Cultivating a court system that values and is intentionally designed to treat court users and court professionals in a positive, supportive, and trauma-informed way.
Family-Centered Fridays
Hope-Centered Child Welfare Court (July 2024)
Washington’s Court Improvement Program has teamed up with state and national partners to introduce Dr. Chan Hellman’s Science of Hope research to Washington.
The Science of Hope can be applied by systems, organizations, communities, or individuals to foster hope in programs, policies, and practices. When a system adopts hope-centered policies and practices, it promotes increased well-being for the organization and better outcomes for the youth and families it serves. Building a hope-centered culture instills a sense of common purpose and collaboration, encouraging a shift from conflict and recrimination to possibilities and constructive outcomes. This change can enhance resilience and emotional regulation, reducing reactive and adversarial behaviors.
During this Family-Centered Friday session, Sarah Burns and Kelly Warner-King of the Washington Court Improvement Program, along with Heather Cantamessa, Director of Family Impact and Parent Ally at Akin, spoke about their journey to bring the Science of Hope to Washington and their plans for a hope-centered child welfare court system.
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Creating User-Centered Court Culture (March 2023)
During this webinar, Maricopa County (Ariz.) Superior Court Judge Bruce R. Cohen led a discussion on user-centered court culture. Judge Cohen encouraged participants to consider how the judicial process can exacerbate trauma for families engaged in custody or child-related proceedings as well as how to be mindful of the impact exposure to trauma has on judges and court personnel.
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Building User-Centered Courtrooms (June 2023)
NCSC’s Nathan Hall, Principal Court Management Consultant, and David Sayles, Senior Court Management Consultant, led a discussion on how courtroom design can support user-centered court culture. David and Nathan are joined by Nicole Ticknor and Kimberly Ackmann, Deputy Court Administrators with Illinois’ 17th Circuit (Winnebago County), to discuss their jurisdiction’s proposal for a new, trauma-informed Family Courts Center. In this webinar, participants viewed plans for user-centered courtrooms and court service areas, heard details of the design process, and learned some of the creative ways jurisdictions can implement user-centered design principles at all levels of scale.
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The Case for Using Universal Practices to Center Families (October 2023)
In this NCSC webinar, panel of experts discuss how implementing universal practices to serve all individuals can ultimately center families just by the very nature of the practice itself. Participants learn how courts improve access, increase community collaboration, change court culture into a more positive environment, focus on the court user (e.g., trauma-informed care), and ultimately serve families better.
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ACEs-Informed Courts (January 2024)
In this session of the Family-Centered Fridays, speakers with the North Carolina Judicial Branch share insights into their groundbreaking work on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)-informed courts. Discover how the Chief Justice's Task Force on ACEs-Informed Courts (TFAC), formed in 2021, has impacted the state court system.
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