The cornerstones of this work continue to be the following:
Cross-system collaboration. Critical to Washington’s court improvement work is a commitment to bringing together people from all parts of the system to confront challenges and take ownership of solutions. In a non-unified court system with scant resources, this approach was both economical and elegant—and is now a part of standard operations. Importantly, facilitators of these collaborations are trained in practices, like Liberating Structures, that foster lively participation, build trust, and ensure all participants contribute.
Data-informed courts. FYJP partners with the Washington State Center for Court Research to help local courts understand and use data as a tool for system improvement and to increase transparency within the system. The CIP maintains a secure database that joins court and child welfare data; this enables local jurisdictions to assess how their system is working, identifies opportunities for improvement, addresses inequities, and evaluates the effectiveness of their interventions. An online public Dependency Dashboard provides local and state dependency court performance and outcome measures, with filters for child race/ethnicity and age.
Action-oriented learning. Grounded in principles of adult learning theory and sustainability, the trainings created by FYJP build the capacity of courts and system partners to effectively apply the law in dependency cases in ways that promote better outcomes for families. The non-unified court system has no state training requirement for judicial officers who hear child dependency cases. For that reason, FYJP strives to create engaging, interactive training content that aligns with the current expressed interests and needs of the court system. FYJP convenes cross-system partners and experts to design and deliver trainings on a variety of topics at in-person events, in live webinars, and through online asynchronous modules. FYJP also utilizes communities of practice (e.g., Judicial Community of Practice) that provide spaces for peer learning, idea sharing, and problem-solving.
Lived experience. Because FYJP consistently engages people with lived child welfare experience (youth, parents, and caregivers) in the design and delivery of FYJP’s work, courts and partners now expect lived experts to be actively and authentically engaged in court system improvement work. Currently, FYJP is co-designing processes to recruit, onboard, compensate, and support parents, youth, and caregivers with lived expertise to meaningfully participate. In addition, FYJP’s training and tools are developed in partnership with judicial officers, attorneys, peer partners, and court staff, to ensure they are useful and responsive to the needs of people doing the work.
Current Investments in Collaboration
Washington State’s Family Well-Being Community Collaborative
In 2021, the AOC convened the Family Well-Being Community Collaborative (FWCC) under the existing FYJP. The FWCC serves as Washington State’s CIP multidisciplinary task force. Endowed with a mission of collaboration, keeping “families safely together and supported in their communities,” and radically reducing “inequities within the child welfare court system,” the FWCC is integral to fomenting collaboration among system partners. We attribute the FWCC’s success in modeling interagency collaboration to three indispensable qualities:
Leadership. In this space, AOC’s leadership and demonstrable belief in the power of multidisciplinary collaboration are central to the FWCC’s success.
Composition. As of 2024, the FWCC consists of more than 80 individuals from across the state. Among them are judges, attorneys, administrators, advocates, social workers, academics, and, importantly, individuals with lived experience. This breadth of membership is integral to the success of the FWCC. However, we acknowledge that the mere act of convening a diverse group with divergent interests is itself arguably insufficient to avoid performative collaboration and stagnation.
Action. The FWCC’s mission is fully realized through collective action. As a whole, the FWCC meets about eight times a year to discuss a range of topics, including progress on individual agency updates, changes in the law, resource gaps, and initiatives. Yet, it is in the FWCC’s workgroups that collective action effectively fuels enduring collaboration. As mentioned, the FWCC establishes initiatives such as creating resources and trainings related to the harms of removal. Understanding the limitations imposed by its size, the FWCC forms smaller, nimble, and similarly diverse workgroups to operationalize these initiatives. Within each workgroup, members from different and at times divergent positions work collaboratively to produce actionable results for the FWCC. Examples are the Harm of Removal Workgroup, which is developing resources and trainings that support court communities in assessing and responding to the harm of removal in child dependency cases, and the Guardianship Workgroup, which is working to identify challenges and develop practical tools to enhance the use of minor guardianships in ways that promote positive outcomes for families.
The combination of leadership, composition, and action, oriented to solve complex, systemic problems, has engendered a commitment to collaboration that is often elusive in a complex, adversarial system.
Expanding and Transforming Local Courts: Family and Juvenile Court Improvement Programs
The work of the FWCC is complemented by the work of the Family and Juvenile Court Improvement Programs (FJCIP). Similar to the FWCC, the FJCIP creates a regionally responsive space for multidisciplinary collaboration. The goal of the FJCIP is to expand the capacity of local court communities and transform systems to produce better outcomes for children and families.
Funded by the Washington State Legislature since 2008, the FJCIP is currently operational in 15 of 39 counties, covering about 80 percent of active state dependencies. Each participating court has a dedicated FJCIP coordinator who facilitates system improvement and cross-system collaboration efforts at the local level.
The FJCIP convenes professionals from across the participating counties’ dependency court systems in a collaborative, non-adversarial setting to solve systemic issues. Importantly, each county-level FJCIP identifies issues pertinent to its regional practice and is endowed with the autonomy to establish its own initiatives. Through these initiatives and multidisciplinary teams, FJCIP courts act as “laboratories for innovation” where new ideas, resources, and practices are tested, legitimized by mutual development, and transmitted to otherwise independent court systems.
