Baby Court

What is Baby Court?
Baby Court is a specialized treatment court in Michigan that is designed to address the needs of children under the age of three years, who are being served by the child welfare system for maltreatment. It is a problem-solving court that recognizes a child's need for a consistent and sensitive attachment figure. All families receive an attachment-based treatment, Infant Mental Health Home Visiting, and the clinician speaks to the child's needs in court. The foster care specialist and clinician collaborate frequently, court hearings are non-adversarial and held more frequently. Baby Court is effective at reducing developmental delays, time in care, and re-entries into care. It also increases timely permanency, parenting sensitivity, and reunification.

MPSI provides three self-paced on-line training modules for Baby Court

1. Bringing Baby Court to Your Community is designed for county-level decision makers in child welfare, children's mental health and the court systems. It provides an overview of Baby Court, outlines the steps to bring a Baby Court to your community, and increases awareness of other training resources. This training takes approximately one hour to complete. You can register yourself for free by completing this form. After completing the form you will receive instructions for self-registration. Once registered, you can access the training at training.mpsi.wayne.edu

2. Baby Court Team Training is offered in 5 modules and takes 8 hours to complete. It is intended for members of a Baby Court Team, including jurists, attorneys, foster care specialists and their supervisors, and IMH clinicians and their supervisors. Participants learn about the laws and policies that guide the child welfare system, how Baby Court addresses the needs of babies in the child welfare system and their families, the collaborative role of the Baby Court team, the values of Baby Court team members, inequities in the child welfare system, the impact of implicit bias in work with families, the child welfare process from allegation to case closure, and the perspective of families involved in the child welfare system, and Infant Mental Health-Home Visiting. Participants who pass a post-test can earn a certificate and social work CEs. We are able to offer this training for free to Michigan providers thanks to support from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, and the Health Resources Services Administration. To register for the training please email amstacks@wayne.edu. Provide the first and last name(s) of the people you would like to enroll, their email address, the county in which they work, and their role of the Baby Court Team

3. Overview of Baby Court was designed for Wayne County front-line child welfare providers who need to know about the Baby Court so that they can make appropriate referrals. This training takes one-hour to complete. You can register by filling out this form. After completing the form you will receive instructions for self-registration. Once registered, you can access the training at training.mpsi.wayne.edu

We are grateful to the Michigan Health Endowment Fund for their support to develop the Baby Court training and evaluate it and to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and the Health Resources Services Administration for funding that allows Michigan professionals working with families in child welfare to access the training for free.

Question? Contact Ann Stacks at amstacks@wayne.edu

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