This qualitative study brings together the voices of parents and their representatives, including attorneys, social workers and parent advocates, to understand the lived experiences of child welfare involved parents as they navigate Family Court, and how to improve it. The findings suggest that these courts are difficult to navigate for both parents and their representatives, and are often experienced as punitive and unsupportive spaces. The findings also reveal a strong congruence between how parents and their advocates wish the courts to operate (and how they sometimes do), and the principles of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ), which recognizes the emotional and psychological toll legal proceedings can take and suggests ways to minimize that harm. Parents' relationship with their judge and the judge's ability to understand and connect with them are identified as transformative factors in the courtroom. Key Points for the Family Court CommunityThe fast paced and often harsh environment populated with multiple actors make navigating the Family Court system challenging for both parents and their representatives.Contextual factors, such as trauma, and race and class bias multiply the often negative and anti-therapeutic effects of Family Court.Judges have a key role in mediating these contextual factors, and providing a supportive and therapeutic environment for adjudicating claims of child maltreatment Specific behaviors that exemplify TJ are identified, and suggestions made as to how they can be applied in the court room.

Due to their high rates of parental maltreatment and violence exposure, youth in the foster care system are considered particularly vulnerable to experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) in adolescence and young adulthood. Those who have emancipated from foster care may be at a heightened risk, as they are significantly more likely to struggle in a variety of critical domains (i.e., mental health, substance use, and delinquency). This longitudinal study is the first to explore the impact of demographic, individual, family, and foster care system factors on IPV involvement for foster care alumni at age 23/24. Analyses were conducted on three waves of quantitative data from the Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth (the Midwest Study). We find that approximately 21% of the young adults in our sample were involved in some type of IPV at age 23/24, with bidirectional violence the most commonly reported form. Males were more likely than females to report IPV victimization, whereas females were more likely than males to report IPV perpetration and bidirectional violence. Young adults who reported parental IPV prior to foster care entry were more likely to be involved in bidirectionally violent partnerships than nonviolent partnerships in young adulthood, as were young adults who reported neglect by a foster caregiver and those who reported greater placement instability while in the foster care system. Anxiety at baseline increased the odds of IPV perpetration at age 23/24, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at baseline decreased the odds of IPV perpetration at age 23/24. Understanding the characteristics and experiences that place these young adults at risk for IPV will allow for more effective and targeted prevention efforts.

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