Iron Range families see results from Safe Babies Court

Apr. 20—Editor's note: This is the first story in a three-part series on St. Louis County's Safe Babies Court. Find the other stories in the April 24 and 27 print editions of the News Tribune and on our website.

VIRGINIA — A young mother stepped to the front of Judge Robert Friday's courtroom with her toddler son.

The parent, 21, has battled drug addiction since before the child's birth and was reunited with the boy on a trial basis just two days prior. It felt "natural," said the mother, who is now sober and on the path to regaining full legal custody.

"I feel super good," she told the judge. "I made it this far. At some point, I didn't think this would happen."

Friday, who has been closely following the woman's journey over the past two years, appeared equally as excited about her progress. He credited her for a "level of honesty" that allowed her to turn her life around.

"I think that bodes so well for you and (the child)," Friday said. "You didn't rush it, and now you're really in the position where this is what you want, and you're going to go get it."

But the judge cautioned the mother and father, who is also in recovery, that they need to remain each other's "biggest supporters" because if they turn against one another, "it can go bad really fast."

"Your worst day in sobriety will be better than your best day when you're using," Friday said. "It takes a while to get there, but you're on that path."

Scenes like this are typical in St. Louis County's Safe Babies Court, an innovative, team-based approach to child protection cases used on the Iron Range for about four years.

Tailored to cases involving infants and toddlers, the effort is akin to drug and DWI treatment courts for criminal cases, offering a higher-intensity level of services and supervision for parents and children to keep families together in healthy environments.

Leaders say it's working, resulting in more positive outcomes and less disruption to children's lives. And they're now looking to replicate the model on a wider scale across all three St. Louis County courthouses.

"The research clearly shows that children involved in child protection end up doing best long-run if they are reunified with their parents," Friday said in an interview. "The numbers aren't even close."

The effort is rooted in maintaining the bond between parents and children during their formative years — birth to age 3.

The

program started in early 2020 with two grants

totaling $300,000 from the Minnesota Department of Human Services and a national organization called Zero to Three, which selected St. Louis County as an evaluation site for its Safe Babies model.

Families may be screened in if they meet certain criteria — namely, those that have progressed to the point where the kids are placed out of home or are at high risk of being taken away. Nearly all of the parents have substance-use disorders, sometimes coupled with mental health issues.

But unlike traditional court proceedings, which are structured to be adversarial, team members said Safe Babies strives to be a supportive program with a more hands-on approach.

"We really try from the beginning to establish that this is a place where it's OK to be honest," said social worker Sadie Arnzen. "The work that we're doing is not going to be fruitful at all if we're not honest — from both us and from the family that we're working with."

The team offers many services, from treatment referrals to peer recovery specialists and parent mentors, who help participants navigate sobriety and the court process.

Family team meetings are held between court dates, allowing a core group of professionals to identify strengths and challenges in the family dynamic, help establish goals and send updates to the judge.

Parents in the program also can have supervised visits with children in foster care, allowing the bond to continue even while they are legally separated. And those further along may get a trial home placement for up to six months.

"It builds our confidence and trust with them," said Sara Henkel, the guardian ad litem — an advocate tasked with looking out for the interests of the children. "We can really see what those interactions look like between the parent and the child."

Recovery looks different for every family, Friday said, so the program needs to be highly individualized to succeed.

"Parenting is a continuum," the judge said. "It's not one-size-fits-all, and without having the services that we provide be consistent with what the parents' goals are, what you generally do is just stay in that conflictual spot."

State law requires that "reasonable efforts" be made to prevent out-of-home placements and to rehabilitate and reunify families entering the child protection system.

Ultimately, though, the team said there are circumstances where something other than parental custody is in the child's best interest.

Community coordinator Nicole Cook said five cases have concluded with a full family reunification. Another 11 have resulted in permanency with other relatives or adoption by foster parents — outcomes where the biological parents often still maintain active roles in the children's lives.

"Many of these have been as much parent-directed as they've been team-directed," Cook said. "It's kind of hard to differentiate them in your head because, at the end of it, everyone still has really great, positive feelings."

In only three instances have participants voluntarily terminated their parental rights, recognizing substance-use or mental health barriers that could not be overcome within the confines of the program.

Remarkably, there has yet to be a single contested permanency hearing in Safe Babies Court — a major difference from normal child protection proceedings.

