Children’s Rights and a team of Oklahoma attorneys filed the lawsuit known as D.G. v. Henry in February 2008, charging the state Department of Human Services (DHS) with violating the constitutional rights of children by routinely placing them in unsafe, unsupervised, and unstable situations in which many suffer further abuse — and some die — due to the department’s longstanding failure to correct widespread problems that prevent it from providing adequate care and protection.

In its appeal of the district court’s decision to grant the case class action status, the state argued that the abuse suffered by some children in state foster homes (1.2 percent, according to the children’s complaint to the federal court) did not imply risk to all children in the custody of the state’s child welfare system.

“This argument entirely misses the mark,” wrote the appeals court in today’s decision (PDF). “The fact that 1.2% of OKDHS foster children reported abuse or neglect does not mean the rest of the class was not exposed to an impermissible risk of serious harm. In theory, 100% of foster children could live under an imminent threat of serious harm, but only 1.2% ultimately suffer and report abuse or neglect.”

The court further rejected the state’s claim that the class proposed by plaintiffs lacked the cohesiveness necessary to enable the federal court to grant relief that would be appropriate for the class as a whole. Among the measures proposed by Children’s Rights attorneys are limits on child welfare workers’ caseloads and frequent, required visits to children in the custody of the state child welfare system.

“This is a strong affirmation of children’s right to seek relief in federal court for the harm they have suffered at the hands of dysfunctional child welfare systems, and we will now press on in our campaign on their behalf to secure an enforceable order from the court requiring the state to dramatically improve its treatment of all of the vulnerable children it serves,” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children’s Rights.

“It is also a strong rejection of the arguments state officials have made in trying to prevent this case from moving forward,” Lowry said. “It is time for them now to stop delaying the process of reform through all manner of costly and time-consuming legal maneuvering and begin fixing at last the widespread problems that continue to put thousands of children at risk of great harm every day.”

The full text of today’s decision and more information on Children’s Rights’ campaign to reform Oklahoma child welfare can be found at www.childrensrights.org/oklahoma.

Last week, we went back to court to ensure that the state does not succeed in shutting out the vulnerable children who depend on the critical services it provides.

The Voluntary Services Program offers specialized treatment to children with severe mental, emotional, and behavioral challenges. It was created as a part of the 1991 settlement of the class action that Children’s Rights and local advocates brought on behalf of abused and neglected children throughout the state, seeking the reform of the entire Connecticut child welfare system. Since then, the program has served thousands of families — and kept many troubled kids safely at home with their parents rather than leaving them at risk of being taken into foster care.

Last November, after preserving the Voluntary Services Programs in the state budget, Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell proposed deep budget cuts that would have closed the Voluntary Services Program to new participants — cutting off access for hundreds of kids and families each year. While we were initially successful in blocking the cuts and the state has agreed to keep the program intact for the time being, the battle is not yet over.

The state has now taken the position that children at risk of entering foster care are not protected by the class action settlement that created the Voluntary Services Programs, because the kids receiving these services have not been reported as victims of child abuse or neglect.

Their position raises a fairly obvious question: What good are preventive services if the only children who can access them have already been harmed?

“Families who are willing to proactively ask for assistance to get their kids the help they need should not be punished simply because they haven’t been accused of abusing or neglecting their children,” says Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights. “Programs that prevent abuse, neglect, or abandonment before they occur are exactly what state systems should be protecting.”

It’s not hard to see the difference this program has made in the lives of the kids and families it serves. Take “Justin,” for example — a young boy whose parents couldn’t afford to treat his serious mental health disorders, including hallucinations, multiple personalities, and thoughts of suicide. With the help of the Voluntary Services Program, his parents were able to get Justin the counseling and therapy he needed while remaining safely at home with them. “Rosa,” a 17-year-old young woman with severe depression, was able to get the mental health care and medication she urgently needed through the Voluntary Services Program — even though her family lacked health insurance.

There are thousands of Justins and Rosas across the state of Connecticut with success stories just like these. “There is no question these families risked being broken apart and their children likely placed in state custody if these services had not been available to them,” Lustbader said.

The judge has not yet made a decision on Connecticut’s latest bid to undermine the Voluntary Services Program. But Children’s Rights remains committed to doing everything necessary to ensure that the state doesn’t leave its most vulnerable families out in the cold.

For more information about Children’s Rights’ campaign to reform Connecticut child welfare, please visit www.childrensrights.org/connecticut.

The report (PDF), covering the first six months of 2009, was issued by the independent monitors appointed by the court to track reforms required under the settlement of a class action brought by Children’s Rights and Atlanta co-counsel on behalf of several thousand abused and neglected kids who depend on the state-run Atlanta child welfare system for protection and care.

Six months after the monitors lauded the lowest rate of abuse of foster children while in state custody since the court-ordered reforms began in 2005, that statistic has skyrocketed to 1.06 percent — three times the national standard of 0.32 percent — and “represents the highest . . . rate measured thus far,” according to the report.

