Thanks to a $20,000 Ohio State Bar Foundation grant, Portage County Juvenile Court and Job & Family Services have another tool to keep kids safe and with their families.
Now a pilot program, Child Protection Mediation is designed to keep kids in safe, stable living situations, hopefully with their parents or relatives.
“I think children’s services has such a negative stigma that we’re seen as only wanting to take kids away from their parents or their guardians,” said Kaylyn Kane, JFS’s child & adult protective services administrator. “Actually, that’s quite opposite. We want to keep families together. We do give them a seat at the table. It’s just that, are they willing to come?”
The presence of a neutral third-party mediator may make family members feel more comfortable speaking their minds, she said. To ensure that their needs and wishes are considered, the children also have an opportunity to be heard, either directly or through their representatives: a guardian ad litem or a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) volunteer, both of whom are court-assigned.
Together, the group will craft a plan that will keep the kids safe and the families out of court. Start with the necessities: the family’s ability to provide safety, food, shelter, clothing and sleeping spaces. Poverty, drug and health issues, or school attendance could also be discussed. Perhaps home will be with a parent. Perhaps a relative or trusted friend steps in when a parent can’t or won’t. It happens.
Foster care is a last resort. In those cases, the court and JFS ramp up efforts to reunite the family, Kane said.
“We want to be able to keep the family unit intact in a safe and healthy manner, and if we can do that while working together, that’s the best approach we could ever imagine,” Kane said.
Kane said she will work with JFS’ team of attorneys to identify which families would be good candidates for mediation. For the ones that are, she will bring parents, attorneys, social workers and other professionals and support personnel involved with the family to the mediation table. Also present could be neighbors, coaches and anyone else who is identified as a support to the family, Kane said.
Not eligible for mediation would be families who are resistant to the process, and even those, should they change their minds, could eventually participate, Kane said. Also ineligible are cases where the children are in imminent danger of serious harm. Those cases proceed directly to law enforcement and the courts.
Giving parents an active voice in decision-making leads to better compliance with case plans, improved family functioning, greater parental investment in the process and an increased likelihood of positive outcomes for the children, said Scott Wayt, director of family services for Portage County Juvenile Court.
Because they are tailored to each family’s unique needs, solutions achieved during mediation are often more effective and longer lasting than court orders after contested hearings, Wayt said. Also, solutions arrived at during mediation tend to be implemented faster than those ordered through court, and kids spend less time in foster care.
Kane said she expects to bring about 20 cases this year to the mediation table, starting in March. Wayt said court and JFS staff will assess CPM’s effectiveness by surveying all participants, tracking cases to see if they lead to better outcomes and seeing if case duration decreases. Should all results tally in the positive column, Wayt said he is hopeful local funds can be found to ensure CPM continues.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the Ohio State Bar Foundation as the Ohio State Bar Association.
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.