Judge Carole Clark learned early in her life to appreciate what the courts could do. Her first job out of college? Child Protective Services. From CPS Worker to judge, she’s seen it all. Now, she shares her story in order to call attention to Trauma Informed Care.
“I was 22 years old at the time. I had no idea that children were ever removed from their home by the government,” she says now. After presiding over Smith County’s designated family court for 20 years, she’s developed a passion for Trauma Informed Care.
Through Trauma Informed Care all those involved in our justice system create dramatic and lasting change in families. In the past, family courts tended to see the same families over and over, according to Judge Carole. Obviously, the justice system is groaning under the weight of providing justice to families in crisis.
CPS Worker to Judge: Trauma Informed Care with Judge Carol Clark
All Rise for Justice, Trauma Informed Care with Judge Carol Clark
CPS Worker: Time in Court
Trained in education, she took the CPS worker job almost accidentally. Her husband was an attorney. They moved to Tyler, Texas together in October, with the school year well underway. With no jobs as a teacher open, she opted for another way to help children, CPS worker.
“That job requires you to spend a lot of time in court,” she says. After awhile, she caught on to the problems. There seemed to be a pattern, with the same families showing up in court, endangering the same children, generation after generation. Sadly, nothing seemed to help. No one had solutions.
Trauma Informed Care
From the beginning, Judge Carole’s passion for helping children inspired her commitment to family well-being. As a young CPS worker, her natural assumptions got a dramatic wake-up call.
“I was stunned that some people were such abusive parents or neglectful parents that they endangered their children so much that the state had to step in and take them away. So I spent six months walking around with my mouth open in sheer shock.” She began to note patterns and seek solutions. Eventually, as a judge, she discovered Trauma Informed Care.
Ultimately, with Trauma Informed care, breaking the cycle of recidivism in our court system means kids get relief. Over the years, cases in her court prove the data.
In example after example, parents who habitually make poor decisions may experience an underlying issue with generational trauma. Fortunately, Trauma Informed Care provides a tool to break the destructive cycle popping up in multiple generations of the same families. (Stay tuned as we learn more about how to bring Trauma Informed Care to your community in next week’s blog. Or, click here to find podcasts of our interviews with Judge Carole.)
The Lena Pope Home
Growing up in Fort Worth, she attended high school was across the street from the Lena Pope Home. Lena Pope, a nonprofit committed to serving children and families, is still well-known in Fort Worth and throughout Texas. Cultural ways of helping have evolved; we don’t use the word orphanage anymore, it seems. But, back then the term was common. (For more interviews on how to create companionship in families, click here.)
“I can remember asking my mom why they lived there. She told me their parents were dead,” explains Judge Carole. At the time, few people understood that some children could be abandoned due to neglect. Most people assumed that children in group homes were truly orphaned. “Back in those days a lot of things were not real public knowledge,” she adds.
Soon she was attending Texas Christian University and preparing to be a school teacher. “I was the first person in my family to graduate from college,” she adds.
A Heart for the Law
That’s when mutual friends introduced her to the love of her life, a young law student attending Baylor. Instantly in love, they were married, bringing her to Tyler. Her husband’s family viewed law as the family business, with several family members practicing in the courtrooms of Smith County.
While it was agonizing at times, her job as a CPS worker opened her eyes and heart to the challenges in the justice system. (For our interview with Lorie Boruff, Cell 121: How to Respond When Your Child Goes to Jail, click here.) Gradually, she began to have a vision for how the law could help families. After several years, she decided to attend Baylor Law School.
“It was my first time to live by myself,” she laughs, adding, “I lived in a camping trailer they put in a mobile home park.” On weekends, she made the drive from Waco to Tyler, spending time with her hubby at home and studying for the next round of tests in law school. After graduation, “I came home and practiced with my husband and his dad.”
Clear the Court for Caring Solutions
In 1999, she became a judge, presiding over Smith County’s designated Family Court.
