Court can be terrifying, especially for parents who are worried they’re at risk of losing their children.
J.H. Corpening II, the Chief District Court Judge for New Hanover and Pender Counties, knows this. He considers himself a trauma-informed judge, meaning he brings an empathetic perspective that takes into account the past negative experiences of the people who appear in his courtroom.
In New Hanover, Corpening is championing Safe Babies Court, a new specialty court in Wilmington that aims to reduce the time to find permanent homes for infants and toddlers in the child welfare system. Once per month, he meets with families enrolled in the optional program to discuss case plans and placement options.
He doesn’t wear a robe or clutch a gavel in these meetings. The chairs in the room are rearranged into a circle, and Corpening prefers to sit next to the parents instead of looming over them from the bench. Something as simple as making the courtroom a more welcoming environment can go a long way in rebuilding trust within the child welfare system, he believes.
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“Lots of our folks don’t have a lot of hope when they first start their journey with us,” Corpening told Carolina Public Press. “Lots of them are affected by substance misuse, affected by mental health issues, affected by domestic violence, affected by poverty.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to see the light of day from way down in that dark well, and so one of my goals is to light the spark of hope for them and to encourage the whole team to grab their arms around these parents and help guide them through the process of achieving permanence for their children.”
Corpening recalled that he conducted his first judicial status conference in July with an incarcerated mother of a 6-month-old baby boy. During that meeting, the mother held her son in her arms for the first time in two months.
“She held her baby up and whispered as she was lifting him up to look in his eyes, ‘I hope he remembers me,’” Corpening said.
“His eyes lit up, he smiled his beautiful smile, and I touched her arm and said, ‘He remembers.’ She cried, and half the people in the room cried, and off we went with our conversation.”
According to Corpening, the moment was more than just a touching story. Within 24 hours of being released from jail, that same mother received a comprehensive clinical assessment and made three other required appointments in accordance with her case plan.
“She came out so fired up from her experience with Safe Babies Court that she has literally hit the ground running, and I can’t wait to hear at the end of this month how she’s doing,” he said.
A new approach to child welfare
Safe Babies Court is a three-year pilot program carried out under the direction of North Carolina’s Administrative Office of the Courts. Enrollment of families in New Hanover, Yancey and Mitchell counties started in July, and AOC plans to expand the program to Durham, Brunswick, McDowell and Rutherford counties.
The program originated as a recommendation of the Chief Justice’s Task Force on ACEs-Informed Courts. Adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, are defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as “potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood,” which can have long-term impacts on health, opportunity and well-being.
The main goal of Safe Babies Court is to reach permanency faster, preferably through reunification of a child with its parents. If the court determines that reunification isn’t a viable option, then fallback options include guardianship with a relative or adoption.
The key to this approach is having more frequent meetings with the families in less formal settings.
Eligible families who opt into Safe Babies Court while involved in an abuse, neglect or dependency case have monthly team meetings with court personnel, DSS and a community coordinator who is an AOC employee. The family also meets with the district court judge monthly for judicial status conferences.
The approach is based on a national model created by the nonprofit organization Zero to Three, which has worked to implement these specialty courts at more than 150 sites across 30 U.S. states.
Aidan Bohlander, an outreach and product development manager at Zero to Three, said the program specifically focuses on infants and toddlers because that period of life is so critical in brain development.
“Stressful experiences early on in life can lead to these poor outcomes later on in life,” Bohlander said. “They can lead to early death. They can lead to poor health. They can lead to behavioral or mental health challenges, and the thing that is most stressful to babies and toddlers is a disconnection in their attachment relationships.”
“For babies and toddlers who are in child welfare, by the very nature of being in child welfare, those connections are disrupted,” she said.
According to national data from Zero to Three, children under the age of three enter the child welfare system more than any other age group. The latest progress and services report from North Carolina’s Division of Social Services showed that the agency expects 11,300 children to be in foster care over the next year.
Safe Babies Court State Director Polly Handrahan told CPP that Safe Babies Court makes child welfare proceedings for qualifying children quicker and less adversarial.
“We’re sort of the driving force to get child welfare and the court system to look at these children and families in a little bit different way, and to approach how we get them through the system in a different way,” she said.
Asia Prince, the Court Programs Director at the AOC, added that traditional child welfare cases might have months to go by between hearings, which creates less accountability for all parties to complete required tasks in a prompt manner.
“Providing that intensive support and accountability to all parties involved, not only to the parents or the guardian, but also to the attorneys (and) to DSS that are involved in a child welfare case ensure that we can get that child to permanency as quickly as possible.”
Hope for future of court program
North Carolina spent the first year of the pilot program coordinating with community stakeholders in Mitchell, Yancey and New Hanover counties before starting to enroll families in July.
New Hanover, which already had some infrastructure built out through a years-long reunification program that Judge Corpening led, has already enrolled 10 children in Safe Babies Court. District Court Judge Rebecca Eggers-Gryder, whose district includes Yancey and Mitchell counties, told CPP that she is holding her first meetings with families in Safe Babies Court in October and hopes to have 20 children enrolled in the program in the near future.
The local DSS directors in Yancey and New Hanover counties both told CPP that they are eager to take advantage of the program.
“It is a heavy lift, but it’s a worthwhile heavy lift,” New Hanover Social Services Director Tonya Jackson said.
“I don’t think any of the outcomes are going to tell us anything other than the fact that this is a positive step for child welfare.”
By the end of the pilot program in 2026, Handrahan said she hopes to have quantifiable data to show the North Carolina General Assembly that the program is not only a success, but a good investment for the state. Zero to Three estimates that reducing the time to permanency and increasing reunification rates could save the state hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long term.
Although gathering such data may take at least a year, those working with Safe Baby Court pilot sites are overwhelmingly optimistic that the program will show positive results.
“As we achieve the kind of success that I believe that we will achieve, it will give us an opportunity to go to the General Assembly and say (that) this is right by our kids and it needs to grow beyond pilots,” Corpening said.
“It needs to be statewide, which will give us a chance to transform child welfare work in North Carolina.”
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