A population of families in the United States has been almost completely ignored by the technology industry.
They are not rare. Each year, approximately 3.5 million children are involved in DCFS or CPS investigations in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of families are navigating dependency court proceedings, working toward reunification, attending hearings, completing service plans, and trying to understand a legal system that moves fast and rarely stops to explain itself.
These families have social workers assigned to their cases. They have court-appointed attorneys or none at all. They have hearings with names they do not understand: Detention, Jurisdiction, Disposition, Review, Permanency. They have service plans with requirements they must complete to bring their children home.
And they have almost no tools built for them. Not because their need is not significant. Because the market has not seen them as buyers.
WHAT THE DEPENDENCY COURT EXPERIENCE IS ACTUALLY LIKE
Most people outside the child welfare system do not understand what dependency court proceedings involve. When DCFS opens an investigation, it moves quickly. A social worker is assigned. An initial assessment occurs. If children are removed from the home, a Detention Hearing happens within 72 hours. The family has days, not weeks, to understand what is happening and what their rights are.
The Detention Hearing is followed by a Jurisdiction Hearing, then a Disposition Hearing where the service plan is established. Review Hearings occur every three to six months. At twelve months, a Permanency Hearing determines the children's long-term plan.
Each hearing type is different. Each has different implications. Each requires different preparation. Most parents arrive at these hearings having received a court notice they barely understood, with no clear sense of what will be decided or what they should say.
The outcome of a Permanency Hearing the hearing that determines whether a family reunifies or proceeds toward termination of parental rights can depend significantly on whether the parent arrives prepared or arrives confused.
Preparation matters. Documentation matters. Understanding matters.
None of these were available in a free, accessible, plain-English format before COMPASS.
WHAT COMPASS DOES
PeacePath COMPASS is a free, web-based navigation tool for families involved in DCFS investigations and dependency court proceedings. It is not a legal service. It does not give legal advice. It does not replace an attorney.
It gives families the organizational infrastructure to document their experience, understand the process, and arrive at every hearing as prepared as possible.
Case Dashboard: Every hearing, every deadline, every key contact organized in one place. Case number, court jurisdiction, assigned social worker, next hearing date and type, reunification deadline. A family's entire case at a glance, always accessible from their phone.
Hearing Preparation Wizard: Before any hearing, a family selects the hearing type from a plain-English list. COMPASS explains what that hearing is, what the judge will decide, what documents to bring, and what questions to ask their attorney or CASA volunteer.
In plain English. Not legal jargon.
The difference between a parent who understands that a Review Hearing assesses service plan progress and a parent who doesn't know what a Review Hearing is shows up in the courtroom.
Service Plan Tracker: Log every item on the service plan. Sessions completed versus sessions required. Provider names and contact information. Target completion dates. Progress bars that show exactly where things stand. At a Review Hearing, the judge asks about service plan compliance. A parent who can pull out a printed progress summary from COMPASS, organized, complete, showing every session attended, communicates something important about engagement and commitment.
Visit Log: Document every scheduled visit with the children. Whether it occurred. Whether it was canceled, and by whom. Duration. Notes on the children's condition and behavior during the visit. Visit documentation matters. It demonstrates consistent parental engagement. It also documents agency-canceled visits, which are more common than most people realize and which can be relevant at permanency hearings.
Know Your Rights: A hardcoded, plain-English guide to legal rights at every stage of dependency proceedings from the initial investigation through placement decisions, hearing rights, ICWA protections, and reunification.
Reviewed for accuracy. Written at a sixth-grade reading level. Available in plain English, always.
Get Free Help: A curated directory of free legal aid resources, CASA volunteer programs, domestic violence services, and community support organizations. Not a list that
PeacePath maintains manually links to established,
maintained directories that update automatically.
WHO COMPASS IS FOR
Families and parents in dependency proceedings. The primary audience. Parents working toward reunification with their children. Kinship and foster caregivers. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and family friends who stepped in when children were removed. Often navigating a system they have never encountered with no guidance at all.
CASA volunteers. Court Appointed Special Advocates who represent the interests of children in dependency proceedings. COMPASS helps CASA volunteers understand what families are experiencing and document their own observations.
Legal aid attorneys. Attorneys who represent families in dependency court at no cost. When clients use COMPASS, attorneys receive organized documentation rather than verbal accounts. It saves intake time and improves the quality of representation.
Social workers. COMPASS gives social workers a tool they can recommend to client families not a surveillance tool, not a reporting tool, but a preparation tool that helps families show up to hearings ready to engage constructively.
THE DESIGN PRINCIPLE THAT MATTERS MOST
COMPASS was built around one principle that distinguishes it from any agency-facing tool: the family controls everything. Social workers cannot log into a family's COMPASS account. Courts cannot access COMPASS data. Agencies receive nothing automatically. The only way information from COMPASS reaches a social worker or attorney is when the parent chooses to print a summary and hand it over.
This design is intentional. COMPASS is a tool for families, not a surveillance tool for agencies. That distinction matters enormously for whether families actually use it.
A tool that families trust is a tool that helps them.
A tool that feels like monitoring is a tool they avoid.
ALWAYS FREE. NO EXCEPTIONS.
COMPASS is free for every family who needs it.
No credit card. No premium tier for dependency court features. No expiration. No agency requirement to access.
Free for families. Free for kinship caregivers. Free for CASA volunteers. Free for legal aid attorneys. Free for court-appointed counsel.
COMPASS's revenue model is institutional agencies and court systems that want department-wide access and integration; contact PeacePath for licensing.
Individual families, social workers, and attorneys pay nothing.
This is the only sustainable model for serving the population COMPASS exists to serve. A freemium model with individual attorney subscriptions at $149/month, which is what the market might suggest would exclude exactly the people who need this most.
THE LARGER CONTEXT
PeacePath Compass is two products in one platform. The co-parenting module serves separated parents navigating custody disputes and high-conflict situations where documentation and communication coaching change outcomes. This module is freemium, with paid plans from $19 to $97 per month.
COMPASS serves families in the child welfare system, a population with less financial flexibility and greater legal vulnerability. This module is free, always, without exception.
Both populations are underserved. Both deserve tools built for their specific situation. And both can be served from a single platform without compromising the mission for either.
That is what PeacePath Compass is building. The people who need this are finding it.
peacepath-compass.com/compass
Not legal advice. Not a substitute for an attorney.
Free forever for families navigating the child welfare system.