The Honorable LeAnn Kay Rafferty recently was selected to serve on the Children Justice Act Task Force for the State of Texas. “I am incredibly honored and humbled to serve on this prestigious Task Force.  I remain committed to serving children and look forward to working with professionals throughout Texas to improving child welfare and to improving current state systems.”

 

The federal Children’s Justice Act (CJA) program was established in 1986 by Congress as Section 109 of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) and provides grants to States to improve the investigation, prosecution, and judicial handling of cases of child abuse and neglect, including cases involving child sexual abuse and exploitation, suspected child maltreatment fatalities, and cases involving children with disabilities or serious health-related problems who are the victims of abuse or neglect. CJA grants also focus on reducing additional trauma to the child victim and the victim’s family while ensuring procedural fairness for the accused. 

 

CJA funds are to be primarily focused on the front-end, intake and investigative piece of child welfare and should be used for programs to reform state systems. The Texas CJA program is administered by the Texas Center for the Judiciary.

 

Judge Rafferty was selected to serve on a multidisciplinary task force of child welfare professionals charged with making policy recommendations to improve the child protection system. Funds are used to implement pilot projects as well as model and demonstration projects that test innovative approaches to advance the handling of cases of child abuse and neglect and improve the prompt and successful resolution of both civil and criminal child abuse cases. 

CJA in Texas has supported a variety of initiatives affecting children and child welfare professionals throughout the state. Recent initiatives include:

Providing training and technical assistance for child advocacy centers to improve the investigation and prosecution of child abuse cases by multidisciplinary teams; Developing statewide joint child abuse and neglect training for Texas peace officers and CPS investigators;  Conducting a prospective study on infant death to determine links between the infant’s cause of death and pattern of injury; Conducting a comprehensive review of current practices for child abuse medical evaluations in Texas and providing training and policy recommendations to increase the number of child maltreatment victims obtaining medical evaluations.