Family Drug Treatment Court (Snohomish County, WA)
Effectiveness

Effective

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Effective

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Life periods served
Where the program was applied
Country of application
Description

This is a Drug Treatment Court program for parents with substance use charges whose children are involved with the institutional foster care system. The goal is to encourage future planning by families, reduce the length of children’s stay in shelters, and increase the substance use treatment completion rate.
The program takes in participants authorized by the family court and offers a variety of services, such as treatment, support, and legal representation. The intervention is delivered in four phases: intensive, keeping pace, transition, and aftercare.
Each phase has requirements for adherence to the program, with sobriety being one of the permanent requirements for completion and release. In the event of non-compliance with the requirements, participants are subject to sanctions defined by the court, which may delay progress to the next phases of the program.

Impact evaluations

An impact evaluation showed that participating parents were more likely to regain custody of their children compared to the control group, which did not receive the intervention (69% versus 62%, respectively). Participants were more likely to start planning on regaining permanent custody and less likely to have their parental rights terminated, and their children spent less time in the child welfare system [1].

Bibliographic reference

[1] van Wormer, J. & Hsieh, M.‑L. (2016). Healing Families: Outcomes from a Family Drug Treatment Court. Juvenile and Family Court Journal, 67(2), 49–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfcj.12057

Information source