“I was very familiar with the court, different aspects of the court,” says Judge Carole, who recently retired. “Over the first five years, I became very frustrated with the child protective service system because I felt like we were seeing the same people over and over. We were not providing services to families that really made a difference.” She grew more and more disenchanted with procedures and laws that exacerbated problems, rather than solving them.
“I thought these children need to be with their families, but their families need to learn to be good parents,” she says. How in the world could THAT be accomplished? It seemed hopeless.
In what Judge Carole views as a series of miracles, long term solutions began to unfold, step by step. Now called Trauma Informed Care, no human could have anticipated the success of the unexpected and effective solutions they developed for courtrooms. Stay tuned because next week’s blog is all about Trauma Informed Care. (Sign up here so you don’t miss it!)
Fostering Justice
After serving twenty years as a Family Court Judge, Carole is taking on the system with an insider’s viewpoint. When she retired recently, folks throughout east Texas made donations to the Judge Carole Clark Trauma-Informed Care Fund at East Texas Communities Foundation. The new fund provides for training so that those serving in courts throughout the United States create lasting change in families. (To make a donation to the Judge Carole Clark Trauma-Informed Training Fund at the ETCF, click here.)
Offering hope and healing is the best way to help families, according to Judge Carole. Of course, healthy families foster justice throughout our land!
In our next interview, Judge Carole explains why traumatic events in families affect several generations. In it, Judge Carole offers hope and effective tools, along with how to contact experts to bring the training to your community. Please click here to be sure you receive our next bog on Trauma Informed Care.
May I pray with you?
Dear Father, You are the Righteous Judge. You alone know every detail of every case before every court today. Please intervene on behalf of families across America who are suffering. Especially for children who are affected, we ask Your mercy. Oh Lord, have mercy! We pray now for all the officials in our justice system who struggle under the weight of traumatized families. Give them wisdom and insight with each individual You bring across their path today, O Lord, so that our justice system can reflect Your glory.
We ask for healing and restoration for those who have been hurt. Help court officials provide tools to those who are willing to recover from old wounds. Help us break the cycle of repeated trauma in generations of the same families. May Your goodness and unfailing love pierce through, with firm guidance and hope. Have mercy, O Lord! We pray in Jesus’s name. Amen.
We love to hear from you!
What has the justice system in your location taught you about the nature of God? How is your church encouraging those who have experienced incarceration? In your community, what seems to be helping families who struggle with trauma? (It means so much to us when you leave comments below in our comment box! Thank you!!)
More Ways to Create Healthy Companionship
At Camp Krafve, we strongly support all efforts to create companionship in our families and communities. Just for you, Anna Krafve Pierce offers lots more easy ideas about spending time with creative kids, here. Also, if you’ve ever struggled to write a stack of thank you notes, watch for our “Foolproof Thank You Notes” cheatsheet, which will be available soon! Sign up for our weekly blog, here. In an upcoming bog, we’ll discover why thankfulness frees our children’s hearts
More Stories and Wisdom to Bless Our Hearts
If you, too, embrace justice and compassion in our communities, we want to encourage you! Joyfully, we’ve interviewed experts. Don’t miss their stories and wisdom, shared just for you on Fireside Talk Radio: Doug McSwane, Marcie McSwane, Lori Boruff, Ben Sciacca, Tina Meier, and Colleen Long, to name a just a few of our favorite heroic people! Don’t forget, Anna is returning soon to Fireside Talk Radio https://cathykrafve.com/fireside-talk-radio/ for more creative fun with kiddos. Or, you can sign up for our blog by clicking here (and we sure hope you do!!!)
Cathy Krafve, host of Fireside Talk Radio, Speaker, Blogger, Podcaster, and Christian Communicator, invites your stories, ideas, and questions at CathyKrafve.com. Truth with a Texas Twang spoken here!
