The nature of these orders, involving recurring patterns of family behavior, and the importance of the interests that they seek to protect have shaped many of the family law doctrines discussed in this Article. These doctrines have molded the general law of injunctions to fit a unique legal context, the creation and enforcement of post-divorce custody orders

Support and services for parents : a review of practice development in Scotland

Three year national evaluated pilot intended to focus on systems and practice for the operation of Parenting orders

International Perspectives on Parenting Support - Non-English Language Sources

This study was commissioned by the DCSF, and began in October 2007. The project aimed to extend existing knowledge of ‘what works’ in parenting support beyond the English language international evidence that was comprehensively reviewed in an earlier study for DCSF (What Works in Parenting Support, Moran, Ghate and van der Merwe 2004). While the previous study focused on English language literature, the focus of this study was to examine parenting support in a selection of non-English language countries. Five countries were selected from an initial list of 12 (originally chosen from a longer list of 22). Their selection was based on the relevance to UK policy and practice, potential translatability to a UK context and indications of promising practice

Twice the Opportunity: Policy Recommendations to Support Expectant and Parenting Youth in Foster Care and Their Children

In 2011 the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP), with funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, commenced an effort to draw attention to the urgent and unmet needs of one of the more vulnerable populations in our society: youth in foster care who are expectant or parenting their children. These young families face significant challenges to becoming healthy, stable and successful for both parents and their children. They also present policymakers and child welfare administrators with an opportunity to design a comprehensive set of policies and programs to reduce the poor and costly outcomes that these families too often experience and to instead positively support these two generations to thrive. As more states extend foster care beyond age 18, child welfare agencies will face an increase in the number of expectant and parenting youth in their system. This guide presents elements of a policy agenda for addressing the health, safety, permanency, educational, housing and financial needs of both the expectant and parenting youth and their children. It is based on CSSP's experience working for the past two years with four jurisdictions (New York City, Washington DC, Knox County, Tennessee and the State of Washington) to support their efforts to improve outcomes for these young families. The policy recommendations in this guide build on the on-the ground experiences of the four sites and are also informed by the advice CSSP received from a group of national experts on expectant and parenting youth in foster care. This publication is an update of a set of draft recommendations that CSSP published in 2011

Legislating for the Provision of Comprehensive Substance Abuse Treatment Programs for Pregnant and Mothering Women

Additionally, in writing this article it became clear that, although the data collection in this area has improved over the past twenty years, more specific data is needed in order to have a clearer picture of the exact nature of the unmet need so that the states can better address it. [...] although the authors were able to obtain enough information to provide some suggestions to the states for providing treatment programs for pregnant and mothering women, work in the area is severely limited by the lack of accessible data

What can professionals do to support mothers whose previous children have been removed: an exploratory study

"As senior social workers working in an inner London borough’s front line child protection service for five to six years we have been struck by the fact that the same families become the subjects of safeguarding concerns time and again, often with similar outcomes for subsequent children, in terms of them being removed into substitute care via care proceedings. We were interested in exploring whether there may be more innovative ways of working with parents to enable more children to successfully remain in their parents care.

Prepped for Success? Supporting Pregnant and Parenting Teens in Chicago Schools

In 2000, there were 8,153 births to mothers under the age of 20 in the city of Chicago. Forty-one percent of those births (3321) were to teenagers 17 or younger. Research has demonstrated that teen mothers are more likely than other teens to drop out of school and become dependent on welfare. 2 When a teen mother does not finish high school, she is more likely to become trapped in poverty than her better-educated peers. With so many potential negative effects of poverty on the teen and on her child, it is critically important to help the teen mother finish her education while she is still young and more likely to finish.During the course of its work on issues around pregnant and parenting teens, the Center for Impact Research (CIR) has heard from several advocates and service providers about the barriers teen parents face in furthering their education. 3 In addition to helping pregnant and parenting teens prepare for their new parental roles, many teen service providers help young parents navigate through various institutional systems. Some of these service providers reported negative impressions about how various educational systems in Chicago deal with pregnant and parenting teens. Service providers believed that some Chicago Public Schools teachers and administrators were not addressing the needs of pregnant and parenting teens and were inappropriately pushing them out of CPS schools and referring them elsewhere