Goals of Juvenile and Family Drug Courts
Juvenile and family drug courts provide immediate intervention in the lives of children and parents using
drugs or exposed to substance addiction through family members, as well as structure for the litigants
through the ongoing, active involvement and oversight of the drug court judges. Common goals of
juvenile drug courts therefore include providing children with an opportunity to be clean and sober,
constructive support to aid them in resisting further criminal activity, support to perform well in school
and develop positive relationships in the community, and skills that will aid them in leading productive,
substance-free, and crime-free lives. Most programs recognize that to accomplish these goals, the
court may need to have a continuing involvement with each child beyond the period traditionally
required by the adversarial process. Goals of family drug courts are similar and include helping the
parent to become emotionally, financially, and personally self-sufficient and to develop parenting and
"coping" skills adequate for serving as an effective parent on a day-to-day basis.
Juvenile and family drug courts use a variety of strategies to achieve these goals. They are developing
systems of triage applied at intake to better utilize community services, recognizing and responding to
the cultural diversity of children and parents involved in court proceedings and the environments in
which they live, and treating children and families holistically. For example, they have worked to
overcome the dichotomy (for management purposes) between juvenile delinquency and
family/dependency matters and to provide substance abuse treatment that addresses family issues.
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