Unfortunately, this lady here has developed a talent for causing trauma. She along with all of her Title IV D gang members separate good fathers from their children and places a bill on the heads of the children. She is never impartial, and is in favor of the obligations that the OAG sets forth which makes her biased. She performed illegal acts from the bench in the name of “what’s in the best interest of the children” and forces unconstitutional obligations on parents despite their agreements being no obligation. Her tactics are fast and leaves families to suffer from anxiety and depression. She’s definitely no hero. She deserves the biggest lawsuit one could form. The Smith County OAG office needs reformation. Even after retirement a class action needs to be brought against this lady.
Dear Prince Charm, first thank you for expressing your opinion. Sorry it took me a minute to see this; my website still confuses me after all these years! Of course, I invite you to share your real name for a you stronger impact.Still, I am always in favor of multi-sided conversations and I can understand the need for anonymity in many cases. If enough people agree with you, speaking up may allow your ideas to form traction. For myself, since it’s clear our culture at large is suffering from a systemic breakdown of family, I am in favor of trying new approaches. Trauma-informed care is backed by good research out of TCU. My prayer is always for healing for others, since I need to walk in healing myself. To me, ultimately, the One who heals is Jesus. I find Him a comfort.
I only see my one comment, unless a previous one was removed. Smith county is horrible. They use coercion, scare tactics and abuse of power in the courtroom. This woman is one of the greatest violators of the constitution in which she is supposed to uphold. She’s faced serious allegations of misconduct and investigations have found clear instances of fraud. Among the violations substantiated by findings were improper ex parte communications where she engaged in unauthorized private discussions regarding ongoing cases without the presence of all parties involved. Though her misconduct has limited public information, she knows exactly what she’s done and so does the courts. Her and her husband have placed plenty of individuals in turmoil. She does not follow due process of the law, executing judicial orders without proper oversight, rush to judgement orders, perjury, and never impartial. My attitude isn’t just geared towards her, it is towards the whole Title IV-D agency as a whole. Smith county is just one of the most corrupt areas that this scam takes place. Forcing the other parent to feel as though a natural obligation can be compelled, and using their lack of knowledge of the law to drive them into a courtroom that will lie as though they have the best interest of the child in mind. All along it is the incentives provided to the state that encourages the fraud to take place. How does the state preside over its own cases? How is it that almost every case ends in a judgment? How is it that present parents become alienated from their children with limited time given and then the custody order cannot be enforced but the child support order can be? Sounds to me like they never had the authority to do neither, wouldn’t you say? Why is it that the OAG during the meeting of the minds never gathers information from the “custodial parent” to calculate child support but instead uses a formula that is supposed to be based on disposable income. How is it that they never have to provide evidence that supports the claim other than the “custodial parent” applying for child support or the TANF grant provided from the state. Then in turn violates its own statutes and codes by placing provisions within the judgment order to coerce an individual into complying. Holding them in contempt and slapping them with a felony charge because they are choosing to pay their bills instead of the state. Isn’t that considered involuntary servitude? Isn’t that considered debtor’s prison which was abolished. How is it that someone is sitting in jail for a debt when the state of Texas says that no one can be imprisoned for not being able to pay a bill. They use the notion that the individual is violating a court order as justification, when that is in fact kidnapping and false imprisonment because the order is either void or voidable and should be vacated on the grounds of fraud. She is the reason I decided to go to law school so that I could learn to fight against corruption like this. Given that my case is still affecting me today, mentally, there is no statute of limitation nor are any of the officials that had a hand in my case protected under immunity once misrepresentation and fraud has been proven. Any motion or notice I file today that gets ignored is grounds to hold the whole county accountable. She belongs in jail!
I sense a personal reason for continuing to comment here, dear one. If I can encourage you, I certainly want to. Have you searched our lists for other blogs that might be a blessing to you? Andy Clapp shared some cool stuff about heartbreak and being a dad. I found him very encouraging. And one of my personal favorites is “When a good man dies,” a tribute to family friend, David Stiles, who left a lasting dad legacy. Also, Chris Legg is always a strong supporter of men. You can find all those on our Home page by pushing the “Expert Guests” button. I hope you will.