The CLC was established to address the critical need for comprehensive, statewide training opportunities for the many professionals and volunteers working in the child abuse and neglect system. An extensive assessment and evaluation conducted by the Supreme Court Foster Care Task Force found that these individuals had received minimal training, if any, in the complex legal, medical and psychological issues of their cases. Few training opportunities existed and what little was offered was fragmented and haphazard.

The CLC’s mission is to provide education throughout New Mexico that will help improve the outcome of proceedings in two areas of the law that directly affect children and families:

• Child abuse and neglect. In civil abuse and neglect proceedings, training will enable participants to more effectively address the safety and well-being of children and to expedite permanent placement for children in state custody. Expedited permanency produces better outcomes for children and families and reduces demands on the overworked child welfare system. In criminal cases, training will lead to improved investigations and prosecutions.
• Juvenile justice. Training will likewise enable these participants to better perform their functions, with the ultimate goals of increased public safety, increased rates of rehabilitation and decreased recidivism.

The CLC offers training programs and resource materials to judges, attorneys, social workers, Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), Citizen Review Boards (CRB), educators, counselors, law enforcement, juvenile justice probation and parole officers, foster parents, and other interested individuals. Judges are also trained by the Institute's Judicial Education Center, which consults with the CLC on children’s law programs for the judiciary. The CLC does not provide legal services to individuals or litigate.

Among other things, the CLC has produced the New Mexico Child Welfare Handbook, a legal resource manual on abuse and neglect for judges and practitioners in New Mexico; co-sponsored the annual Children’s Law Institute, a conference for participants in the child abuse and neglect and juvenile justice systems; conducted delinquency training for state and tribal prosecutors and juvenile defenders; developed training for attorneys who represent parents in Children’s Court; and sponsored a CASA/CRB training workshop in Hobbs.

About the Court Improvement Project
In 1995, federal grant money was awarded to the New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts (the AOC), on behalf of the State Supreme Court, to develop and manage the State Court Improvement Project, a comprehensive effort to assess and improve judicial proceedings relating to child abuse and neglect, foster care, and adoption. A broadly based task force was appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to oversee the project. Originally called the Supreme Court Foster Care Task Force, the group is popularly known as the Court Improvement Project Task Force.

When the Task Force first assessed the state’s child abuse and neglect court proceedings, it found the most pressing need was to find a more efficient and effective way to get children permanently placed back in their own homes or in adoptive homes. As a result, the Task Force launched a number of initiatives, including the following:

• It sought amendments to the Children’s Code to speed up time frames and introduce permanency hearings in order to move the children through the courts faster and more effectively. The New Mexico legislature, the state’s Children, Youth and Families Department, and the Governor’s office broadly supported these changes.
• It promoted the use of contracts with judicial districts throughout most of the state, replacing the practice of random assignment, in order to assure attorneys representing children and families in these cases were committed to this work.
• It established the Corinne Wolfe Children’s Law Center to provide training for attorneys, other professionals, and volunteers who represent or assist children and families.

The Court Improvement Project continues to implement and evaluate the strategies the Task Force recommended in the report: “Improving Outcomes for Abused and Neglected Children through State Court Improvement – Assessment & Evaluation Report.” For further information about the Court Improvement Project, contact Angela Peinado, Administrative Office of the Courts, at 505-827-4729 or .

About Corinne Wolfe
(Article courtesy of National Association of Social Workers Foundation. Photograph courtesy of Santa Fe Living Treasures.)
During her lifetime, Corinne H. Wolfe made significant contributions to the field of social work in several important areas: (1) administrative simplification of policy for more effective performance at the local level; (2) national policy for in-service training programs, which began with training the trainer who, in turn, was responsible for teaching the caseworker; (3) policy for promoting opportunities in professional education; (4) establishment of standards for undergraduate social work; and (5) a role model for social work retirees in influencing state and local social legislation.

Corinne received her master of social work degree in 1944 from Tulane University. During World War II, before completing her professional training, she was already working in public welfare in staff development and the administration of special programs. In 1945, she joined the Federal Security Agency (which later became the Department of Health, Education and Welfare) Regional Office staff in San Francisco as public assistance analyst. She assessed policy effectiveness and how well it was being carried out at the state and local levels. With this background, she was moved to the Washington Central Office into the Division of Program Operation. She and a colleague with a similar background reviewed various programs and set policy to facilitate communication between the central office, the regional office, and the state, which would include providing feedback from all levels.

In 1950, she became chief of the Training Division, Bureau of Family Services (FSA). She was responsible for the policy and in-service training of public assistance workers throughout the United States and its territories. During this period, which extended into the late 1960s, a grant from private funds helped set up a unique and successful training program for staff at the state level who were designated to be trainers of caseworkers. This program for public welfare agencies was the first to provide federal funds for training purposes. She is credited with using federal funds to establish more schools of social work than anyone else.

In 1972 Corinne left the federal government and returned to New Mexico, her home state. This was the beginning of her contributions to social work in New Mexico and to social program development. She joined the faculty at Highlands University schhol of social work and began an unprecedented career of advocacy. She initiated as co-chair what became the Human Needs Coordinating Council, now the largest advocacy group in the state. She supported a program of social work licensing with provisions that made New Mexico one of only three states in which social workers in state government had to be licensed. She helped develop Child Abuse and Neglect Citizens' Review Boards, which monitor how children in the custody of the state and their families are receiving services. She developed the Children’s Trust Fund, created to fund innovative children’s services and programs. She monitored what is now the public welfare TANF fund and the state Medicaid program.

Corinne died in 1997. She was so trusted by legislators for her honesty and integrity that the only place in the state Capitol that is dedicated to an individual is the Corinne Wolfe Lobby. She remained active in numerous professional organizations and, after her death, family members found boxes and boxes of awards and honors.