Evaluation of Online Training for Court Personnel on Authentically Engaging Child Welfare System-Involved Children and Youth in the Judicial System

Background and Purpose: A primary goal of the child welfare system is to achieve legal permanency for system-involved children and youth. Courts have an vital role in this process but relationships between court personnel and children and youth have historically been limited and one-sided. This study assesses a newly developed online, asynchronous training for court personnel on authentically engaging child welfare system-involved children and youth in the judicial system. The purpose of this evaluation is to inform revision of the training and whether training access should be expanded.

Methods: The study includes results from intervention participants enrolled between March-July 1, 2023. Six states and tribal nations have so far piloted the court training as part of the Quality Improvement Center for Engaging Youth in Finding Permanency (QIC-EY), including Hawaii, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Rhode Island, and Yakama Nation. Participants include 235 individuals who completed a pre-training survey, 194 of whom have also completed a post-training survey. Analysis of the results focuses on this set of 194 court personnel, with descriptive statistics of the demographics, agency rating, attitude, knowledge, and satisfaction items, and paired-sample t-tests of the attitude and knowledge items to measure the significance of any observed differences from before to after the training. Finally, two free-response satisfaction items asked at the end of the training were qualitatively coded into a small set of recurring themes.

Results: Before the training, respondents indicated that their agencies were “somewhat” developed (i.e., average 5.3 on a scale from 1=strongly disagree to 7=strongly agree) on how children and youth were engaged in the courts and that child and youth engagement in court most commonly began in their agencies between the ages of 8-13. The training improved attitudes regarding child and youth engagement in court (i.e., average improved from 4.3 to 4.5 on a scale from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree; p<.001). The training also resulted in knowledge gains (i.e., average score improved from 69.3% to 82.9% on a set of 21 knowledge items; p<.001). After the training, court personnel indicated that they were mostly satisfied with the training (i.e., average 4.4 on a scale from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree). In two open-ended response questions, court personnel most frequently stated that they liked the content of the training (25.8%) and most frequently stated that there was nothing that could be improved (49.5%).

Conclusions and Implications: The results of this evaluation of the court training indicate that it has been largely successful and positively received. After completing the court training, court personnel demonstrated improvements in knowledge and attitudes related to the importance of and strategies to effectively engage child welfare system-involved children and youth in the judicial system toward achieving legal permanency. In addition, court personnel reported high rates of satisfaction with the training and qualitative feedback supported these quantitative results. The capacity of the training to motivate and teach court personnel about authentically engaging with youth in a useable and well-received format indicates that this training should be considered for expansion to a wider audience.