Juvenile Law Commons^™

Predicting Less, Understanding More: Shifting The Use Of Machine Learning From Individual Prediction To Structural Insights In Systems That Affect Children And Families, Amanda J. Fairchild, Joshua Gupta-Kagan, Andrew Barclay

Faculty Scholarship

Machine learning algorithms have been deeply embedded across domains, valued for their capacity to analyze large-scale data and to support a range of descriptive and predictive tasks. Despite their versatility, most applications to date have focused on individual-level prediction at the expense of broader structural insights. This paper shifts that focus by using comprehensive demographic, juvenile justice, and other key data from child-serving agencies in one southern state to examine how juvenile and family court intake structures shape case outcomes in delinquency referrals. Specifically, we combine machine learning algorithms with a doubly robust, potential outcomes-based modeling procedure to estimate the …

Bridging The Gap: Predictors Of Alignment Of Parent And Caseworker Perceptions Of Engagement, Jianchao Lai, Michelle I. Graef

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

This study examined predictors of alignment between parents’ and caseworkers’ perceptions of family engagement in child welfare services. Using data from 2,274 Alternative Response (AR)–eligible families randomized to AR or Traditional Response, engagement was assessed across the domains of Receptivity, Buy-in, Worker-family Relationship, and Mistrust using a modified Yatchmenoff (2005) scale. Multinomial logistic regression models identified factors associated with agreement and discrepancy between ratings of family engagement within the parent and worker dyad. While both parents and workers valued engagement, workers were more likely to provide higher overall engagement ratings, although the direction of discrepancy varied across specific subscales. Greater …

What's In A Name? Policing, Juliet., Shanée Brown

Scholarly Works

Child welfare" and "child protection" are misnomers. These terms do not accurately depict the investigatory nature of the system purported to help families, or at the very least, save endangered children. Contrary to public opinion, the "child welfare system" comprises of state actors who police parents and children. It is the naming of this system that convinces the public that these agencies are excised from the category of law enforcement, persuading many that the agencies engage in social work and not police work. Calling the system what it really is-family policing-is a step toward achieving justice for families adversely impacted …

Exploring The Dynamics And Outcomes Of Family Engagement In Child Welfare Services: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach, Jianchao Lai, Michelle Graef, Todd Franke

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

Background: Engaging families effectively in child welfare services remains a persistent challenge, shaped by complex interactions between agency practices and family circumstances. While existing research has explored this issue, it has predominantly relied on data from agency and caseworker perspectives, often overlooking the crucial viewpoint of the families. Objectives: This study investigates families’ subjective experiences and perceptions within the child welfare system, focusing on their satisfaction with child welfare workers and overall engagement. Methods: The study draws on data collected through an evaluation of the implementation of Alternative Response in a Midwestern state. Agency administrative data is integrated with additional …

Seeing Race & Sexuality: Child Welfare & Forced Labor, Annie Isabel Fukushima, Jens Nilson, Kaden Richards

Arkansas Law Review

This Article examines how child welfare responds to children who are forced to labor through a case study of California. We use an intersectional framework to argue that a conceptualization of current sociolegal responses to human trafficking cannot be delinked from racialized and sexualized forms of governmentality. In using an intersectional framework, we hope to draw upon intersectionality as a way to “point[] to the ways that structural inequality, persistent disadvantages, and structural abandonment are some of the root causes of microlevel violent interactions and at the same time influence how effective macrolevel justice policies are at responding to or …

Nudging Improvements To The Family Regulation System, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

The Restatement of Children and the Law features a strong endorsement of parents’ rights to the care, custody, and control of their children because parents’ rights are generally good for children. Building on that foundation, the Restatement’s sections on child neglect and abuse law would resolve several jurisdictional splits in favor of greater protections for family integrity, thus protecting more families against the harms that come from state intervention, especially state separation of parents from children.

But a close read of the Restatement shows that it only goes so far. It is not likely to significantly reduce the wide variation …

Letting The Kids Run Wild: Free-Range Parenting And The (De)Regulation Of Child Protective Services, Fenja R. Schick-Malone

Washington and Lee Law Review

Families in the United States suffer from a removal epidemic. The child welfare framework allows unnecessary and harmful intervention into family and parenting matters, traditionally left to the discretion of the parent. Many states allow Child Protective Services (“CPS”) to investigate, intervene, and permanently separate a child from their parents for innocuous activities such as letting the child play outside unattended. This especially affects low-income and minority families.

