Interviewee: Yeah, it almost doesn’t matter that it has of Jay Blitzman, for example, he has been there a long time, longer than Chief Justice has been a court judge, it doesn’t matter.
Interviewer: Do you see any other place where it could sit, in terms of the child advocate program, DCF, DIH –
Interviewee: We talked about that when I was with Marisol, Matt and Josh Greenburg. Josh had a lot of good ideas. One place is the child advocate, I think there is a real potential there. It would extend beyond kids in court; it would give a legal kind of dimension …show more content…
That is really a great question. In the last several years, I have always done this with the caucus, but it is more intensive in the last few years, this notion of diversion,. Just get out of that system, almost by hook or crook. Get out of it. For kids, we are focusing now on the project, which is tied to a juvenile court system, that anything that can be done, that almost makes it impossible to get into the system. Make it as hard as possible.
Interviewer: I will challenge you. What happens if someone said, it might be bad for the system, but it is good for the kids, because it creates levers for both the kids and the families, that you don’t get without the court.
Interviewee: To me, that sounds like CHINS way. In other words, the number of partners that have been advised to get in and go for a CHINS because that is the only way you are going to get some services. That is a symptom of a failure of the system. I am not interested in buying into that. It may be true, but in terms of fashioning a project, that is not where I would want to extend my resources.
Interviewer: So, diversion, have you thought at all about, we are seeing a lot of parental mental illness. Do you have any thoughts about it. This program isn’t really designed to address that in any way. Is that something that you have thought about at …show more content…
Interviewee: These are kids who would be care and protection before they would be CHINS, so in that sense, it’s a little mismatch.
Interviewer: Most of the kids have been referred to J-MHAP are CRA cases, not delinquency and they tend to be whiter than certainly in the delinquency cases. What do you think happens in delinquency cases?
Interviewee: That is a real defect in our project, and it was from the beginning, because it was focused on CHINS. The kids, who are delinquent, are no less fraught with mental illness.
Interviewer: It’s interesting because there are not many cases, do you think the judges are less in tuned to that, so they are not seeing the mental health issues in delinquency cases?
Interviewee: I don’t know, even just as you say it, the deeper you are in the system, the more needs you are likely to have. In w weird way, the CHINS kids were a form of pruning themselves, because clearly the kids who were delinquent, were on their way. That is a