The report notes serious systemic deficiencies that may be contributing to the spike, including relaxed monitoring and enforcement of private agencies contracted by the state to provide foster homes and other living arrangements for children in foster care. The state’s Division of Family and Children’s Services (DFCS) consistently fails to make unannounced visits to foster homes managed by private agencies, the report says, and only does so when an agency’s contract has been suspended or is under corrective action plan.

“We are extremely concerned that children in the Atlanta foster care system are simply not safe, and that DFCS is not doing enough to provide the necessary safety net for the vulnerable youth whose lives and well-being depend on it,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights. “If DFCS fails to address this problem quickly, we are prepared to take whatever action is necessary to protect these kids from further harm.”

Due to the lack of progress in these critical areas, Children’s Rights formally asserted in a letter delivered last week that state officials responsible for DFCS are violating the 2005 court order. Children’s Rights, state DFCS officials, and the independent monitors are scheduled to discuss the state’s violation of the court order on Monday to attempt to resolve these issues without the need for additional court action.

In addition to the slippage noted in today’s report, Children’s Rights has separately received recent evidence showing that child protective services workers — who perform the critical job of investigating reports of child abuse or neglect — may be carrying caseloads as high as 33 cases per worker, far in excess of the limit of 12 cases mandated by the settlement agreement.

“Maintaining manageable caseloads is a prerequisite for keeping kids safe,” Lustbader said. “If caseloads are too large, workers investigating child abuse simply cannot do their jobs and devote enough time to each case.”

While the report shows DFCS has made or sustained progress in some areas, which include placing children in foster homes closer to their own communities, ensuring that foster homes are not overcrowded, and ensuring that children are placed in licensed foster homes, today’s report cited several additional areas requiring improvement:

• DFCS is still failing to ensure that foster children are regularly visiting with siblings placed in different foster homes. According to today’s report, only 50 percent of children in custody who have siblings placed in different homes are having at least one monthly visit, far short of the 95 percent required by the court-order.

• DFCS is still failing to ensure that foster children receive required health check-ups. Under the court order, foster children must receive health check-ups at required intervals. But today’s report notes that the state’s progress has remained static — showing approximately 19 percent of the children whose cases were reviewed by the monitors did not receive initial health screenings, 50 percent did not receive initial dental check-ups, and 40 percent did not receive a health screening before being discharged from foster care.

Children’s Rights, along with the Atlanta law firm Bondurant, Mixson and Elmore LLP, filed the reform class action known as Kenny A. v. Perdue against the state of Georgia in 2002, on behalf of all children in foster care in Atlanta. In 2005, Children’s Rights and its Atlanta co-counsel reached a court-enforceable settlement agreement with state officials requiring Georgia to make sweeping reforms to the Atlanta foster care system and to achieve specific benchmarks for progress. Today’s six-month progress report is the seventh issued since the Kenny A. case was settled.

The full text of today’s report and all previous monitoring reports, as well as the initial complaint and recent contempt motion that Children’s Rights filed against the state of Georgia, can be found at www.childrensrights.org/georgia.

Related Press

Foster Children Experiencing High Rate of Abuse and Neglect (Atlanta Journal Constitution, Jan. 24, 2010)

Today, Children’s Rights advocates called on incoming Governor-Elect Chris Christie to uphold the state’s commitment to completing the required reforms.

The new report (PDF), issued by an independent monitor appointed by the federal court, is the first since the state successfully completed the first phase of the reform effort at the end of 2008. It highlights several critical areas in which DCF has maintained good results, including dramatic improvements in children’s safety both in foster care and at home, steady increases in adoptions and the number of kids placed in foster families rather than group homes and institutions, reductions in caseloads for child welfare workers, and improvements in training for caseworkers and supervisors.

But the report also raises some potential concerns about DCF’s implementation of reforms required in the second phase of the massive effort — and makes it clear that, in some areas, more focused attention is needed right away to come into compliance with upcoming mandates of the federal court order and improve the results DCF produces for the children and families who depend on it.

“New Jersey has dramatically improved a child welfare system that many once considered irreparable, and we call on the incoming administration to maintain the support, resources, and collaborative spirit that have enabled this historic reform effort’s success,” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children’s Rights. “Although many challenges remain, we look forward to working with Governor-Elect Christie to ensure DCF’s continued progress toward meeting the requirements of the federal court order and the needs of New Jersey’s abused and neglected kids.”

Children’s Rights filed a class action against New Jersey in 1999 on behalf of more than 11,000 children dependent upon the state child welfare system, seeking widespread improvements. In 2006, after a previous settlement agreement failed to yield positive results, Children’s Rights and co-counsel Drinker Biddle & Reath reached a new agreement with state officials, mandating sweeping reforms and resulting in DCF’s creation. The case is known as Charlie and Nadine H. v. Corzine.