A Shared Understanding of the Safety Framework: The Safety Summit Project
In partnership with the Washington State Department of Children, Youth, & Families (DCYF), AOC established the Safety Summit Project. Originating from DCYF’s Program Improvement Process, Safety Summits provide local court jurisdictions with high-quality training on safety framework practices within the context of a guided change management process that includes organization, planning, action, and evaluation phases. Safety Summits revolve around a half-day training event that focuses on helping local dependency court systems develop a shared understanding of how to assess and talk about child safety. This training teaches entire court systems how to effectively apply safety framework principles to crucial aspects of cases (safety assessment, safety planning, conditions for return, family time, and case planning) in tangible ways that ultimately result in a more effective dependency system and better outcomes for families. Importantly, Safety Summit events are delivered by a cross-system team of trainers, including the CIP, DCYF, Washington State’s Office of Public Defense (OPD), and Washington Association of Child Advocate Programs.
Safety Summits have been held in eight Washington counties. Pre- and post-hearing quality evaluations conducted by Dr. Alicia Summers through the Capacity Building Center for Courts of four Safety Summit sites found clear evidence of statistically significant positive changes in the depth and breadth of safety discussions at 72-hour hearings and in the quality and quantity of safety-related information submitted to the court prior to the hearing.
A Multidisciplinary Practice in Action
Pattern Pleadings and Forms for Dependency Matters
Pursuant to Washington State law, AOC is required to develop pattern pleadings and forms for mandatory use in dependency matters. Consistent with its practice of calling on multidisciplinary teams, AOC convened a Juvenile Court Forms Committee to revise forms consistent with changes in the law. Members included representatives from the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, the Washington Court Appointed Special Advocates Association, OPD, and a state court judicial officer. In 2023, the Juvenile Court Forms Committee added four new members, a member of the Washington State Office of Civil Legal Aid (OCLA), a member of FYJP, a parent with lived experience, and an additional judicial officer. With new and diverse perspectives, the committee navigated the most significant changes and corrections to pattern forms in decades following the passage of sweeping changes to Washington State’s removal statutes.
Trainers United: The Statewide Training Coordinator Affinity Group
The brainchild of OCLA’s training coordinator, the Statewide Training Coordinator Affinity Group provides a space to foster training innovations and to reduce redundancies. Its member organizations are the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, OCLA, OPD, DCYF’s Office of Tribal Relations, and Akin (which houses Parents for Parents, a program that connects parents who have successfully navigated the child welfare system with parents who have recently come into contact with DCYF and the court system). The Affinity Group meets remotely every other month in an open space format to discuss opportunities for training collaboration, ways to share existing training materials, and training goals. Successes of the Affinity Group include the collaborative rewriting of several chapters of the Washington State Juvenile Non-Offender Benchbook, interagency trainings provided to a variety of audiences (including stakeholder attorneys and judicial officers, and at statewide and national conferences), and strengthened connections between stakeholder agencies and their training programs.
Reimagining Reasonable and Active Efforts: Building Training Academies for Judges and Attorneys
Facilitated by the Capacity Building Center for the Courts and hosted by FYJP, the Reasonable and Active Efforts Academies provide an optimal opportunity for judges and attorneys alike to do a deep dive into the efforts required of the agency to keep families together at all stages of the proceedings. In 2022, Washington State held one academy devoted to judicial officers, and in 2023, Washington State held academies targeted toward attorneys. These academies used a cross-system team of trainers, including the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, OPD, nonprofit attorneys, social workers, judicial officers, and other subject matter experts. Besides lectures and discussion, the trainings relied on demonstrations and simulations so that the relevant audience had the opportunity to practice the material and implement the lessons learned. Furthermore, as a result of the collaboration of the trainers at these academies, all dependency practitioners in Washington State can now benefit from the WA Guide on Reasonable & Active Efforts (Mar. 2022; updated Feb. 2023), a comprehensive manual of the statutes, case law, and policy—state and federal—giving critical guidance on reasonable and active efforts findings throughout the life of a dependency case.
Ready, Set, Go! Annual Dependency Judicial Training
Each year, FYJP hosts an Annual Dependency Judicial Training for judicial officers who are, or will be, presiding over matters related to dependency or child welfare law. These trainings familiarize judicial officers with black-letter statutory law and case law, dependency-related policy, research and authority relevant to dependency, and other important and helpful topics judicial officers must rely on in making important decisions about the families before them. Judicial officers are trained by attorneys from the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, OPD, and OCLA, as well as DCYF social workers, judicial officers, parents with lived experience, and other subject matter experts. In Washington State, these annual trainings are critical; as previously indicated, Washington State does not have a unified court system, and judges may rotate off and onto the dependency bench, sometimes on an annual basis. Often, the Annual Dependency Judicial Training, though optional, provides the vast majority of the training judicial officers receive regarding dependency and child welfare. Past and recent judicial trainings have included participation from trial-level judges and commissioners, Washington court of appeals judges, and even state supreme court justices!
