Child and family outcomes of the Safe Babies Court Team – A scoping review

Abstract

Children under the age of three are frequently removed from their home and placed in foster care, resulting in critical impediments to their development and well-being. These placements result in significant short and long-term economic costs. The Safe Babies Court TeamTM (SBCT) intervention was created to provide an alternative to the traditional welfare system by serving the needs of parents and children with a multidisciplinary team led by a judge and child welfare leader trained in trauma-informed practice and infant mental health. The SBCT intervention has been implemented across states and counties within the United States to various extents: certain locations have only implemented partial elements of the intervention or have extended it to children up to five years of age. Many of the SBCT implementations have published reports which discuss the methods and outcomes seen in each court. This scoping review aims to comprehensively characterize the effects of SBCT, both child-centered and economic, across the different implementations. We summarize forty articles and reports that document outcomes for children, families, and courts served by SBCT sites across the United States. Overall, SBCT was shown to be promising for children and families who underwent the intervention through positive outcome comparisons. SBCT may have positive economic benefits by reducing labor costs and out-of-home payments in the short-term, though long-term studies are needed for more comprehensive conclusions.