Unified Courts for Families Program

Introduction

The Unified Courts for Families (UCF) Program was established pursuant to the Judicial Council's Operational Plan for fiscal years 2000—2001 through 2002—2003. The council's operational plan articulates high-priority, state-level operational objectives for the California courts. Goal IV of the plan, "Quality of Justice and Service to the Public," includes the objective of establishing "unified or coordinated family court systems" and specifically authorizes six "mentor courts" to be established in the state by June 2003. A second key objective included in Goal IV is to "develop a statewide strategy to reduce differences among courts in the quality and availability of trial court services provided to children, youth, families, and adults requiring court intervention" by drafting "essential service standards" and collecting and testing "promising practices."

Unified Courts for Families Deskbook: A Guide for Courts on Unifying and Coordinating Family and Juvenile Law is available as a resource. Click here to read the entire deskbook.

Planning Grant Phase

The first phase of the UCF Program was a statewide planning process in which superior courts of 31 California counties received grants to develop strategies for unification or coordination of proceedings involving families and children. Several important concepts emerged during the planning process, including the necessity of addressing domestic violence issues in both family and juvenile matters; the value of cross-training for judicial officers and court staff in all divisions handling cases involving families and children; and the importance of implementing systems that allow for appropriate information sharing and coordination throughout the courts. Courts that participated in this planning process created Action Plans or submitted proposals to implement mentor courts.

For more information about action plans please contact CFCC@jud.ca.gov or click here.

Unified Courts for Families Program—Mentor Courts Project

This grant will enable the courts to implement various strategies for coordination and unification of family and juvenile proceedings, including those matters involving members of the same family with cases on multiple court calendars. The processes employed by each mentor court are expected to improve families' experiences by reducing the number of conflicting court orders; increasing the amount of information available to judicial officers; and providing services. The Judicial Council has selected six (6) mentor courts.

Superior Court of California, County of Butte and County of Glenn Collaboration:
Butte and Glenn county will collaborate to: 1) locate and provide information to judges regarding families with multiple cases and 2) coordinate the services that families need. A Coordinated Services Manager will be shared by the two courts to assure that services needed by families are offered within an effective system of collaboration among local service providers. As a mentor court, the Butte-Glenn partnership will provide outreach and training for regional court neighbors including forms, resource information, data collection methodology, and training.

Superior Court of California, County of Del Norte:
Using a one family, one case manager model, Del Norte will coordinate all cases involving children. The court plans to hire a case manager, enhance the self-help center, and initiate and build a "wrap around" program, providing services for families. The court will create a relational database to track cases and identify related cases.

Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles:
The court will focus on coordination of dissolution, Domestic Violence Prevention Act, dependency, delinquency, and Title IV-D cases, initially in 12 courts throughout the county. The project includes improvement projects in the areas of re-assigning and hiring staff; policy, procedures and protocol development; training and internal communications; agency and service provider collaboration; expansion of services and information; and operations improvements.

Superior Court of California, County of Napa:
The project will include family, delinquency, dependency, child support, paternity, guardianship, adoptions, domestic violence and related criminal proceedings as deemed appropriate. The court will also focus on improving self represented litigant assistance and will hire a case coordinator. The coordinator will conduct searches in the court's automated system to identify families with more than one case in the court system and present that information to the court and court-connected services.

Superior Court of California, County of San Joaquin:
The San Joaquin Superior Court will focus on family law, domestic violence, dependency, delinquency, guardianship and adult drug court matters. In this project, the dependency case is the "controlling" case. Sixty or more families will be identified each year for inclusion in the project and they must have at least one active child dependency proceeding and at least two additional cases involving family members. The project also includes a Unified Family Court Facilitator-Ombudsman position to assist the family law facilitator with Unified Family Court cases and an attorney to provide legal oversight.

Superior Court of California, County of Yolo:
This project builds on the court's experience with a "one judge, one family" model. As a mentor court, they will establish a new legal center for case processing; expand case management coordination, and referral services; improve tracking of cases, and develop monthly statistical reports. Additionally, the court will establish a service provider roundtable, unified court newsletter, education seminars, and develop a redesign of their recommending mediation process.

Program Objectives

Mentor courts are not expected to unify all aspects of their family and juvenile proceedings; however, by the end of three years, each of the mentor courts will have all of the following in place:

• Local rules and/or protocols for identifying families who have cases in more than one division or courtroom;
• Local rules and/or protocols for appropriate information so as to inform judicial officers about existing orders to avoid conflicting orders;
• Local rules and/or protocols for notifying court-connected services such as family law facilitators, mediators, evaluators, attorneys, social workers, probation officers, and victim advocates that members of a family they are working with are involved in other related court matters;
• Formal calendaring methods to coordinate multiple court appearances and improve access for litigants, such as establishment of time-certain hearings;
• Case-tracking methods to expedite cases where appropriate and reduce unnecessary delays;
• Local rules and/or protocols to coordinate or reduce the number of times children are required to testify about the same issue in different court matters;
• Local rules and/or protocols addressing safety and security for family and juvenile court participants, domestic violence victims, and staff;
• Local rules and/or protocols for providing services and making referrals for families with mental health and substance abuse concerns;
• Local rules and/or protocols addressing how cases should be handled when a family has two or more cases within the same division (i.e., two family court matters) or in multiple divisions (i.e., a family matter and a juvenile matter); and
• Evidence of accessible services including programs for self-represented litigants, use of interpreters and volunteers, and facilities designed to meet the needs of families and children in the courts

The AOC will collaborate with the mentor courts to develop sample or model local rules and protocols for these program elements and other related issues, such as confidentiality.

Evaluation Component

The Unified Courts for Families Program includes an evaluation component. The main purposes of this evaluation are to

1. document models of unified or coordinated family courts that could be replicated around the state by assessing the implementation of the Mentor Courts,
   
2. measure increases in the efficiency and effectiveness of case processing that result from the implementation of the Mentor Courts, AND
   
3. examine the extent to which the Mentor Courts promote positive outcomes for families and children that they serve.
   

Please contact CFCC@jud.ca.gov for more information.