Hope and Justice: The Children’s Justice Conference
The Children’s Justice Conference is the largest child welfare-related conference in the Pacific Northwest. The conference brings together stakeholders from multiple disciplines—professionals in child welfare, law enforcement, medicine, psychology, and much more. The Children’s Justice Conference is supported by a federal grant through the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. The program instruction describes the grant application process and even details the tentative grant allocation for each state (see pages 29–30). In particular, the Children’s Justice Conference has carved out a specific dependency track devoted to a child welfare curriculum. Among the stakeholder trainers involved in supporting the dependency track are attorneys from the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, OPD, and OCLA, as well as DCYF, and OPD social service workers, parents with lived experience, community experts, and many others. In 2024, the Children’s Justice Conference’s dependency track included sessions from cross-system trainers on topics such as “Pitfalls and Strengths of Safety Planning,” “Life Experiences of Incarcerated Families Through the Lens of Children,” and “Teaming Up to Reach Resolution and What to Do When Collaboration Collapses.”
Three Heads Are Better Than One: Families Stronger Together Joint Annual Conference
Prior to 2023, OPD held an annual parents’ attorney conference for its contractors for almost 20 years. The conference was educational and inspirational, and it was a great opportunity to mix and mingle. However, in 2023, OPD, OCLA, and Akin made the insightful decision to come together and hold a joint conference, bringing parents’ attorneys, defense social workers, children’s attorneys, and the Parents for Parents program into the same space. On the whole, the collaboration was a tremendous success. Joining the resources of three agencies into one conference meant combining finances, staff, technological know-how, institutional knowledge, and training resources. With our combined financial resources, we were able to bring nationally known and compelling advocates to serve as our plenary speakers, including Dr. Monique Mitchell and Corey Best. The collaboration was not without its difficulties; for example, some participants were uncomfortable sharing a conference with contractors outside their silo of work and wished for a conference that was entirely devoted to their own contractors. Despite these growing pains, OPD, OCLA, and Akin have already begun planning the joint conference for 2024, maintaining a strong focus on anti-racist and client-centered representation.
Keeping Families Together Through Cross-Systems Partnerships
On July 1, 2023, Washington State rolled out House Bill (HB) 1227, the Keeping Families Together Act. This landmark piece of legislation raised the standard for child removal at the initial emergency hearing (or shelter care hearing), required courts to consider the harm of removal when making the decision to remove a child, and demonstrated lawmakers’ prioritization of family unification, prevention services, and relative placement. In advance of the rollout, stakeholders worked together to train, and prepare, system partners for the implementation of this groundbreaking legislation.
Cross-System Regional Webinars
DCYF and FYJP worked together to offer cross-system regional webinars. The webinars, tailored to each of the six DCYF regions in Washington State, provided high-level training on HB 1227, as well as opportunities for brainstorming and discussion among participants about the specific needs of, and resources available to, families in each region. At the end of each webinar, participants left with a customized list of prevention services and programs for families that are available and accessible in their specific region.
Readiness Retreats
In preparation for the rollout of HB 1227, many individual counties held “readiness retreats.” Spurred by the work of FYJP, these readiness retreats involved the joint efforts of the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, DCYF, OPD, OCLA, the Washington Court Appointed Special Advocates Association, judicial officers, and others. The retreats included trainings, discussion, and logistical preparations related to the new law. For example, in one readiness retreat, participants discussed whether HB 1227 might result in an increased number of contested shelter care hearings and, if so, whether the court should increase its courtroom capacity by adding additional court days or judicial officers.
Training Attorneys in Three Parts: HB 1227 Parent, Child, and Appellate Attorney Training
FYJP, OPD, and OCLA teamed up to train parent, child, and appellate attorneys in advance of the implementation of HB 1227. The three-part training series consisted of (1) a high-level overview of the new legislation, presented by FYJP; (2) in-depth training in and analysis of the changes in the black-letter law, coupled with breakout groups and hypotheticals for group participants to test and apply the new law; and (3) a brief review of HB 1227 with parents’ attorneys, children’s attorneys, and appellate attorneys, followed by opportunities for these attorneys to apply the law to hypothetical factual scenarios at the trial and appellate level. The chances to apply the new black-letter law to the types of scenarios attorneys would soon be facing in the courtroom, coupled with the opportunities attorneys had to collaborate with, and learn from, other attorneys in different stakeholder positions, made these trainings meaningful and effective.
Conclusion
Cross-system collaboration has been essential in Washington State’s efforts to foster a holistic approach to child welfare that addresses the multifaceted needs of families. By leveraging available funding and intentionally integrating efforts across various agencies, we have created a more cohesive and responsive framework that can better adapt to the ever-changing landscape of child welfare. This collaborative model helps ensure that system partners, including those with lived experience, can contribute their unique perspectives and expertise to the creation of the many supportive tools, trainings, and resources available in Washington. Ultimately, these partnerships have helped to align cross-system improvement work, enhance support for families, and create better long-term outcomes for children—paving the way for a more just and effective child welfare court system.
