Innovative court partnership connects families to mental health and legal support
The Family Law Navigation Model, a pilot project developed by a Michigan State University researcher, provides early intervention in family legal issues to keep them from becoming more complicated.
Led by Brittany Rudd, an assistant professor in the Michigan State University Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health in the College of Human Medicine, the program is intended to improve the outcomes from family transitions, which can often put families at greater risk of entering the criminal, juvenile or child welfare systems.
Complex issues like divorce, child support, parenting time and other civil legal issues are stressful for families and can put families involved at greater risk of entering the criminal, juvenile or child welfare systems down the road due to the instability associated with family transitions.
“Divorce, parental separation and intimate partner violence increase the risk of mental health problems and suicide for children and parents as well as potential legal conflicts within the family,” Rudd said. “Potential problems in the family system could lead to things like a criminal offense because of family disagreements that can arise in civil legal matters like divorce or custody proceedings.”
Family Law Navigation Model
Providing early interventions to those families is the basis for the Family Law Navigation Model, a pilot project led by Rudd for the National Center for Health and Justice Integration for Suicide Prevention, or NCHATS. NCHATS is a suicide prevention research center funded by a $15 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. It focuses on identifying individuals at risk for suicide and connecting them to care, co-led by researchers from MSU, Brown University and Henry Ford Health.
Rudd’s Family Law Navigation Model is one of four current NCHATS pilot projects. The project recognizes family court as a critical intervention point.
“Many families, especially low-income ones, face difficulties navigating the system without legal representation, as there is no right to counsel in civil cases,” Rudd said.
Rudd’s background is as a child psychologist and she has always been interested in supporting children and parents. She was an assistant professor of psychiatry, psychology and law at the University of Illinois Chicago when she started the project and has continued that research at Michigan State.
“In my clinical work, I saw many families who had issues navigating the legal system,” she said. “Parents were divorcing and kids were having a hard time, so I saw a lot of family stress. It was through that work and early graduate training that I began thinking about how we might embed parenting interventions that could help provide support for these issues in courts. I became really interested in parenting interventions and how they can be helpful for parents, specifically during transitions. I wanted to figure out how to get these programs outside of just clinics and into the civil system. It felt like a natural opportunity and place to embed services and help more families.”
NCHATS includes a network of more than 36 investigators, 18 universities and health systems and organizations representing judges, attorneys and jails. Jennifer Johnson, chief translation officer in the Office of Health Sciences at MSU, chair of the Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health and co-director of NCHATS, said that network is perfectly equipped to promote real-world change.
“We’ve pulled together a network of partners and people who don’t usually talk to each other,” Johnson said. “The goal is for everyone to work together to stabilize families and prevent suicide.”
A Collaborative Pilot in Indiana
In collaboration with the Indiana Superior Court and multiple counties, this project aims to help families access legal resources while connecting them to mental health and social services, preventing deeper system involvement. The pilot project, locally called the Families Matter Triage Program, was launched to prove the concept and allow for the collection of data on parent and child outcomes. There is also a Facebook page for the Indiana version of the pilot.
Rudd has worked closely with Judge Maria D. Granger in Floyd County on developing the model.
“Judge Granger has really been a pioneer and early adopter of this model,” Rudd said. “I'm excited, because in our work with the Indiana Supreme Court, we've been presenting the preliminary pilot work of this service in this one county and now there's at least three more counties saying, ‘finish the manual finish the intervention because we want this too.’”
A Foundation for Expansion
The goal is to use this pilot data to launch a comprehensive evaluation of the model’s effectiveness on families and court processes. Ultimately, the Indiana Superior Court’s support plays a crucial role in building the foundation for future research and the potential expansion of this model.
“This project is helping rethink how we serve families in crisis,” Granger said. “By connecting parents to legal guidance and behavioral health services early in the process, we’re reducing confusion, improving outcomes for children and strengthening public trust in the courts.”
Aiming to improve how resources connect to people during stressful times or transitions in life is a key feature of this project.
“I think about hopelessness being a key factor in suicidality,” Rudd said. “And sometimes, hopelessness is shaped by things like poverty, lack of education, unsafe housing or limited access to health care. So part of my thinking and hope with this project is that by catching people during stressful transitions, getting them connected to care, getting them mental health resources and targeting social determinants of health, we will promote mental health overall and prevent suicide.”
This story originally appeared on the College of Human Medicine website.