THE FIELD CENTER
for Children's Policy, Practice & Research

Judicial Training for the Philadelphia Family Court Bench

Drexel University School of Public Health graduate student Morgan Model coordinated a one-day training program for all Philadelphia Family Court judges in October 2004.  Judge Cindy Lederman, Presiding Judge of Miami-Dade Juvenile Court, Joy Osofsky, Ph.D., Professor of Public Health and Psychiatry at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center and Vicky Youcha, Zero to Three, conducted a well-received full-day training session at Penn’s Law School.  The focus of the training was to provide a child developmental context for judicial decision-making. Faculty Director Carol Wilson Spigner served on the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care.  The Commission was established to develop recommendations to improve outcomes for children in the foster care system. Of primary importance were expediting the movement of such children from foster care into safe, permanent, nurturing families, and preventing unnecessary placements in foster care. In particular, the Commission sought to investigate and offer comprehensive recommendations on improving existing federal financing mechanisms to facilitate faster movement of children from foster care into safe, permanent families, to reduce the need to place children in foster care, and improving court oversight of child welfare cases to facilitate better and more timely decisions related to children's safety, permanence, and well-being.

The Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care was announced on May 7, 2003. The Commission is supported through a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts to the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.  It is an independent, nonpartisan entity dedicated to developing effective, practical policy recommendations to improve the foster care system. The Commission includes some of the nation’s leading child welfare experts, heads of state and local child welfare agencies, prominent judges, social workers, foster and adoptive parents, former foster youth, and others.  It convened its first meeting in May 2003 and issued its final report and recommendations in May 2004.