Vigo County Superior Court Division 2 Judge Lakshmi Reddy had spent just one year on the bench when she realized the system handling family law cases was broken.
She has since devoted much of the last decade to seeking solutions to help families and children improve their relationships and situations.
Family courts deal with cases involving families in dissolution and offer services to alleviate the circumstances of the problem, usually by ordering those involved to seek counseling.
But that often doesn’t work, Reddy observed.
“Mostly in this area, in the criminal setting, it’s taking a couple of months [before counseling is available] and they’ve already re-offended,” she said. “We’re trying to get people in within a couple of weeks to stabilize them.”
Which creates another issue. “We have a lot of people who can’t figure out how to (make appointments) or they don’t get a return phone call and they just give up,” Reddy said.
The judge said she had been bouncing around ideas for a solution since 2016. Finally, she said, Chances And Services for Youth (CASY) Chief Operating Officer Brandon Halleck suggested they fix the problem themselves.
“We were in Washington, D.C., for a conference with our high-school kiddos that we take up there,” Halleck recalled. “The judge was with us, and we were sitting in the hotel lobby just talking about the issues she’s having, saying ‘I’ll come back to them in eight or 12 weeks and they haven’t done anything.’
“I said, ‘What you need is a navigator helping them with this.’”
First in Indiana
They wrote up a grant application for $250,000 grant through FSSA and the Division of Mental Health and Addiction for a pioneering family court navigator program.
“We’re the first in the state — I don’t think anyone else has anything remotely close to this in a court program,” Halleck said.
Kandace Brown, who has worked for CASY for 18 years, joined the navigator program in 2021 and started taking clients in 2022. Brown meets with the families and helps them make appointments for services.
“She can get people into appointments within two weeks,” Reddy said. “Having this money has been really helpful to keep these children safe and not let them go home with someone who’s abusing them.”
Those children stay with guardians, who frequently are grandparents.
Reddy first approached the Vigo County Council to fund the family court navigator plan in 2021, and it has supplied money in growing amounts since then.
“For the 2025 budget, we got $200,000 out of the general fund,” she said. “So for 2026, we asked for $250,000, which shouldn’t have been a shock, since I’ve said this project is growing every year.
“And they came back and said, ‘We would prefer that it come out of the opioid settlement funds,’ and I thought, ‘OK.’ I’ll take the money from wherever it comes from. But it’s a county problem. This problem is not going to go away, and I think the county needs to pay for it. Those settlement funds are not going to be there forever.”
“They’ve been great supporters for the past few years,” Halleck said of the County Council. “I think it’s like everything else in our government, from state to federal to local, I think everyone’s trying to figure out where’s the best bang for your buck, where do you put your money?
“One thing we’re working on is demonstrating the effectiveness of the program, the fact that these clients are coming fewer and fewer before the judge,” he added. “We’re getting great counseling services provided for folks.”
Reddy made the case that Vigo County spends $34,000 annually per jail inmate and only $12,428 per student for grades K through 12, nearly three times more per year to house criminals versus educating children expected to become productive citizens.
She will appear before the County Council with her latest request at Tuesday’s meeting. At the recent sunshine meeting, client Frankie Cox shared how the program has helped her family.
Reddy also provided letters of support from Megan Kirk of MK Collaborative Solutions, as well as from several law firms.
Focus on children
“In the beginning, I tried to focus on the parents but what I learned is, it’s so hard to get them to change,” Reddy said. “If we focus on the children and try to help them learn problem-solving skills, coping skills and how to be emotionally healthy, then in the long term, they’ll be out of the system and be better (adults).”
She added, “What’s the real impact of divorce? It is juvenile delinquency and it is academic underachievement and it is substance abuse disorder and it is depression. So our thought process — and the research shows this — if you have that early intervention and you help them early on with their coping skills or give them some independent outlet, they are going to do better.”
“Why not start at the earliest age, with the kids that we serve,” Halleck said. “We don’t want them involved in DCS. We don’t want them involved in further issues as they grow and mature. We create this protection for them, through counseling.”
Brown said, “I have the privilege of interviewing … (the children) in my office and I learn from them by letting them tell their story to me on their own terms. … That helps me move forward on how to address the providers to get them set up for services.” To ensure the services are working, Brown has team meetings with their service providers and counselors in schools.
“Oftentimes I will have conversations with the teacher to get an update on a child’s behavior in the classroom,” Brown said. “A lot of it is anecdotal in that I can just hear in the trenches the immediate changes that are happening in the kiddo’s behavior.
“We’ve been doing this since ‘22, but we’re just now getting to the point where we’re getting some longterm data to show that kids are in school longer and are missing fewer days,” she added. “Their behavior is improving, they have more stability in their home and getting some of their basic needs met so they have a better chance in their learning environment.”
Brown also helps families in need secure housing, food and insurance, Reddy said.
Not typical court work
“These are not typically things that courts do, but if we don’t help them from the beginning, they’re just falling apart,” she said.
Reddy said that teachers often spend half their time on behavioral issues in the classroom.
“If we have this early intervention and help these kids with coping skills, that helps teachers,” she said. “They can focus on educating our children, not be distracted by behavioral problems.”
Reddy added, “From my perspective, this Family Court Project has been more successful than I had hoped for. I have witnessed real change in parents and children when they return to Court. I’m proud of this project and the collaboration with numerous organizations and providers.
“I don’t believe Vigo County can afford not have this project and similar type projects involving early intervention and prevention in place.”
Halleck suggested, “The more we invest in prevention and early intervention, you get more bang for your buck than you will with anything else. It is far more cost-effective if we invest more in those protective factors that we need in our community.”
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