The Juvenile Court Improvement Program (CIP) is a federally funded program to improve court practice in child abuse, neglect, and dependency cases.

Mission The mission of the North Carolina Juvenile Court Improvement Program (CIP) is to improve the performance of North Carolina's juvenile courts in abuse and neglect cases so that safety, permanence, and well-being for each child are achieved in a fair and timely manner.

Goals

• To help ensure that foster children's needs for safety, permanency and well-being are met in a timely and complete manner.
• To increase timely decisions and final resolution of juvenile abuse/neglect/dependency cases.
• To conduct more meaningful, thorough hearings in juvenile abuse/neglect/dependency cases.
• To increase efficiency of court practices to achieve permanence for children.

Outcomes

• Children are placed in permanent homes within one year.
• Each family receives the individual attention necessary to make effective decisions for the child.
• Each child and each parent is afforded due process and effective legal representation.

To that end, CIP funds are used to implement strategies and activities to ensure greater permanence for children and their families and reduce the length of time children remain in foster care. These activities and strategies include:

• Providing consultation to district courts to improve their practice in abuse, neglect, and dependency cases.
• Advocating for and reforming state laws (Juvenile Code), policies, and procedures (court rules) for juvenile court proceedings.
• Providing technology assistance, such as developing the juvenile court information collection and management system (JWise) to track performance standards which will be used to monitor and improve the performance of our state's juvenile courts.
• Supporting and creating collaborative efforts and training opportunities for judges, attorneys, and community partners

How Juvenile Court Works The juvenile court proceedings chart visually depicts the process steps these cases follow as they moved through district court.