You do what? And you do it where?

A lot of people have asked me what exactly it is that I do. My job title is Site Liaison (soon to be Site Manager) at the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (The Council). There are four departments at The Council, other than administration, and the one I work for deals solely with child and abuse and neglect (foster care) proceedings. Our administration is located on the UNR, University of Nevada, Reno campus, and we are affiliated with both the university and the National Judicial College. Because of this affiliation, I am considered associate faculty at the university, however the only thing it's gotten me so far is a discount at the local gym!

Other departments at The Council focus on juvenile delinquency, custody and other issues in divorce proceedings, research, and domestic violence. My job entails working directly with courts in a federally funded program known formally as: Child Victim’s Act Model Courts. These aren’t the prettiest, most fashionable courts (sorry, I couldn’t resist) but are courts who are willing to look at their practice and compare it to the gold standard, The Resource Guidelines; a document created at The Council in the mid ‘90s. In addition to conforming their practices to this document, they also agree to dream up and implement innovative ways to serve children and families in child abuse and neglect cases. There are 31 Model Courts across the country, and right now I work directly with Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Jose, Toledo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Charlotte and Newark.

My work with these courts includes visiting their jurisdiction to observe the judges at work, talking to the other stakeholders involved in the court process (social workers, children’s attorneys, parents’ attorneys, mediators, district attorneys, etc.) and providing feedback to the court on what they are doing well and what could be improved upon. My colleagues and I also have the opportunity to take court teams to visit courts in other cities to observe something innovative that they might want to incorporate in their own jurisdiction. This month I will be traveling with a colleague and a team from Omaha to Honolulu, to observe Family Group Conferencing, and last October, another colleague and I met my team from Charlotte in Chicago, so that we could learn more about how Chicago assigns cases to a judge by the geographic location of the family. There are also many conferences and training events to attend. In future posts I hope to go back and tell you about some of the adventures I had in travel during 2007.

Due to space, the departments of The Coucil are in separate buildings downtown. And just so you can visualize, this is a shot of my office. Notice the floor to ceiling window looking onto downtown =-) I am only slightly spoiled…

...and here is what I see when I look out my office window.