Examining Child Welfare Appellate Court Opinions
Jill Berrick, Professor
Social Welfare
Applications for Fall 2024 are closed for this project.
In California, child protective services (CPS) investigators are required by law to evaluate reports of maltreatment in screened-in calls from the hotline and remove children from caregivers (and/or parents) who demonstrate evidence or significant risk of harm towards the child. In certain cases, caregivers may appeal on a prior ruling in their CPS case. Depending on the appellate court judge’s opinion, decisions made by the lower courts on actions of CPS can be ruled erroneous and the case remanded to the juvenile dependency court for reevaluation, thus giving parents a chance to argue for restoration of their rights or other entitlements from the lower court’s initial decision.
The literature is sparse on using court opinion documents to measure the frequency of parental appeal success, likely because juvenile dependency court records are confidential under California law to protect the privacy of minors involved in those cases; only California Court of Appeals and Supreme Court records are publicly available for the purpose of setting legal precedent. Most research on the child welfare system tends to focus on upstream (front line intake) or downstream (foster care to permanency planning) events, not the consequences of later dependency court decisions or outcomes. This study aims to analyze the public appellate records of CPS cases in California to understand which types of cases are more likely to succeed and why, among other general questions about this unexplored dataset. The project tasks are mostly qualitative, with a focus on reading and coding appellate court opinions into tabular form for analysis.
Role: Assist with deep reading, interpretation, discussion, and qualitative coding of legal court opinions. Engage with members of the team to evaluate coding decisions in pairs.
Qualifications: Strong candidates will have an interest in legal studies and/or child welfare. Interest or knowledge relating to the child welfare system, California court systems, and natural language processing may be helpful.
Hours: 3-5 hrs
Off-Campus Research Site: Remote or in person, depending on the preferences of the team as a whole. Includes weekly meetings with the research team.
Social Sciences