The Pennsylvania Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will release the “Pennsylvania Dependency Benchbook,” a guide developed by Pennsylvania trial judges to aid lawyers and other judges in deciding whether, in juvenile dependency cases, a child should be removed from the home.
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Max Baer explained that the guide “creates a comprehensive resource that combines Pennsylvania law, organized pragmatically to allow quick and efficient use, with a series of state and national best practices that will provide judges and practitioners, from the least to most experienced, with the best possible information to support children and families safely.”
Sandy Moore, administrator of the Office of Children and Families in Court, said the handbook is an important tool that will help judges reach the right result in tough situations. “New judges tend to go to those courtrooms and those cases are some of the most complex -- involving abused and neglected children. Foster care numbers are coming down. The benchbook is one piece of that strategy.”
While recent statistics show that the number of Pennsylvania children in foster care is declining, there is much work to be done. Officials hope that the guide, which will eventually be distributed to all trial level judges and child dependency professionals across the state, will prove valuable in achieving this goal.
Read the AOPC's release here.
View the benchbook here.
