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Calif. judicial council endorses sweeping reforms for nation's largest foster care system

By Jason Siegel

California's Judicial Council, the state court's policymaking body, endorsed a set of sweeping reforms for the nation's largest child foster care system, including reduced lawyer caseloads, more judges and juvenile law questions on the state bar exam.

The Judicial Council approved more than 79 recommendations that range from pushing Congress to extend financial support of foster children beyond age 18 to age 21, pushing courts to give higher priority to dependency court resources and a variety of ways to reduce caseloads.

More than half of California's 80,000 foster children remain in care for more than two years, and nearly one-fifth are there much longer, according to the results of a two-year investigation by a Blue Ribbon Commission on Children in Foster Care, headed by Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno.

The report found that there are fewer than 150 full-time and part-time judicial officers presiding over the entire dependency court system responsible for 80,000 children. Average caseloads for dependency court lawyers, who represent children and parents, is 273 cases per attorney, when the ideal level is 75 to 100 cases.

Full-time juvenile court judges carry 1,000 cases each on average, according to Moreno.

Moreno said the commission found that foster children rarely get to attend their own court dates and if they do, usually do not understand or participate in the process. The commission recommended that attorneys and judges talk to the children and families in ways that help them understand the process. The report also called for speedier processing of appeals of dependency court decisions and more emphasis on reuniting families and more aggressive efforts to return children to relatives when possible.

One proposal called for the inclusion of juvenile dependency law as a mandatory study area for the California bar exam and creation of a State Bar Juvenile Law section, to increase its statute and visibility with the bar.

The commission will be back in December with detailed plans for carrying out the recommendations.

-- Pamela A. MacLean

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on August 19, 2008 (boomark / email).