It's a given in our society:  all children need safe, permanent homes with caring, guiding families to provide them with love and support as they grow into adulthood. They need care for their most basic needs and stimulation within continuous, unconditional and stable, long-term reciprocal relationships.

Unfortunately, not all children's homes are safe and nurturing environments. When they are at risk of being abused or neglected, authorities must step in and place the children into foster care. Although foster care is intended as a short-term, temporary solution while locating permanent placement alternatives, all too often children languish in foster care for years, undergoing multiple placements and moves, and creating a tumultuous and labile childhood with lasting deleterious effects. On average, foster children undergo three different foster home placements. Thousands of foster children “age out” of foster care without any familial support system to ease the transition into adulthood.

As a result, the inability to find safe, permanent homes for foster children creates incredibly high caseloads for child welfare workers. High stress and burnout contribute to the 20 percent annual turnover rate among caseworkers nationally.¹ As experienced workers leave the field, the quality of care for each child diminishes. While these problems within the child welfare system are not new, the complexities of the system and its problems often overwhelm good intentioned reform efforts. There is a disjunction among the agencies and various disciplines involved in child protection cases, and faulty or no communication results in a lack of common understanding about each agency’s role and unique issues. Few collaborative efforts are undertaken, and often no clear picture exists of what each agency is working toward.

While Child Protective Services (CPS) is a first responder to reports of child abuse and neglect, many other agencies and organizations become involved during the provision of prevention and treatment services. Case managers often gather, coordinate, and evaluate information from several different service agencies. These agencies may address a multitude of family needs such as childcare, parenting education classes, treatment for substance abuse, counseling, or post-investigational services, such as foster care or in-home family preservation services designed to maintain the child’s safety. Case plans involving the family and various treatment providers attempt to address the behavior or alter the underlying conditions that contributed to an environment of abuse or neglect.²

For judges, CPS dockets often present their most challenging cases. Their decisions in these cases have immediate and lasting effects on the lives of the children and families before them. Judges must be equipped with the tools to make timely decisions that best secure the safety, permanency and well-being of the child. While judicial leadership is critical, judges must also encourage and promote collaboration among all participants in the child welfare system.³ This entails utilizing a problem-solving approach rather than the traditional adversarial process, and providing broad oversight to ensure that children receive the safety, permanency, and well-being promised to them by federal and state law.⁴

In fact, the stakes are too high not to open the avenues for effective communication. To best serve the interests of foster children, a dialogue must develop between the various agencies and organizations. This means interdisciplinary brainstorming and creative problem solving. Without this cross-disciplinary exchange of information, it is impossible to develop an effective plan for reaching the best result for each child.

As a first step toward building inter-agency networks and cross-disciplinary collaboration, the Texas Center for the Judiciary offers its award-winning program, Beyond the Bench. This annual event, unprecedented in Texas, encourages participants to look for opportunities to build and strengthen services to child, youth, and families by coordinating investigative, administrative, and judicial responses to child protection.

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