To prevent CPS from unnecessarily intervening in a family’s decision to let their children engage in independent, unsupervised activities, Utah passed a “free-range” parenting act (“Act”) in 2018. The Act explicitly excludes …

They're Cops, Too, Shanée Brown

Scholarly Works

Caseworkers or child protective workers are government officials tasked with investigating allegedly endangered children and their parents or guardians. They work for state agencies and exercise police power, but this kind of police power intrusively interferes with the life of an individual more than police power wielded by other law enforcement agencies. The Fourth Amendment provides individuals with protections against illegal searches and seizures of bodies and private spaces by the government, and police officers, as well as caseworkers, are required to respect these constitutional protections. Caseworkers, who are state actors, are dedicated to public safety in that they have …

Unaccompanied Children And The Need For Legal Representation In Immigration Proceedings, Sejal Singh

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

An unaccompanied child is defined as someone who enters the United States under the age of eighteen, without lawful status, and without an accompanying parent or legal guardian. Despite the term’s implication, many children do not enter the country alone but are either separated from their family members at the border or left by smugglers or other migrants near the border. The number of unaccompanied minors plunged in early 2020 due to border closures and restrictions amid the COVID-19 pandemic; however, a recent surge has led to a strain on government resources and a backlog of cases in immigration …

A Child’S Constitutional Right To Family Integrity And Counsel In Dependency Proceedings, Rachel Kennedy

Emory Law Journal

Since the child welfare system’s inception, abuse and neglect laws have conflated poverty-related neglect with active parental violence and willful neglect. The ensuing state surveillance has disproportionately harmed poor children and children of color. Pursuant to the state’s expansive parens patriae authority, countless families are investigated, and thousands of children are separated from their caretakers each year—only to be returned within days or weeks after a finding that the reasons for removal were unsubstantiated. Other children risk drifting in foster care limbo until they experience the termination of parental rights—an adjudication so severe that some courts call it the “civil …

How To Improve Legal Representation Of Children In America's Child Welfare System, Donald Duquette

Law & Economics Working Papers

From 2009 to 2016 the University of Michigan Law School served as the National Quality Improvement Center on the Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System (QIC-ChildRep). This article provides the final recommendations of this project. These recommendations have not yet been published in the academic literature. This article first summarizes the research findings of the QIC-ChildRep project. Then it sets out QIC-ChildRep recommendations for: 1) Training and supervision of lawyers; 2) State statutes and rules governing lawyers for children; 3) State organizational structure to support child representation; 4) Strategies for recruiting lawyers in this specialty; 5) Caseload size; …

Did Anyone Ask The Child?: Recognizing Foster Children’S Rights To Make Mature Decisions Through Child-Centered Representation, Katie Chilton

Emory Law Journal

A child placed in foster care finds themselves in an especially vulnerable position. Removed from their homes, apart from family, and living with strangers, a foster child’s voice often gets lost in the shuffle. While the Supreme Court has recognized some constitutional rights for children, legislators and judges tread lightly when expanding children’s rights for fear of infringing upon parents’ fundamental rights to determine the care and upbringing of their children. This situation creates a unique disadvantage for a child in foster care who is subject to the trauma of removal, placement in a temporary home of strangers, outside the …

Child Welfare Service Worker's Perspective Of The Juvenile Justice System, Valorie Antone, Kathryn Whitehead, Alexander Comeau, Zoe Donvan

Thinking Matters Symposium

Prior literature indicates youth who have had adverse childhood events or are diagnosed with a mental illness are more likely to become involved in the juvenile justice system (Chappard & Maggard, 2020). While research has been performed to involve juvenile justice workers and juveniles that have been involved in the system, there has been little involvement by the child welfare workers who have followed the trajectory of the youth from the beginning of involvement. This study investigates the perceptions of child welfare workers regarding youth involvement in the criminal justice system, addressing a current gap in the literature. In terms …

Children's Justice: How To Improve Legal Representation Of Children In The Child Welfare System, Don Duquette, Britany Orlebeke, Andrew Zinn, Robbin Pott, Ada Skyles, Xiaomeng Zhou

Books

From 2009 to 2016 the University of Michigan Law School served as the National Quality Improvement Center on the Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System (QIC-ChildRep). This seven-year, multimillion dollar project, directed by Clinical Professor Don Duquette, conducted a national needs assessment that identified a substantial consensus on the role and duties of the child’s lawyer. The needs assessment led to the QIC-ChildRep Best Practice Model, an update and expansion of the 1996 ABA Standards for Lawyers Representing Children in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases.

