What is Early Childhood Court?
Early Childhood Court, also referred to as "Baby Court," is a problem-solving court that serves children under the age of three who are involved in the child welfare court process.
Early Childhood Courts use therapeutic jurisprudence, employing a nonadversarial approach to address both the legal and underlying nonlegal issues. The goal of these courts is to improve safety, permanency, and well-being outcomes for abused and neglected infants and toddlers.
History
Florida started the national problem-solving court movement by pioneering the first drug court in 1989. Years later, another innovative Florida court, the Miami Child Well-Being Court, inspired the national expansion of a similar approach - Zero to Three's Safe Babies Court Teams. Then, in 2013, Florida State University's Center for Prevention & Early Intervention Policy was awarded a trauma and toxic stress federal grant, and used the funds to implement a "baby court team" pilot. From the time of this first pilot the "baby court team" took hold across the state and evolved into the Early Childhood Court initiative.
"We now have our son home permanently and even when he wakes up at 6am because he's ready for breakfast I can't wait to walk over to the crib and as soon as he sees mommy and daddy that cute face of his lights up!!! This program does need to keep going...each and every person that is involved is necessary because they all had a role in helping us to complete our tasks."
Early Childhood Court Participant
Court Teams Across the State!
Early Childhood Court has fundamentally shifted the focus from “managing the case” to “healing the underlying source of maltreatment” and changing the trajectory for the child and family. The potential to alter the intergenerational cycle of trauma has engendered wide-spread support from grassroots communities to the Florida Supreme Court for rapid expansion of baby courts.