Today’s report, which evaluates DCF’s performance from January 1 through June 30, 2009, commends DCF for maintaining critical improvements in several key areas:

• Children are safer. New Jersey has reduced the rate of abuse and neglect suffered by children in state foster care from a high of 11.4 percent in 2003 to 0.15 percent through the calendar year 2008, well below the maximum allowable rate of 0.49 percent mandated by the 2006 settlement agreement. Additionally, only 5.5 percent of children who came to the attention of the child welfare system in 2008 but remained with their families suffered repeated incidents of abuse or neglect — lower than the settlement’s maximum allowable rate of 7.2 percent and an accomplishment Children’s Rights officials attribute in part to expanded services made available by the state to vulnerable families under the settlement agreement.
• Children in foster care are being kept together with their siblings and placed in family-like settings. New Jersey has surpassed court-ordered targets for both placing siblings together in foster care and placing children with foster families rather than in group homes or institutions — improvements made possible by the state’s fulfillment of the settlement agreement’s requirements for licensing increased numbers of foster homes.
• Fewer children in foster care are being placed out of state. In March 2006, 329 children were living in out-of-state foster homes. By July 2009, this number had been cut to 66.
• Child welfare workers are better-trained and carrying lighter caseloads. DCF continues to meet and comply with the settlement agreement’s caseworker and supervisor training requirements and have brought caseloads for child welfare workers down to acceptable levels.

But the report also calls attention to several areas to which DCF must devote attention immediately to keep up with the requirements of the federal court order:

• DCF must improve health care for children in foster care. New Child Health Units have produced improvements in health care for kids in out-of-home placements, but DCF still failed to meet most of the benchmarks for reform required in this area by June 2009. Children’s Rights officials say the improvements noted in today’s report illustrate the critical importance of fully staffing the Child Health Units and completing the court-ordered health care reforms.
• DCF must improve visitation for children in foster care, including face-to-face visits from the caseworkers responsible for monitoring kids’ safety and well-being in foster care and visits between children and their parents and siblings — critical to improving the chances that they can be reunified safely and successfully.
• DCF must better engage vulnerable children and families in critical decision-making about their future. Family Team Meetings aimed at pairing children and families with child welfare workers and others to work toward better outcomes appear not to have become a routine part of DCF’s practice, according to today’s report. DCF must fully implement these meetings in order to realize the goals of the new statewide model of child welfare practice mandated by the 2006 settlement agreement, which emphasizes the importance of keeping children with families — preferably their own — and engaging children and their families in critical decision-making.

“Today’s report highlights many significant improvements that illustrate how far the New Jersey child welfare system has come, but also several shortcomings that remind us how far it still needs to go,” said Lowry. “Children’s Rights will continue to work with New Jersey’s leaders to overcome the obstacles that lie ahead, and we will continue to hold DCF to the commitment it has made to provide abused and neglected children with the care and protection that is their right.”

The complete monitoring report and more information on Children’s Rights’ campaign to reform New Jersey’s child welfare system can be found at www.childrensrights.org/newjersey.

Related Press

Federal monitors give largely positive marks for N.J. child welfare (Star Ledger, Jan. 7, 2010)

According to the report (PDF), covering the period from July 1 through September 30, 2009, and issued late Tuesday by the independent monitor appointed by a federal court to track the reforms, the Connecticut Department of Children and Families (DCF) is adequately planning for and meeting the basic service needs of only a little more than half the children who depend on it for protection and care.

DCF has also posted a precipitous drop in the percentage of eligible children it is quickly and safely returning home to their parents — from 71.9 percent of the cases studied during the previous review period to 56 percent during this one.

Additionally, despite a court-enforceable agreement negotiated by Children’s Rights and state officials in 2008 that required DCF to undertake a massive foster family recruitment campaign, DCF is currently showing a net loss of 41 foster homes off a baseline taken last year. The agreement, which averted contempt proceedings initiated by Children’s Rights to address DCF’s continued poor performance on this and other measures, called for the state to produce a net gain of 350 foster homes by the end of June 2009.

“DCF has broken one commitment after another to the federal court and to the children it is supposed to serve, promising dramatic improvements in the care and treatment it offers and failing to deliver time and again,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights. “The ongoing inability of DCF’s leadership to adequately meet the basic needs of Connecticut’s abused and neglected kids only underscores how deeply unwise it is for state officials to consider further service cuts.”

The reforms reported on by the independent monitor — and the quarterly reports themselves — are required under court orders secured by Children’s Rights and local co-counsel through a class action they brought against the state on behalf of the approximately 6,000 children in the custody of the Connecticut child welfare system and thousands more at risk of entering custody.

The current court orders under the 1991 settlement of that class action set 22 court-enforceable benchmarks for reform, including measures related to keeping children safe in foster care, quickly and safely reunifying kids with their families or finding them adoptive homes, providing for children’s basic service needs, avoiding overcrowding in foster homes, meeting standards for caseloads and visitation among child welfare workers who monitor kids, and improving outcomes for children who have left state custody.

Although DCF had previously achieved and sustained 17 of the 22 benchmarks, yesterday’s report finds the agency meeting just 15 — the state’s worst performance since Susan Hamilton was appointed commissioner of DCF in June 2007.

Children’s Rights took additional action against the agency on December 8, 2009, asking the federal judge in the ongoing case to block budget cuts ordered unilaterally by Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell that would have closed a successful and widely used family preservation and foster care prevention program to new participants — placing countless children at risk of serious harm.

