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The Court Improvement Program is a federally funded program that is designed to
assess and improve court proceedings regarding foster care and adoption. The
Omnibus Budget and Reconciliation Act of 1993 created grants that are available
to all states for use in improving their juvenile justice systems.
The grants were designed in recognition of the overwhelming pressures on
juvenile courts including,
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rapidly escalating judicial
caseloads,
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more difficult cases, and
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growing complexity of the litigation
itself.
The funding is designed to first
enable state court systems to carry out an accurate assessment of their
functioning, and then to develop and implement a plan that insures that both the
spirit as well as the letter of recent reforms are in place for children.
The list of links on the left
explain the different aspects of court improvement that are currently underway
in Arizona.
The
Children’s Action Alliance and the Administrative Office of the Courts jointly
published a report regarding the
Arizona
juvenile
court. The report,
Arizona
Juvenile Courts: Working to Improve Outcomes for Abused and Neglected Children,
was released in September 2004. The report provides detailed information, in
layman’s terms, regarding the juvenile dependency court system in Arizona.
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