Center Court
- Vol. 6, No. 2 - Spring 2003
Service Coordination
Essential to Resolving Problem Cases
A continuous increase of court cases that involve
people with medical, psychological and social problems has dealt state
courts a new set of problems – ones the courts can’t effectively solve
alone, according to a report recently completed by the National Center for
State Courts.
The report, “Court Responses to Individuals in Need
of Services: Promising Components of a Service Coordination Strategy for
Courts,” outlines nine elements of a successful problem-solving approach
to these cases. Many of these difficulties can be overcome through
effective coordination with local service agencies and the courts.
The Bureau of Justice Assistance, which funded the
report, based a recently released program brief, “Strategies for Court
Collaboration with Service Communities,” on the National Center’s
report.
The NCSC report identifies nine components that
address both policy-level and case-level issues, and allow jurisdictions
flexibility to develop a service-coordination strategy based on its needs,
legal and social services cultures, and resources:
- an
acknowledged court role in service coordination
- judicial
leadership
- an
active policy committee of stakeholders
- case-level
service coordinators
- centralized
access to the service network
- active
court monitoring of compliance with orders
- routine
collection and use of data
- creative
use of resources, and
- training
and education related to service coordination.
The success of these components depends on the local
jurisdiction’s ability to modify them to best fit their community’s
specific needs, the report says. To identify these components, NCSC
researchers interviewed court and social service professionals in eight
jurisdictions that use a collaborative problem-solving approach to resolve
such cases.
“Reaching out to other community entities to
achieve goals is a hallmark of problem-solving courts,” said authors
Pamela Casey and Bill Hewitt, NCSC principal court research consultants.
“Because these courts are particularly practiced in collaboration and
service coordination, they offer a starting point for identifying
promising components of an effective service coordination strategy that
addresses the key service coordination questions.”
The NCSC report concludes that effective service coordination takes place
throughout the court process: it is not something completed by one or two
individuals at the end of a case.
A copy of the NCSC monograph, is available on
NCSC’s website, www.ncsconline.org.
Click on Research and find the title in the publications list. The BJA
brief, “Strategies for Court Collaboration with Service Communities,”
is also available at www.ncjrs.gov.
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