Although the state agreed at a court hearing on December 16 not to stop intakes into the program for the moment, it has signaled that it will continue to challenge Children’s Rights’ move to keep it open. A hearing on that matter has been scheduled for January 28, 2010.

Steven Frederick of the Stamford law firm Wofsey Rosen Kweskin & Kuriansky serves as the children’s co-counsel on the case.

More information about Children’s Rights’ efforts to reform Connecticut child welfare — and a complete archive of documents related to the case — can be found at www.childrensrights.org/connecticut.

At first, it seemed that we had succeeded. The budget passed by the Connecticut legislature in August included full funding for the program. But then Governor Rell started issuing budget “rescissions” and “mitigation plans” — unilateral cuts allowed under Connecticut law after the legislature has approved the budget — including one that would have closed the program’s doors to new participants as of last week.

Once again, Children’s Rights took action — asking a federal judge to issue an emergency order blocking the budget cuts and allowing the program to remain open to new children and families.

And Wednesday, in a hearing in federal court, the state agreed to leave the program alone — at least for now.

This is an important victory for Connecticut’s vulnerable kids. The Voluntary Services Program, created as part of the settlement of the class action Children’s Rights and local advocates brought to reform the entire Connecticut child welfare system, has for more than 18 years offered specialized treatment for children at risk of entering state custody due to serious mental, emotional, or behavioral problems. It serves more than 1,000 children and families on any given day, and several hundred children enter the program for the first time each year. Suspending new intakes would leave many families with no other source for the services it provides — and the result, for many, would be dire.

“Countless families would be torn apart, and their children needlessly placed in foster care, just so they could get the services that the Voluntary Services Program already provides,” says Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights. Ironically, Lustbader says, the long-term cost of providing these services to children in state custody would be much higher than the cost of maintaining the program.

“When children must be committed to state custody to get these services, and as their untreated problems worsen, not only does the financial cost to the state rise, but the human cost to children and families is absolutely devastating,” Lustbader says.

The battle over the Voluntary Services Program is not over. The state has argued that the children affected by these budget cuts are not protected by the court order we secured in our reform class action, and the judge has scheduled another hearing on this matter for January 28. In the meantime, though, the state has agreed to give us a week’s notice if it plans any further changes to the program — and the judge has left the door open for us to return to court immediately if we don’t like what we’re hearing.

“We remain committed to doing everything in our power to fight these cuts,” says Lustbader, “and making sure that Connecticut’s vulnerable children receive the services they need to keep them home safely with their families and out of foster care.”

Related press

Group Seeks to Cut Conn. Cuts to Children’s Aid (AP via Hartford Courant, December 9, 2009)

Children’s Advocacy Group Asks Court to Stop Conn. Budget Cut (WSHU Radio Fairfield, December 9, 2009)

Hundreds Protest Rell’s Budget Cuts (The Day, December 10, 2009)

Emergency Motion Filed to Retain Treatment Program for Kids (WNPR Radio, December 10, 2009)

Rell Backs Off on Cost-Saving Move (The Day, December 14, 2009)

Connecticut’s Voluntary Services Program, which for more than 18 years has offered specialized treatment for children at risk of entering state custody due to serious mental, emotional, or behavioral problems, was spared in the budget passed by the state legislature on August 31, 2009 — but has since been targeted in a budget rescission by Governor Rell that halted new intakes into the program as of this week.

According to attorneys representing Connecticut’s abused and neglected children, the move not only places countless children at risk of irreparable harm, but also violates the terms of the state’s 1991 settlement of a class action brought by Children’s Rights to reform Connecticut’s dysfunctional Department of Children and Families (DCF).

“For the sake of small, short-term cost savings, Governor Rell and DCF Commissioner Susan Hamilton are shutting down a critical program that has kept thousands of children together with their families since it was created by the settlement of the child welfare reform class action,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights. “When these children must be committed to state custody to get the same services, and as their untreated problems worsen, the financial cost to the state will rise and the human cost to the children and their families will be devastating.”

The issue is so important that the Connecticut state legislature passed a law in 1997 prohibiting the commitment of children to state custody just so they can receive mental health services.

“That’s exactly what’s going to happen if these services are not protected, and countless families will be torn apart as a result when their children are needlessly placed in foster care just so they can get the services that the Voluntary Services Program could have provided,” Lustbader said. “We are committed to fighting these cuts and ensuring that Connecticut’s vulnerable children receive the services they are guaranteed by law before commitment to state custody is the only option remaining.”

The Voluntary Services Program serves approximately 1,000 children on any given day, and several hundred new children enter the program each year. Suspending intakes will leave many families with no other source for the services it provides, according to Children’s Rights’ motion, denying vulnerable children access to vital services and supports when they need it most.

According to an affidavit filed in support of today’s legal action by Martha Stone, executive director of Connecticut’s Center for Children’s Advocacy, “Many children will go without desperately needed mental health services and will suffer severe deterioration as a result, placing the family at risk of not being able to properly care for the child and forcing some families to have to place their child into DCF custody just to the same services can be provided.”

