Judges. Human service agencies. County attorneys. Public defenders. Guardians ad litem. Foster care. Schools. Mental health experts. A variety of other service providers. In Minnesota, any and all of those stakeholders come to the table any time there is a court case involving children, especially one involving child protection or the possibility of abuse or neglect.

With so many busy entities involved, it’s easy to see how these cases can languish. And it gets

even more complex when cases deal with both family and criminal laws. But in the past five years, Minnesota has made important strides in finding the best and quickest way to help children in such cases.

It’s the Children’s Justice Initiative, and it focuses on a simple philosophy: Have the same judge handle the same case from the time a child is removed from the home until a final decision is made on where that child should live.

Beginning in November, Stearns County Judges Elizabeth Hayden and Richard Jessen will focus their time on this effort.

The idea is one judge will not only get to know the case, but the judge will be able to keep all the stakeholders accountable, which advocates say is critical to the state’s goal of deciding a child’s permanent home within a year of when the case first starts.

Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz proposed the initiative in 2001 through a pilot project involving 16 counties, including Stearns. By 2003, all Minnesota counties were involved, and the idea of having the same judge handle the same case began to take off.

Anne Ahlstrom, staff attorney with the Supreme Court and co-manager of the initiative, says the &8221;one judge, one family&8220; model makes sense on many levels.

For starters, the judge gets to know the child and the case, which is important considering there could be more than a dozen different hearings before a final ruling is made. Another benefit is the judge learns the intricacies of this area of the law as well as all the resources that might be available to a child in any given case. Finally, the judge is the one person who can best keep the other stakeholders accountable, which helps in showing that helping children in the court systems is not just the job of human service agencies.

The problem of protecting children and moving their cases quickly through the system is not just something that concerns Minnesota. Blatz, who will retire in January from the Supreme Court, helped lead a nationwide child protection conference of her peers last month in Bloomington. And Minnesota’s model was among those considered as a leader.

That’s good news for Minnesota, and especially its at-risk children.

&045; St. Cloud Times