What can Family Courts Learn from Veterans Treatment Courts?

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12101
• Author: Sean Clark,Jessica Blue‐Howells,James McGuire
• Published date: 01 July 2014
• Date: 01 July 2014

WHAT CAN FAMILY COURTS LEARN FROM VETERANS

TREATMENT COURTS?

Sean Clark, James McGuire, and Jessica Blue-Howells

While there is considerable awarenessof ser vicemembers and veterans in contact with the criminal justice system, it is unclear

to what extent they,and their readjustment issues, have surfaced in family courts across the country. Veterans Treatment Courts

(VTCs) routinely encounter veteran defendants’ family issues that could be addressed in a family court. This article provides

administrative data from the Veterans Health Administration Veterans Justice Outreach program, which serves veterans in

VTCs, that describe the court-involved veteran and his/her family circumstances, as well as other social and clinical charac-

teristics. It concludes with a discussion of the possible implications of these data in a family court context and suggestions for

how family court judges use this and related information regarding U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs health care and

benefits to improve their practice with veterans.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

•The data presented in this article are the first to describe the characteristics and service needs of court-involved veterans

with minor children at a national level.

•These data offer family court practitioners a basic understanding of the potential issues presented by veteran families

in their courts.

•This article identifies existing resources available to address these issues, which practitioners working with veteran

families will find useful.

Keywords: Benefits;Health Care;Mental Health;Minor Children;U.S. Department ofVeterans Affairs;Veterans;and

Veterans Treatment Courts.

INTRODUCTION

The rapid development of Veterans Treatment Courts (VTCs) began in 2008, following Judge

Robert Russell’s establishment of a VTC in Buffalo, NewYork (Russell, 2009). As of December 2012,

there were 168 veterans courts or dockets across the United States that had monitored, treated, and

adjudicated 7,724 veterans, 69%, or 5,330 of whom had successfully completed court-required

treatment (McGuire, Clark, Blue-Howells, & Coe, 2013). VTCs are generally adaptations of drug or

mental health treatment courts and require, in addition to any legal criteria, a treatable psychiatric

condition for admission. The court model combines a judge and a court team trained in mental health

and substance abuse intervention, knowledgeable about veteran culture and military experience,

a peer mentoring component that provides instrumental support and supports adaptive recovery, and

the in-court presence of a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veterans HealthAdministration

(VHA) Veterans Justice Outreach (VJO) Specialist,1who facilitates access to VA health care and

other benefits (Blue-Howells, Clark, van den Berk-Clark, & McGuire, 2013; Clark, McGuire, &

Blue-Howells, 2010).

VTCs routinely encounter veteran defendants’ family issues that could be addressed in a family

court. Family courts are one of the best examples of a holistic justice system. Family court judges are

required to incorporate information from a wide range of sources in their decision making and have

jurisdiction that generally includes divorce, establishinglegal parenthood, orders for child and spousal

support, custody and visitation rights, and domestic violence restraining orders. In short, family court

Correspondence: Sean.Clark2@va.gov; Jessica.Blue-Howells@va.gov

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol.52 No. 3, July 2014 417–424

Published 2014. This article is a U.S.Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.