"We have an environment where parents feel like they can ask for help," said Jessica Foschi, an assistant St. Louis County attorney who handles the cases. "They've felt comfortable coming to us with those concerns themselves."

Five mothers who became pregnant during the program also were able to keep their newborns after having other children removed, Cook said. About 10 families are currently participating in the initiative.

A recent study of "infant-toddler court teams" found that reunification was the most common outcome in cases examined in 2010-2018. That occurred in 44% of cases, compared to the national average of 26%.

Cases are also resolved quicker, resulting in shorter foster care stays, according to the study published by Children and Youth Services Review in January. Those in Safe Babies-style programs reached permanency after an average of 451 days versus a national average of 655 days.

While the law generally prescribes that permanency should be established within one year of an out-of-home placement, the court has significant discretion based on each family's unique circumstances. The reality is that it may take anywhere between three months and five years to reach a conclusion.

"We always get real hesitant when we hear the people use the word 'timeline,'" Friday said, "because we're dealing with human beings."

One recent Thursday afternoon, Judge Friday'sVirginia courtroom buzzed with activity.

One by one, a bailiff summoned families from the hallway — parents, children, attorneys and other team members filling the counsel tables and, at times, spilling into the jury box.

At other points, parents would appear via Zoom, sometimes from treatment programs, reflecting the flexibility built into the specialty court.

As one family provided an update, the judge said he was concerned by a comment he read in the report from their most recent family team meeting. The parents said they didn't feel that they needed support any longer.

"My daughters are 24, 25 and 31," Friday said, "and I still need support as a father. ... We all need people who can help us as parents."

What the parents were referring to, they agreed, was the end of the program, when they would be fully reunified and no longer have regular contact with their social worker, guardian ad litem and parent mentor.

But that is a major transition, Friday cautioned, and he asked the parents to consider the types of long-term support they will require.

"Good parents recognize their limitations as human beings and seek help when they need it," the judge said. "And I know you can do that. You're not the same person who first came before this court."

Parents generally make a court appearance every 12 weeks, though hearings can be scheduled sooner if an urgent matter arises. That's less often than when the program first launched, as staff worried that too-frequent appearances could harm families.

"We are all so mindful of the fact that we are creating trauma also," Friday said. "While we may have a reason that we need to create that trauma at a time for the child, we are part of the problem."

Another mother, making a video appearance from a treatment program, told the judge she was "working (her) butt off" to graduate and secure stable housing.

"I don't have another relapse in me," she said. "The next relapse I have is death."

Pleased to hear the woman's commitment to sobriety, Friday told her: "It begins with you."

"One of the biggest misnomers that we hear, not only in child psychology but in the courts, is that children come first," he said. "It's untrue. Parents come first. If the parents aren't healthy, the kids aren't healthy, either."

Now in its fifth year, grant funding is wrapping up for the Safe Babies program. But St. Louis County officials said they're not planning to let the model fall by the wayside.

"We are really committed to looking at what else can we be doing along all of these system points," said Paula Stocke, deputy director of Public Health and Human Services.

The state DHS funding for Cook's coordinator position is set to expire in June, while a final $150,000 grant from Zero to Three for parent mentors, substance-use outreach and other resources is set to wrap up by September.

A parallel program in Duluth also began in 2020 but did not continue amid upheaval, including the pandemic and the departure of the

presiding judge, Shaun Floerke.

While the focus has been on Virginia, officials said they are now seeking to preserve partnerships and embed the team approach into its child protection system as a whole. Every case in Virginia now relies on some form of the model, with dedicated social workers and guardians ad litem assigned to each of the three judges.

"I think we are all of the mind that some of the things happening with Safe Babies Court are really impactful to families and they should be spread out across (the system)," said Nicole Curphy, who oversees Children and Family Services for northern St. Louis County. "That is really our focus for this year."

The grant funding will also carry some lasting impacts, including a renovation that was completed for a visitation center at Lutheran Social Services and a planned overhaul of a small courtroom at the Virginia courthouse to create a more child-friendly environment.

To continue contracts with providers and expand the model, Stocke said the county will tap other funding sources, including a child protection allocation from the state's settlement with opioid manufacturers and distributors.

"We want to get those really good practices in place," Curphy said, "so that all families can have the same experience in court."

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