Released in 2016 as a300-page softcover book, CHILDREN'S JUSTICE is the final report …

Kinship Care In Pennsylvania: Creating An Equitable System For Families, Heidi Redlich Epstein, Lucy Johnston-Walsh, Jennifer Pokempner, Kathleen Creamer, Karissa Phelps

Faculty Scholarly Works

Family connection provides one of the most important contributions to the development and identity of children. A child’s family connections help them grow and thrive, provide them identity and security, and are a critical link to culture and traditions.

When experiencing difficult times, family members can support each other in ways no one else can, with the shared goal of keeping the family intact and connected.

When a child’s life is disrupted, calling on the support of family is custom in most communities and can be a great source of comfort for both children and the family. This is especially …

More Than The Vote: 16-Year-Old Voting And The Risks Of Legal Adulthood, Katharine B. Silbaugh

Faculty Scholarship

Advocates of 16-year-old voting have not grappled with two significant risks to adolescents of their agenda. First, a right to vote entails a corresponding accessibility to campaigns. Campaign speech is highly protected, and 16-year-old voting invites more unfettered access to minors by commercial, government, and political interests than current law tolerates. Opening 16-year-olds to campaign access undermines a considered legal system of managing the potential exploitation of adolescents, which sometimes includes direct regulation of entities and also gives parents authority in both law and culture to prohibit, manage, or supervise contacts with every kind of person interested in communicating with …

Compassion: The Necessary Foundation To Reunify Families Involved In The Foster Care System, Katherine Markey, Vivek Sankaran

Articles

Compassion plays a critical role in ensuring that stakeholders can engage with, and support parents trying to reunify with kids in the foster care system. This Article will explore the compassion crisis in foster care, will present the research documenting the impact of compassion on engaging families, and will identify key steps stakeholders can take to incorporate compassion into their work.

Professor Katherine Franke Joins Supreme Court Brief Urging Limits To Religious Exemptions In Same-Sex Parenting Case, Law, Rights, And Religion Project

Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

New York, New York — Yesterday, Professor Katherine Franke (Faculty Director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project and James L. Dohr Professor of Law) and 8 other scholars of law and religion filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. The case raises the question of whether a Catholic social service agency that accepts public funding from the City of Philadelphia to provide child welfare services, can use that funding to deny services to same-sex couples seeking to adopt or foster children.

Conceptualizing Legal Childhood In The Twenty-First Century, Clare Huntington, Elizabeth S. Scott

Michigan Law Review

The law governing children is complex, sometimes appearing almost incoherent. The relatively simple framework established in the Progressive Era, in which parents had primary authority over children, subject to limited state oversight, has broken down over the past few decades. Lawmakers started granting children some adult rights and privileges, raising questions about their traditional status as vulnerable, dependent, and legally incompetent beings. As children emerged as legal persons, children’s rights advocates challenged the rationale for parental authority, contending that robust parental rights often harm children. And a wave of punitive reforms in response to juvenile crime in the 1990s undermined …

Rethinking Foster Care: Why Our Current Approach To Child Welfare Has Failed, Vivek Sankaran, Christopher Church

Articles

Over the past decade, the child welfare system has expanded, with vast public and private resources being spent on the system. Despite this investment, there is scant evidence suggesting a meaningful return on investment. This Article argues that without a change in the values held by the system, increased funding will not address the public health problems of child abuse and neglect.

Child Welfare And Covid-19: An Unexpected Opportunity For Systemic Change, Jane M. Spinak

Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic has already wrecked greater havoc in poor neighborhoods of color, where pre-existing conditions exacerbate the disease’s spread. Crowded housing and homelessness, less access to health care and insurance, and underlying health conditions are all factors that worsen the chances of remaining healthy.Workers desperate for income continue to work without sufficient protective measures, moving in and out of these neighborhoods, putting themselves and their families at risk. During periods of greater disruption, tensions are heightened and violence more prevalent. Already some experts are warning of an onslaught of child maltreatment cases, citing earlier examples of spikes in foster …

America's Hidden Foster Care System, Joshua Gupta-Kagan

Faculty Scholarship

In most states, child protection agencies induce parents to transfer physical custody of their children to kinship caregivers by threatening to place the children in foster care and bring them to family court. Both the frequency of these actions (this Article establishes that they occur tens or even hundreds of thousands of times annually) and their impact (they separate parents and children, sometimes permanently) resemble the formal foster care system. But they are hidden from courts, because agencies file no petition alleging abuse or neglect, and hidden from policymakers, because agencies do not generally report these cases.