Stone’s affidavit cites the stories of several children whose lives have been profoundly affected by the services provided through the Voluntary Services Program, including:

• Justin, a young boy who had been diagnosed by the age of seven with several severe mental health disorders that afflicted him with hallucinations, multiple personalities, and uncontrollable thoughts of suicide. Although his parents lacked the resources to get Justin the treatment he needed, the Voluntary Services Program provided counseling and therapy that have enabled him to remain safely at home with his family.

• Rosa, a 17-year-old girl who suffers from depression, has struggled for years socially and in school, and even attempted suicide. Her family, which is impoverished and has no health insurance, could not afford to pay for the services Rosa desperately needed. The Voluntary Services Program, however, was able not only to provide desperately needed mental health care and medication to treat Rosa’s depression — none of which she would have been able to get without it.

• Nicholas, a 12-year-old boy with ADHD and depression who had to repeat the seventh grade due to the severity of his mental health and behavioral problems. Through the Voluntary Services Program, Nicholas and his family received counseling in their home and connected with a psychiatrist who prescribed medication for his ADHD. Teachers and administrators at Nicholas’s school report a complete change in Nicholas’s behavior and academic performance; he has made immense progress in recovering a lost year of reading and writing lessons in a matter of months — and emerging as a leader among his peers in defusing fights and confrontations.

“Ironically, though it costs the state more to care for children in custody than to provide these services in their homes, Governor Rell’s so-called spending cuts guarantee that Connecticut will see a reversal of some of the gains it had made in safely reducing its foster care population,” said Lustbader. “And the cost in terms of families destroyed and children relegated to life as wards of the state will be incalculable.”

Children’s Rights filed the class action known as Juan F. v. Rell in 1989, seeking the reform of the Connecticut child welfare system on behalf of approximately 6,000 children in state custody and thousands more at risk of entering state custody. Although the state has made significant progress since the 1991 settlement, it has yet to meet some key requirements of the reform plan negotiated by Children’s Rights and state officials, and it remains under a federal court order to complete the reforms.

Steven Frederick of the Stamford law firm Wofsey Rosen Kweskin & Kuriansky serves as the children’s co-counsel on the case.

More information about Children’s Rights’ efforts to reform Connecticut child welfare — and a complete archive of documents related to the case — can be found at www.childrensrights.org/connecticut.

Related Press

Group Seeks to Cut Conn. Cuts to Children’s Aid (AP via Hartford Courant, December 9, 2009)

Children’s Advocacy Group Asks Court to Stop Conn. Budget Cut (WSHU Radio Fairfield, December 9, 2009)

Hundreds Protest Rell’s Budget Cuts (The Day, December 10, 2009)

Emergency Motion Filed to Retain Treatment Program for Kids (WNPR Radio, December 10, 2009)

Rell Backs Off on Cost-Saving Move (The Day, December 14, 2009)

So says a foster parent quoted in two new reports by independent child welfare experts linking failures throughout the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (DHS) with the often horrific abuse and neglect endured by children in state custody, filed today with the federal court presiding over a lawsuit brought by Children’s Rights and three Oklahoma law firms to reform the state child welfare system.

One report (PDF), by an independent child welfare consultant and social work professor, reviews the cases of five children named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, evaluating DHS’s casework — and reaching damning conclusions.

“When attempting to describe the children’s harm and suffering, the words that come to mind are incomprehensible, unimaginable, outrageous, and immoral,” the author writes. “These five young children’s tragic and painful stories, told in the pages of their DHS case files about their stays in DHS custody, need not have been written. These tragic stories were wholly preventable.”

The other (PDF), by a social work expert with more than 35 years of experience in public child protective services, evaluates DHS’s efforts to protect nine children in Oklahoma foster care — and concludes that the risk of harm to every child in DHS custody is extremely high.

“Children in OKDHS’s care are more likely to be abused and neglected than are children in the care of almost any other state,” the author writes. “It is probable that all children who are placed in the custody of the agency are in danger of being placed with abusive, neglectful, and dangerous caregivers who OKDHS has failed to identify because of its deficient response to child abuse and neglect referrals.”

The reports were filed in support of a motion seeking state documents that will prove how widespread these problems are, which the state has refused to produce. Attorneys for the abused and neglected children named in the reform lawsuit, who are fighting an appeal by DHS that seeks to overturn a federal judge’s decision to allow the suit to proceed as a class action on behalf of all 10,000-plus children in DHS’s custody, say the reports reinforce the children’s claims.

“We now have expert documentation from two very experienced child welfare specialists confirming that the state of Oklahoma is, quite simply, failing to keep its most vulnerable children safe,” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children’s Rights. “Far from being unique to the children named in this lawsuit to reform the state child welfare system, DHS’s pathetically deficient practices ensure that every abused or neglected child who comes into its custody faces an inordinately high risk of suffering further maltreatment on its watch.”

