Infant mental health interventions in juvenile court: Ameliorating the effects of maltreatment and deprivation.

Abstract

The juvenile court has provided a fertile opportunity for the exercise of therapeutic jurisprudence since its inception a century ago. Unfortunately, until 1997 when the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) was passed, the parent (and not the child) was the center of the child welfare system. With the change in dependency law after ASFA, the juvenile court has a legal responsibility to focus on the well-being and safety of the child as its paramount concern. The juvenile court, acting in concert with the community in an interdisciplinary effort, can focus on healing the child while adjudicating the case and working with the family. Now that infants are the largest cohort of children in the child welfare system, an emphasis on the needs of infants and toddlers, a previously ignored population in juvenile court, can result in true prevention of intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment. The parent–child relationship provides the most important context for pro-moting healthy child development (Sims, 2000). However, a healthy parent–child relationship is unlikely to be seen in the environment of the juvenile court. Created 100 years ago in Chicago, the juvenile court is charged with the respon-

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