Collaboration: Transforming the Concept to Practice in Missouri Judicial Circuits

In fiscal year 2006, the Missouri Department of Social Services, Children's Division (CD) and the Office of State Courts Administrator (OSCA) decided to partner again. The two agencies decided to offer a training opportunity specifically tailored to meet the team building needs of child welfare teams. After reviewing possible curriculums from a number of organizations, the educational team (composed of representatives from CD and OSCA) selected the “Collaboration: A Training Curriculum to Enhance the Effectiveness of Criminal Justice Teams” from the State Justice Institute to provide the training necessary to address the issues facing Missouri's child welfare teams. The Collaboration curriculum recognizes the diverse roles and purposes present on criminal justice teams and seeks to promote a better working environment by accepting those differences and moving forward to a common goal. In the case of child welfare teams, this goal is to meet the best interests of the child. By focusing on the common goal and not their differences, a child welfare team can learn to collaborate rather than cooperate. The outcomes for the child can be improved, as a result of this enhanced team functioning. The Collaboration curriculum also met other goals identified by the educational development team. The curriculum encourages small teams working in a neutral location and combines education with group exercises designed to enable groups to identify common goals, clarify responsibilities, and develop action plans for the future. This assessment of the Collaboration Workshop, conducted by the Children's Division and the Office of State Courts Administrator, is divided into four major sections. The first section details how circuit teams were selected and facilitators were trained. The next section focuses on the Collaboration Workshop through the use of facilitator observations and participant evaluations. The third section analyzes the results of the post-conference assessment and the report concludes with recommendations for future Collaboration Workshops

Courtroom Skills: Assessment of Training Quality and Participant Learning

http://www.truman.missouri.edu/ipp/publications/index.asp?ViewBy=DateThe purpose of the Courtroom Skills training was to improve the skills of juvenile officers and Children's Division case workers in the area of court preparation and testimony. The major objectives of the training were for Children's Division employees and juvenile officers to: Understand their role in the court process and improve their ability to persuade the judge of their position; Understand and work within the timeframes for the judicial process and the Children's Division; Prepare for and testify with competence and confidence; Grasp basic evidentiary rules and their uses during hearings; Knowing how to be responsive to questions and when to elaborate; React positively to cross-examination. The Courtroom Skills training was a one-day, seven-hour training, held in six locations around the state. While there was only one presenter per location, there were three presenters total, each of whom taught at two locations (see Table 1). All presenters used the same curriculum including the PowerPoint prepared by Mary Kay O'Malley. The first half of the day consisted of education on courtroom terminology and processes. The second half of the day was devoted to mock trials for participants to apply new knowledge. The mock trials were presented in slightly different fashions in each location. In Kansas City, law students served the role of attorneys and provided the questioning and cross examination. Another attorney for the juvenile office assisted in Springfield, while a prosecuting attorney served the same role in Benton

Moving Toward Implementation Through Interagency Education: Concurrent Planning in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases

In child abuse and neglect cases, a reunification plan for putting the child(ren) back in the care of the parent(s) is developed in tandem with an alternative permanent placement plan for the child in a process termed concurrent planning. Concurrent planning is a tenet of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 enacted in Missouri in 2004 (HB 1453). The goal of concurrent planning is to avoid multiple placements of a child in the child welfare system, thereby reducing the level of uncertainty in the child's life as well as the emotional risks posed by multiple placements. In concurrent planning, the role of those in the child welfare system is to simultaneously work toward placing a child back with the parent while recognizing that reunification efforts are not always successful. Rather than placing the child in a foster care setting where permanency is not an option, the child is placed with a foster family that is willing to work toward reunification and serve as a permanent home should the reunification fail. The dual and seemingly contradictory goals of concurrent planning make it a difficult concept to implement for both child abuse and neglect(CA/N) caseworkers and juvenile courts. Since 2004 when these changes went into effect, child welfare workers have experienced varying degrees of success in identifying and placing children in foster care settings that could become permanent homes in the future. Additionally, theconflicting nature of the goals of concurrent planning have led to confusion for some in terms of when the alternative placement plan should begin, how the plan should be discussed with biological parents, and the role of the juvenile court in assuring a concurrent plan is in place

Assessing Change Following Interagency Education

House Bill 1453 (2004) brought about a number of changes in the way child welfare cases are processed and approached in the State of Missouri. These statutory changes affect not only the children and families involved, but also the judges, clerks, juvenile officers, Children's Division caseworkers, CASAs and attorneys handling child abuse and neglect cases

The Process of Website Development

This presentation was given to the 36th Annual Conference of the International Association of Clerks, Recorder, Election Officials and Treasurers (IACREOT) on July 17th, 2007 in Charlotte, N

Missouri Micropolitan Areas: A Demographic Profile

This brief examines how Missouri's recently defined micropolitan counties compare to traditional metropolitan and rural areas of the state. This comparison is done by using several demographic categories including: population trends, racial and educational characteristics of the residents of each area, and indices of poverty

Studying human neuropsychiatric disease in DLG2 deficient neurons

Neuropsychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia can have profound impacts both on affected individuals and society more widely yet the neurobiology underlying these conditions is incompletely understood. Various environmental and genetic risk factors have been identified for these diseases which include rare deletions of the DLG2 gene, identified in multiple schizophrenia patients. DLG2 is known to encode a structural scaffolding protein within mature synapses; however, research presented here indicates protein expression earlier than previously appreciated and prior to synaptogenesis. To investigate a hypothesised role for DLG2 in early cortical neurogenesis and determine potential disease relevance, DLG2-/- and isogenic wild-type (WT) sister human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines were differentiated into cortical excitatory neurons and characterised at multiple time points through various techniques, including RNA sequencing. These revealed novel roles for DLG2 during cortical development including the regulation of neural precursor cell (NPC) proliferation and adhesion to the extracellular matrix (ECM) as well as several biological progresses during neurogenesis responsible for the generation of neuronal subtype identity. DLG2-/- cultures produce more immature neurons characterised by deficits in morphology, migration, electrical properties and gene expression, including the cortical layer V marker CTIP2. Genes downregulated at day 30 of cortical differentiation, a time point corresponding to early neurogenesis, were enriched for schizophrenia common risk variants, linking DLG2 regulated biological processes in corticoneurogenesis with neuropsychiatric disease and potentially providing insight into the neurodevelopmental component of schizophrenia pathophysiology

A Meta-analysis of Missouri Drug Court Performance Measures

The first Missouri drug court was established in the early 1990s to focus the state's effort towards treatment and other alternatives to incarceration and probation. Drug courts are popular and the number of such courts, now nearly 100, continues to expand. This report is part of an effort to assess how Missouri's drug courts are faring in comparison to those of other states. This analysis uses published reports and studies on the performance and cost of drug courts in Missouri and elsewhere to assess how Missouri's success compares to the experiences of other states. This report is based upon a larger assessment of Missouri drug courts conducted in 2005 for the Missouri Office of State Courts Administrator (Richardson et al., 2005). The data used in the analysis are from a 2001 study by the University of Missouri School of Social Work (UMSSW) that evaluated outcomes of Missouri drug courts (Sundet, Dannerbeck, & Lloyd, 2001). Data were collected on 14 courts around Missouri (10 adult courts, 3 juvenile courts and 1 family court) and measured graduate recidivism, participant retention, cost/benefit of participation, as well as various participant demographics. The studies of drug courts in other states, reviewed for comparison, were published between 1998 and 2005.Includes bibliographical reference