National Alliance For Drug Endangered Children

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National Strategic Plan for Family Drug Courts

Children and Family Futures – 2017

This report presents the National Strategic Plan for Family Drug Courts (FDC), written by Children and Family Futures (CFF) through a training and technical assistance cooperative agreement with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). The plan outlines a coordinated national strategy to enhance and expand the use of FDCs to reach more children and families. It lays out the key goals, strategies, and activities to improve the health of existing FDCs, engage State champions in FDC expansion, and ensure that all FDC stakeholders have the most up-to-date information about best practices and cost considerations to support quality implementation. Following an overview, Section 1 provides the rationale for a National Strategic Plan for FDCs. Section 2 outlines federal funding support for FDC expansion and lists seven essential practices to improving child welfare and substance use disorder treatment, and Section 3 summarizes the history and current status of FDC implementation. The report closes with a discussion of future goals, strategies, and activities for a more coordinated approach to FDC quality improvement and expansion. Goals include: improve the effectiveness of the existing FDC network by assuring it operates with fidelity to the FDC model; expand the reach of FDCs to keep families together and reduce child maltreatment; and continue to build the evidence base about what works for FDCs to improve outcomes for children and their parents. 14 references.