Summary: Serious systemic problems continue to plague the juvenile dependency court system. States GAO visited reported a lack of cooperation between the courts and child welfare agencies as well as difficult personnel and data management issues that jeopardize the courts' ability to ensure that a child's stay in the foster care system is as brief as possible and that the permanent placement decision is in the child's best interest. Despite their shared involvement in the child welfare system, courts and child welfare agencies often do not work well together. For example, some judges mistrust the judgment of caseworkers and routinely order additional clinical assessments to compensate for what the judges view as professional inadequacies. In addition, courts face many difficulties, including growing caseloads, short tenures for judges and attorneys assigned to juvenile dependency courts, and insufficient training of judges and attorneys in child welfare law. Some states have undertaken court reforms that they believe reduce the length of time that children spend in foster care and improve the quality of decisions made by courts. State and local officials identified three ingredients essential to successful reform efforts: the presence of judicial leadership and collaboration among court participants, the availability of timely information on case processing performance, and the availability of financial resources to initiate and sustain reforms. Although states and localities believe that they have made progress in addressing problems, GAO cautions that few results have been documented.
