Legal Permanency Isn't Everything: Readdressing The Need For Well‐Being Indicators In Child Protection Courts

• Author: Amanda M. Walsh
• Date: 01 April 2015
• Published date: 01 April 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12151

STUDENT NOTES

LEGAL PERMANENCY ISN’T EVERYTHING: READDRESSING

THE NEED FOR WELL-BEING INDICATORS IN

CHILD PROTECTION COURTS

Amanda M. Walsh

In recent years, the child welfare system has begunto focus on the overall outcomes of children by looking at overall well-being

factors. However, despite this shift by social service practitioners, child protection courts have failed to similarly shift focus

onto the long-term outcomes of children and remain focused only on legal permanency.This failure to recognize the importance

of overall outcomes and other forms of permanency,such as relational permanence, on the future of system-involved youth can

have devastatingconsequences. This article argues that child protection courts should integrate well-being indicators similar to

problem-solving courts in order to have a greater influence on the overall outcome of these children.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

• Identifies the importance of well-being indicators and discusses the need for the child welfare system to focus on overall

outcomes of children

• Addresses a gap between social service practitioners and the child protection court on working towards overall

well-being

• Educates child protection court and other child welfare actors on the different forms of permanence affecting system-

involved youth

• Discusses therapeutic jurisprudence and how this theory is integrated into problem-solving courts

• Offers suggestion for how to integrate well-being indicators into child protection courts

Keywords: Adverse Childhood Experiences;Attachment;Best Interests;Child Protection;Overall Outcomes Permanency;

Problem-Solving Courts;Therapeutic Jurisprudence;andWell-Being

I. INTRODUCTION

The true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends to its children—their health and safety, their

material security, their education and socialization, and their sense of being loved, valued, and included in

the families and societies into which they are born.1

The concept of well-being is a relatively new phenomenon used in the past two decades to analyze

the outcomes of children around the world and in the United States. Accordingly, in 2007, the

UNICEF Innocenti Research Center published a report card evaluating the well-being of children in

twenty-one industrialized nations.2The Center uses “well-being” as a broad tool to identify the

overall outcomes of children “across time, relative to the children’s biology and environmental

situations.”3

Child well-being is an especially important concept when working in child welfare systems since

these systems are ultimately meant to improve the outcomes of the children who become involved. In

the United States, the concept of using well-being as an outcome indicator was first introduced

Correspondence: awalsh6@luc.edu

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 53 No. 2, April 2015 326–335

© 2015 Association of Familyand Conciliation Cour ts