Taken together, the two reports paint a picture of a child welfare system in dire disarray, shuffling children around endlessly between overcrowded, understaffed, and highly dangerous facilities and group homes and one unstable — and often abusive — foster home after another.
For example:

• RJ, now 13, has spent a total of more than six years in DHS foster care, going through 10 different placements and spending a total of 126 days in shelters — including one packed with so many children that it was once measured at nearly twice the legal capacity. DHS once received a referral alleging that RJ and three other foster children were beaten with a switch by their foster parents, and all four children confirmed that the foster parents regularly hit them with a switch from a tree. Three had marks from the beatings, and when a DHS worker visited the home, the foster mother acknowledged hitting the kids, saying, “If you don’t beat them down, they will run all over you.” DHS found the referral unconfirmed.

• AP was taken into DHS custody when she was two years old. Over a little more than 18 months in state foster care, DHS has subjected AP to seven different placements in two different counties. Inadequate supervision by her caregivers in two of those placements exposed AP to daily sexual abuse; when she suffered a suspicious fracture during a trial reunification with her father, DHS conducted a shoddy “investigation” in which they failed to interview AP, her sister, or any of the workers assigned to the family. During a gap of two months during the same investigation, DHS left the girls unprotected with caregivers who may have seriously abused one of them. Despite a “somewhat implausible” explanation of AP’s injury, DHS found the referral unconfirmed.

• JA entered DHS custody when he was four years old and went through ten different foster placements in less than ten months — a placement change on average every 53 days — including five different emergency or shelter placements in five counties amounting to more than one-third of his time in foster care. Even as JA began to show signs of significant emotional and behavioral deterioration, DHS workers failed to give him adequate attention. When, at the age of five, JA threatened to run away from his shelter placement and repeatedly made threats to harm himself by jumping out of a van or window “to go to heaven,” his caseworker not only did not increase the frequency of face-to-face visits to monitor his safety, but also failed to even consider a psychological evaluation of the boy.

According to the author of the review of the cases of the children named in the lawsuit, “there are striking similarities in the children’s case records and experiences in DHS custody that appear to indicate systemic deficiencies and persistent preventable failures.”

The author of the report on DHS’s efforts to assure the safety of nine children in its care is even more succinct: “It is likely that all children who are placed in the custody of the agency and who are subjects of child maltreatment allegations are at risk of physical and emotional harm.”

Children’s Rights joined four Oklahoma law firms and the international firm Kaye Scholer in filing a lawsuit in federal court in February 2008 seeking widespread reforms throughout the Oklahoma child welfare system on behalf of more than 10,000 abused and neglected children statewide who depend on the system for protection and care. The federal judge presiding over the case denied a motion by DHS to dismiss the case in January 2009, and, in May 2009, ruled that the case could proceed as a class action on behalf of all children in DHS custody. DHS subsequently appealed that decision, and oral argument will be heard by a federal appeals court in Denver on Thursday, November 19.

The full text of today’s reports and more information about Children’s Rights’ efforts to reform Oklahoma child welfare can be found at www.childrensrights.org/oklahoma.

Related Coverage

Report: Treatment of Oklahoma foster kids ‘immoral’ (AP/Tulsa World, November 11, 2009)

Report: Treatment Of Kids In Oklahoma DHS Care ‘Immoral’ (KOTV News on 6 Tulsa, November 11, 2009)

Child welfare experts say children in DHS custody at risk (KJRH-TV Tulsa, November 11, 2009)

New Reports Criticize OK DHS (KOKH Fox 23 Oklahoma City, November 11, 2009)

Lawsuit Claims DHS Negligent When Investigating Abuse (KOTV News on 6 Tulsa, November 11, 2009)

A report released today on the study’s findings, titled The Long Road Home: A Study of Children Stranded in New York City Foster Care (PDF), says the child welfare system (including ACS, the Family Court, nonprofit foster care agencies, and others involved in handling these cases) has lacked a sense of urgency in its efforts to bring children home to permanent families — and this, combined with inadequate resources and too little accountability has resulted in many children remaining in foster care for a very long time.

New York’s problems in this area are among the worst in the nation: the state (63 percent of whose foster care population is composed of children in New York City) ranks 40th of 47 measured by the federal government on timeliness of children’s return home from foster care. On timeliness of adoption, the state ranks 44th.

Today, ACS announced a renewed citywide campaign to quicken the pace of permanency for all children in New York City foster care.

“A major effort is long overdue to solve the problems, from inadequacies in the child welfare workforce to severe delays in the Family Court, that have kept thousands of children growing up with government agencies as their parents,” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children’s Rights. “This report is a roadmap for overcoming the barriers and speeding kids’ progress toward permanent homes, and we call upon New York’s lawmakers, the Family Court, and child welfare officials to implement its recommendations without delay.”

John B. Mattingly, Commissioner of the NYC Administration for Children’s Services, said ACS has been making substantial reforms to the infrastructure of the child welfare system for the past five years to address both children’s safety and permanency. “We have increasingly been holding ourselves and our contract agency partners responsible for helping youth find permanency through a safe return home to their families, a kinship placement, or adoption,” Mattingly said.”We intend to work with all of our partners in child welfare to turn the structural improvements we have now made into the results we all want for children and families.”

