Strengths Based Approaches to Practice and Family Drug Courts: Is There a Fit?

Abstract

Substance abuse among child welfare service recipients has proven to be a challenging obstacle to child safety, permanence and well-being. The use of family drug courts as a specialized intervention for working with substance affected families has risen dramatically in the past decade, and emanates from the notion of therapeutic jurisprudence. At the same time family drug courts have grown, the use of strengths based approaches to practice has also proliferated among child welfare practitioners. This work examines the intersection of family drug courts and strengths based practices, and encourages to reader to consider that while the court system would at first blush appear to belie the foundation of the strengths perspective, the two approaches are theoretically and practically quite compatible.