While informal custody …

Conceptualizing Legal Childhood In The Twenty-First Century, Clare Huntington, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The law governing children is complex, sometimes appearing almost incoherent. The relatively simple framework established in the Progressive Era, in which parents had primary authority over children, subject to limited state oversight, has broken down over the past few decades. Lawmakers started granting children some adult rights and privileges, raising questions about their traditional status as vulnerable, dependent, and legally incompetent beings. As children emerged as legal persons, children’s rights advocates challenged the rationale for parental authority, contending that robust parental rights often harm children. And a wave of punitive reforms in response to juvenile crime in the 1990s undermined …

A Cure Worse Than The Disease? The Impact Of Removal On Children And Their Families, Vivek Sankaran, Christopher Church, Monique Mitchell

Articles

Removing children from their parents is child welfare's most drastic intervention. Research clearly establishes the profound and irreparable damage family separation can inflict on children and their parents. To ensure that this intervention is only used when necessary, a complex web of state and federal constitutional principles, statutes, administrative regulations, judicial decisions, and agency policies govern the removal decision. Central to these authorities is the presumption that a healthy and robust child welfare system keeps families together, protects children from harm, and centers on the needs of children and their parents. Yet, research and practice-supported by administrative data-paint a different …

My Name Is Not 'Respondent Mother': The Need For Procedural Justice In Child Welfare Cases, Vivek S. Sankaran

Articles

You are a parent whose children are in foster care. Your court hearing is today, after which you hope your children will return home. Upon leaving the bus, you wait in line to enter the court. At the metal detectors you’re told you can’t bring your cell phone inside. With no storage options, you hide your phone in the bushes, hoping it will be there when you return.

Moving Beyond Lassiter: The Need For A Federal Statutory Right To Counsel For Parents In Child Welfare Cases, Vivek S. Sankaran

Articles

In New York City, an indigent parent can receive the assistance of a multidisciplinary legal team—an attorney, a social worker, and a parent advocate—to defend against the City’s request to temporarily remove a child from her care. But in Mississippi, that same parent can have her rights to her child permanently terminated without ever receiving the assistance of a single lawyer. In Washington State, the Legislature has ensured that parents ensnared in child abuse and neglect proceedings will receive the help of a well-trained and well-compensated attorney with a reasonable caseload. Yet in Tennessee, its Supreme Court has held that …

Stories Told And Untold: Confidentiality Laws And The Master Narrative Of Child Welfare, Matthew I. Fraidin

Maine Law Review

In most states, child welfare hearings and records are sealed or confidential. This means that by law, court hearings and records may not be observed. The same laws and court rules also preclude those who are authorized to enter and watch from discussing anything learned or observed in a closed courtroom or from a sealed court record with anyone not involved in the case. It is the restriction on speech—on telling stories about child welfare—with which this Article is concerned. I will argue in this Article that the insights of narrative theory and agenda-setting studies help us understand the damaging …

Child Welfare's Scarlet Letter: How A Prior Termination Of Parental Rights Can Permanently Brand A Parent As Unfit, Vivek S. Sankaran

Articles

In many jurisdictions, once a parent has her rights terminated to one child, the State can use that decision to justify the termination of parental rights to another child. The State can do so regardless of whether the parent is fit to parent the second child. This article explores this practice, examines its origins, and discusses its constitutional inadequacies.

Timely Permanency Or Unnecessary Removal?: Tips For Advocates For Children Who Spend Less Than 30 Days In Foster Care, Christopher Church, Monique Mitchell, Vivek Sankaran

Articles

Removal and placement in foster care is child welfare’s most severe intervention, contemplated as “a last resort rather than the first.” Federal law, with an overarching goal of preventing unnecessary removals, bolsters this principle by requiring juvenile and family courts to carefully oversee the removal of children to foster care. Expansive research reminds the field that removal, while often necessary, is not a benign intervention. Physically, legally, and emotionally separating children from their parent(s) can traumatize children in lasting ways. Yet review of federal data concerning children in foster care reveal a troubling narrative: each year, tens of thousands of …

“Letting Kids Be Kids”: Youth Voice And Activism To Reform Foster Care And Promote “Normalcy”, Bernard P. Perlmutter

Books and Book Chapters

In this chapter, I examine stories that foster care youth tell to legislatures, courts, policymakers, and the public to influence policy decisions. The stories told by these children are analogized to victim truth testimony, analyzed as a therapeutic, procedural, and developmental process, and examined as a catalyst for systemic accountability and change. Youth stories take different forms and appear in different media: testimony in legislatures, courts, research surveys or studies; opinion editorials and interviews in newspapers or blog posts; digital stories on YouTube; and artistic expression. Lawyers often serve as conduits for youth storytelling, translating their clients’ stories to the …