Mattingly said ACS and its provider agencies will begin a new campaign called One Year to Family to speed progress for both children entering New York City foster care and those now awaiting placement in permanent homes. Among the campaign’s objectives:

• Ensure that as many children as possible who enter care will achieve permanency within one year through either safe return home or placement with a family willing to make a permanent commitment to them should they be available for adoption.

• Establish specific plans by July 1, 2010, for children currently in foster care to achieve permanency within one year, to be developed through family team conferences and recommendations to the Family Court.

• Ensure that no child age 18-21 leaves foster care without opportunities for stable housing, employment, medical coverage, a connection to a caring adult, and a support plan.

• Strengthen the foster care provider agency workforce. Together with the state and federal governments, ACS will work to enhance federal funding for training of agency staff, develop minimum requirements for training systemwide, develop new recruitment and retention programs, and begin joint planning to develop a new funding design to better support all foster care providers.

Children’s Rights will track the efforts of ACS, the foster care agencies, and the Family Court toward increasing the pace of all children’s progress toward placement in permanent families.

The Long Road Home examines the case records of 153 children out of more than 4,000 in New York City who had, at the time of the study, remained in foster care for at least two years since they were slated for reunification with their parents or adoption. Their lengths of stay in foster care ranged from two years to nearly 17, and the average stay was 5.4 years. Nearly one-third of the children designated for reunification had been in foster care four or more years — and 10 percent had remained in care six years or more.

In addition to the case record review, researchers conducted interviews and focus groups with parents, foster parents, caseworkers, attorneys (for children, parents, and ACS), and Family Court judges and referees.

The Long Road Home pinpoints problems throughout the New York City child welfare system that contribute to delays in children’s progress toward permanent homes. High rates of caseworker turnover at contracted foster care agencies were prevalent throughout the cases studied. More than half the children in the study (51 percent) had three or more different caseworkers over a period of just two years. Three quarters of the agency workers interviewed for the study carried caseloads larger than the 11 to 12 children per worker recommended in a study commissioned by the state Office of Children and Family Services, and 43 percent said they were assigned caseloads before they received training.

Furthermore, the quality of the casework in many children’s cases was poor, as foster care agencies failed to engage families adequately or provide the intensity of contact and quality of services needed to return children home or get them adopted on a reasonable timetable. The agencies’ documentation of children’s and families’ progress was often incomplete or submitted late, contributing to delays in family court proceedings, and parents and foster parents who participated in the study said they did not receive the level of communication, respect, or support they needed from the agencies.

Equally troubling, most of the cases studied involved major delays in the Family Court. The average length of time between children’s removal from their homes and the court’s initial finding of whether abuse or neglect had taken place was 11 months. The average length of time from removal to disposition — the court’s decision whether to keep children in foster care or send them home — was 14 months, and took more than a year in 44 percent of the children’s cases. More than half the children in the study experienced delays in Permanency Hearings, required by state law every six months for all children in foster care, and court processes to legally free children for adoption were also slow. The average time to complete proceedings to terminate parental rights was almost two and a half years from the time termination petitions were filed.

“In my experience across the country, the standard for family courts in child welfare cases has been that both fact-finding and disposition should be completed within 90 days,” said Mattingly.

All of the groups that participated in the study — parents, foster parents, attorneys, and even judges and referees themselves — said the court does not consistently use its power to hold the parties in children’s cases accountable for their roles in these delays.

“Our state and city elected officials must devote adequate resources to solving these problems,” said Julie Farber, director of policy for Children’s Rights and one of the study’s authors. “All those involved in the cases of children in foster care, including ACS, the foster care agencies, and the Family Court, must accept some responsibility for the delays these children are experiencing and take action immediately to bring children home more quickly to the permanent families they need.”

The Long Road Home lists 18 recommendations for quickening children’s progress toward permanent homes. Among them:

• Take rapid action to address the cases of the children who have been stranded longest in New York City foster care. ACS should develop and execute plans to speed progress toward permanent families for the more than 4,000 children in foster care who have been slated for reunification or adoption for two years or more, and for the more than 2,600 children who are no longer designated for reunification or adoption and are likely to age out of foster care with no permanent family at all.

• Improve the Family Court process and accountability. The report calls on New York’s state legislature and governor to reduce overwhelming burdens on the Family Court by authorizing and funding more judgeships, and to enact mandated time frames for key Family Court proceedings. The Family Court itself should, the report says, require time-certain hearings, report publicly on the timeliness of court proceedings, and use its existing power to hold the parties in children’s cases accountable for ensuring timely progress.

• Improve the child welfare workforce, foster care casework, and accountability. The state and city should provide adequate funding to reduce both caseloads for child welfare workers and caseworker turnover, and take additional steps to improve recruitment, retention, and training. ACS should rigorously implement a quality assurance program to increase accountability among the foster care agencies, and report publicly on key performance measures.

• Improve supports and services for children and families. Areas where improvement is needed, according to the report, include visits between children in foster care and their families, planning and services for parents with mental illness and cognitive disabilities, and the Bridges to Health program for children with severe medical, developmental, or emotional disorders, which should be expanded significantly. The report also calls for additional housing assistance for vulnerable families and an increased commitment to preventive services aimed at strengthening families and keeping children out of foster care in the first place.

