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This article describes an infant-toddler court team in Michigan, the community-based participatory research approach to the implementation evaluation, and the resulting changes in parenting. Like other court teams, Michigan's Baby Court is led by a science-informed jurist, and all service providers are knowledgeable about the developmental needs of young children and engage in collaborative communication throughout the case. Relationship-based treatment in the form of infant mental health home-visiting was provided to families. Sixteen parents participated in pre- and posttest evaluation visits to assess changes in parents' reflective functioning and interactions with their child. Findings suggest improvements in parents' responsiveness, positive affect, and reflective functioning, with moderate effects. Higher risk parents demonstrated significant changes in reflective functioning, as compared to those at lower risk. These findings add to and support the limited literature on the effectiveness of infant-toddler court teams, which include relationship-based and trauma-informed services., (© 2019 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.)

This study presents preliminary outcomes for a problem-solving court improvement model, the Miami Child Well-Being Court (Miami-CWBC), which makes evidence-based clinical intervention and integration of the treating clinician's ongoing assessment and perspective central in the dependency court process. Records were reviewed for children adjudicated for maltreatment that completed treatment. Several promising findings suggest that this approach can help jurisdictions improve the lives of young children and their families' capacity to care for them.

Infants, toddlers, and young children have unique needs when separated from their primary caregivers because of child abuse and neglect. Parents of these children often have their own histories of abuse and neglect and can benefit from assessments and interventions that bear in mind the effect caregiving histories have on present parenting. This article describes a unique intervention designed by evaluators of a court team in Wayne County, Michigan. The video-based "assessment and feedback session" shares evaluation assessment results with parents and infant mental health clinicians in a way that promotes honest conversations about relational and developmental strengths and concerns while supporting the developing therapeutic relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study describes the developmental trajectories of language skills in infants with substantiated maltreatment histories over a 5-year period and evaluates the effect of three different custodial placements on their language trajectories over time: in-home (remaining in the care of the biological parent/parents), nonkin foster care, and nonparental kinship care. Participants included 963 infants reported to child protective services prior to their first birthday and whose maltreatment was substantiated. Results from covariate-controlled growth modeling revealed no significant placement effects. Across all groups, children’s auditory and expressive communication scores decreased significantly from Wave 1 (intake) in the infants’ first year to Wave 4, when children were about 3.5 years of age, then improved to baseline levels by Wave 5, when children were about 6 years old. Despite these fluctuations, children’s average language scores in each placement group remained below the population mean at each wave of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a prevalent social problem in the United States and women of childbearing age are the most likely victims. The young children born to these women are impacted, however, women are not routinely asked about IPV even when there is evidence that their child has been abused. To highlight the importance of routinely screening for IPV in child welfare and other social service agencies this article reviews typical social-emotional development and physiological/neurological development in early childhood and the impact that IPV and trauma have on these domains of development. Early intervention with young children and caregivers living with IPV provides a significant buffer to the negative effects that witnessing IPV have on children''s development and their relationships with caregivers. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]