This commentary is by Meghan Masterson of Burlington. Masterson is the executive director of KidSafe Collaborative, which serves as a member of the Chittenden County Family Treatment Court Docket steering committee.
Last month, it was announced that the Chittenden County Family Treatment Court docket will close at the end of the year. For those of us who have worked closely with this initiative, the news is heartbreaking and deeply disappointing.
The family treatment court docket, which is based on a nationally recognized evidence-based model, was created to support families affected by substance use disorder through a collaborative, trauma-informed and family-centered approach. It focuses on particularly challenging cases, where the stakes are highest for adults, children and the systems that support them.
This approach has been shown to work and be more effective than traditional dependency court processes. For adults, family treatment courts have been found to get people into treatment faster, retain people in treatment longer and support completion of treatment. For children, having parents participate in a family treatment court makes it substantially more likely they will achieve reunification without increased risk of future foster care reentry.
Family treatment courts save money and improve efficiencies. The societal benefit is clear: Children and families are safer and better off.
The Chittenden County docket has been a powerful example of what is possible when courts, child protection, treatment providers and community organizations come together around a shared vision. It created real opportunities for parents to pursue recovery and for children to experience safe, stable connections. It stands as proof that when systems align and people persist through the inevitable challenges of collaboration, outcomes for families improve.
The closure of this docket is a step backward. At a time when Vermont families continue to grapple with the increasingly complex challenges of substance use and our communities cry out for effective solutions, we should be digging in to safeguard programs that work, not dismantling them because of funding decisions.
The children and parents who would have benefited from this model next year will no longer have that opportunity. The professionals who staffed this program and relied on the docket as a structure for collaborative work will lose an evidenced-based and effective strategy. Our most stretched and overburdened systems will be forced to return to inefficient and less effective models of support.
The lessons of the family treatment court docket are too important to lose. Vermont must find a way to sustain and replicate this model, because the well-being of children and families demands it, and because our community deserves it.