• Establish a new permanency option. The report calls on the state legislature and governor to enact and adequately fund subsidized guardianship as an option for abused and neglected children who cannot return home and for whom adoption is not an option, federal funds for which were recently made available to states by the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008.

“The lives and well-being of the children we represent literally hang in the balance,” said Tamara Steckler, attorney-in-charge of the Juvenile Rights Practice of the Legal Aid Society. “The time for action is now on such crucial initiatives for children as the Office for Court Administration’s request to increase the number of Family Court Judges and the need to limit caseloads and enhance training for city child welfare workers and foster care agency workers.”

Children’s Rights conducted the study in partnership with ACS and the Legal Aid Society Juvenile Rights Practice, with the voluntary participation of 28 private foster care agencies, and with input and support on various aspects of the project from many other organizations and individuals, including the New York City Family Court, the Council of Family and Child Caring Agencies, the Child Welfare Organizing Project, the Center for Family Representation, the Bronx Defenders, the Brooklyn Family Defense Project, the Citizens’ Committee for Children, and the First and Second Departments of the State of New York Unified Court System, Appellate Division, Law Guardian Program.

The project was funded with support from the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, the Ira W. DeCamp Foundation, the Stella & Charles Guttman Foundation, the Edward and Ellen Roche Relief Foundation, the Marion E. Kenworthy-Sarah H. Swift Foundation, the Metzger-Price Fund, and the Marsicano Foundation.

To read The Long Road Home and find out more about Children’s Rights’ child welfare reform efforts in New York City and nationwide, please visit www.childrensrights.org/longroadhome.

The children were removed late last week from their homes in Anderson County — one of the counties targeted by the law — and now face decisions by the county’s juvenile court about whether they may be returned safely home or must be placed in state foster care for their protection. The presiding judge in Anderson County recently testified that she is influenced “every day” by a Tennessee law enacted in July 2009 that pressures judges to limit the number of children they commit to foster care through the threat of fiscal penalties for counties that exceed a prescribed limit on foster care commitments.

Children’s Rights attorneys say this not only endangers children, but also violates their constitutional rights and the 2001 settlement of a federal class action brought by Children’s Rights and co-counsel to reform the Tennessee child welfare system.

“These five vulnerable children face potentially life-altering decisions about how best to ensure their safety and well-being, and it is their right to have their cases heard by a judge who is free to choose the best option based solely on the facts of their cases,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights. “Pressuring judges to weigh the fiscal circumstances of their cash-strapped counties alongside these children’s interests violates the children’s constitutional rights and places them at risk of very serious harm.”

The law, which was proposed by the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services (DCS) and signed by the governor in July, requires counties to shoulder the entire cost of foster care for any children committed to state custody beyond a limit of three times the statewide average commitment rate. State officials have been clear in public statements about the law that its intent is to cut costs and reduce the overall number of children in state foster care by making judges think about their total number of commitments before taking individual children into custody.

Children’s Rights first took action against the law in September 2009, asking the federal judge in the long-running child welfare reform class action to issue an order blocking the law’s implementation. The Tennessee Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges — an official organization representing all juvenile and family court judges statewide — supported the move in a “friend of the court” brief asserting that the law violates children’s rights and will erode public confidence in the integrity of the judicial process if allowed to stand.

The federal judge heard testimony on the matter in October, including a sworn deposition from Davidson County Juvenile Court Judge Betty Adams Green in which she said the new law “is telling the Court that rather than thinking about the law or the best interest of children, we need to be thinking about numbers and dollars.”

In another deposition, Anderson County Juvenile Court Judge April Meldrum testified that she felt pressured to house children in undesirable alternatives to foster homes — including emergency shelters and even local jails — or to transfer children’s cases to other counties because her own county could not afford the cost of exceeding the limit imposed by the law.

Anderson County leads the state in both the number of methamphetamine lab seizures and the number of children taken into state custody due to parental substance abuse — local realities that the arbitrary limit imposed by the state law fails to take into account.

Children’s Rights attorneys also assert that the state has other, lawful means of reducing foster care placements, including appealing individual judges’ decisions it believes to be unfounded and — more important — increasing family preservation services where necessary to keep vulnerable families together rather than taking children into foster care.

The federal judge ruled on October 16 that the children who are the plaintiffs in the broader child welfare reform class action were not legally eligible to challenge the new law, but wrote that the plaintiffs had raised substantial legal claims.

“We are doing everything in our power to get these children’s claims addressed by the federal court and get this very dangerous law struck down,” said David L. Raybin, an attorney with Hollins, Wagster, Weatherly & Raybin in Nashville serving as co-counsel on the case. “Our state’s vulnerable kids must be assured that their juvenile court judges won’t be interfered with in determining how best to keep them safe, and we will not stop fighting to protect their rights and their well-being.”

Today’s motion — and a complete archive of documents related to Children’s Rights’ efforts to reform Tennessee child welfare — can be found at www.childrensrights.org/tennessee.