ALL RISE: For the Good of the Children takes you inside the courtroom of an unconventional judge in East Texas who takes a trust-based, trauma-informed approach to healing broken families in the child welfare system. Two families share how their lives were transformed through the support and intervention offered by Judge Carole Clark and her team of lawyers, mental health experts and child advocates.
Every year in the United States, more than 650,000 thousand children enter the child welfare system because of abuse and neglect, according to statistics compiled by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and federal agencies.
In Texas alone, in fiscal year 2018, Child Protective Services investigated 374,769 cases of maltreatment and completed 171,228 investigations, resulting in 50,846 children being place in substitute care outside of their homes, according to data compiled by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
On average, DFPS reports these children remain out of their home for 17 months.
This film spotlights the effort of one small court in East Texas to change these odds and improve the system for the people of Smith County.
The judge revamped her court on the principles of TBRI ®, Trust-Based Relational Intervention, created at the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development at TCU.
TBRI® is an attachment-based, trauma-informed intervention that is designed to meet the complex needs of vulnerable children. TBRI® uses Empowering Principles to address physical needs, Connecting Principles for attachment needs, and Correcting Principles to disarm fear-based behaviors. While the intervention is based on years of attachment, sensory processing, and neuroscience research, the heartbeat of TBRI® is connection.
The great news from neuroscience is that our brains are plastic. They can be reshaped and rewired to overcome the impact of trauma IF we get the tools to change.
Who couldn’t benefit from healthier and more fulfilling relationships? In the words of noted UCLA professor, Dr. Dan Siegel: “Relationships are brain food. It’s all about relationships, relationships, relationships.”
This court demonstrates how a therapeutic, trauma-informed approach can work wonders in repairing broken or frayed relationships in children and adults caught in generational cycles of trauma, abuse and neglect.
When we know better, how can we not do better?