The Georgia Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) has been under federal court order to reform the Atlanta child welfare system since the 2005 settlement of a class action brought by the national advocacy organization Children’s Rights and the Atlanta law firm Bondurant, Mixson, and Elmore on behalf of several thousand children in the custody of the failing Atlanta child welfare system.

Although the state had previously made important progress in improving its care and treatment of abused and neglected children, today’s report (PDF) shows that DFCS’s performance in the second half of 2009 on several key measures was its worst to date.

The rate of maltreatment of children in Atlanta foster care from July through December 2009 was the highest since the monitors began tracking DFCS’s progress, with the majority of increased maltreatment happening in group homes and institutions — settings where the monitors previously raised serious concerns about DFCS’ ability to oversee children. Additionally, DFCS performed poorly in its delivery of health care services to children during the six-month monitoring period and child welfare workers’ caseloads are on the rise.

“Atlanta’s performance on measures critical to keeping children in foster care safe is inexcusable,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights. “If DFCS does not act swiftly to fix these problems, we will return to court to ensure that the state makes these required improvements in the state’s oversight and protection of these vulnerable kids.”

The report noted some areas in which DFCS had continued to make progress — including placing children in foster care closer to their homes, reducing overcrowding in foster homes, and ensuring that foster homes are appropriately licensed. But it also detailed several areas in which reforms deteriorated in the latter half of 2009:

• DFCS is failing to provide safe homes for children in foster care. The rate at which children suffer abuse and neglect in Atlanta foster care has continued to increase over the last six months and is now more than three and a half times the national standard. Additionally, the latest report found multiple incidents of child maltreatment and almost 100 children kept overnight — some for several days — in a Fulton County assessment center strictly limited by federal court order to 23-hour placements. The assessment center was created when the Children’s Rights lawsuit forced the closure of DFCS’s dangerous, overcrowded emergency shelters in 2006.

• DFCS is falling short in its efforts to provide health and dental care for kids. Recent data has indicated that as many as 28 percent of children in foster care needing follow-up medical or dental check-ups never received them.

• Child welfare workers’ caseloads have significantly increased. Caseload sizes for at least a third of DFCS’s workforce are above the standard of 12 to 17 cases per worker — sometimes as high as 30 to 40 cases per worker — during a time when the number of families and children in the system has stayed stable. According to the monitors, the spike in caseloads — the state’s poorest performance in this area since the 2005 settlement — may be due to high turnover rates and the state’s failure to replace workers due to budget constraints.

Children’s Rights and Bondurant, Mixson and Elmore 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.

In 2008, Children’s Rights filed a motion requesting the state be held in contempt for failing to find permanent homes for hundreds of children who had languished in foster care for years. Four months later, Children’s Rights agreed to withdraw its contempt motion in exchange for DFCS’s court-enforceable commitment to take specific aggressive measures, including working with national experts to find permanent homes for all children who remained in state custody.

The full text of today’s report and all other legal documents pertaining to Children’s Rights’ lawsuit in the state of Georgia can be found at www.childrensrights.org/georgia.

Related Press

Foster care abuse and neglect up in Fulton and DeKalb (Atlanta Journal Constitution, 07/23/2010)

Meezan, who began his career as a social worker, has been at the forefront of social work research across the country and has served as an expert consultant to numerous social agencies, foundations, schools of social work, and national organizations — including work as an expert witness in Children’s Rights’ class action to reform child welfare in New Mexico (known as Joseph A. v. Bolson).

An accomplished author and researcher in the field of social work and child welfare services, Meezan has co-authored four books and published more than 50 articles and chapters in peer-reviewed journals and anthologies. Among his many awards in the field, he has been honored with the 2009 Pro Humanitate Literary Award from the North American Resource Center for Child Welfare.

“As we seek to expand our efforts to bring vital improvements to the lives of more children dependent on our nation’s troubled child welfare systems, we are very fortunate to be able to draw on the wealth of experience and expertise that Bill Meezan brings to Children’s Rights,” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, the organization’s founder and executive director. “He is an innovative thinker and a passionate advocate, and his influence will be felt in our campaigns for child welfare reform and in the results they produce for abused and neglected children nationwide.”

Prior to his tenure at Ohio State University, Meezan served as the Marion Elizabeth Blue Professor of Children and Families at the University of Michigan School of Social Work and a Senior Fulbright Scholar in the Baltic States, where he helped organize the first schools of social work in Lithuania and Latvia.

Meezan received his bachelor of arts from University of Vermont and master of social work from Florida State University. He received his doctorate in social welfare from Columbia University, where he was later inducted into that institution’s School of Social Work Hall of Fame.

Children’s Rights’ policy team supports the organization’s campaigns for child welfare reform and conducts intensive studies on public policy issues vital to improved protection and treatment for abused and neglected children in the care of child welfare agencies. The organization’s most recent study, issued in November 2009, examined the barriers that keep thousands of children languishing in New York City foster care rather than going home to permanent families, and led to the creation of a new citywide program aimed at speeding children’s progress toward permanency. Previous studies on child welfare workforce issues, foster care support payments, and other topics have contributed to federal and state legislation and other initiatives aimed at improving the operation of child welfare systems at all levels.

Today’s decision (PDF) by the First Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a lower court’s dismissal of the case in April 2009 on the grounds that the adults chosen to serve as the children’s legal representatives (or “Next Friends”) in the reform class action were inadequate because they did not have current relationships with the children, and that only the law guardians (or “guardians ad litem”) appointed to represent them in family court could bring claims against the state on their behalf.

Noting that “foster care children are often unable to forge significant relationships with the adults that are entrusted to protect the children’s interest,” the Court of Appeals reinstated the children’s complaint and allowed the current Next Friends to proceed as representatives of the children named as plaintiffs in the case. Wrote the court: “Important social interests are advanced by allowing minors access to a judicial forum to vindicate their constitutional rights through a Next Friend that the court … particularly where, as here, the minors see relief for alleged violations of the guardian’s duty to protect them.”

“The Court of Appeals has thrown open the doors that the district court had closed to thousands of children whose lives and well-being continue even now to be imperiled by the failings of the Rhode Island child welfare system,” said Susan Lambiase, associate director of Children’s Rights. “The court has granted them the access they deserve to present their claims in federal court and seek relief for the harms they have suffered in Rhode Island’s custody.”

The advocates filed the class action, known as Sam and Tony M. v. Carcieri, in June 2007, seeking widespread reforms on behalf of the approximately 3,000 abused and neglected children dependent on the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF). The children’s complaint alleged that the state violates their rights under the Constitution and federal law by failing to provide them with basic safety, protection, and care — often resulting in serious harm.

In addition to the Rhode Island Child Advocate and Children’s Rights, Vernon Winters of the international law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, and Rhode Island attorney John Dineen serve as co-counsel on the case.

For more information about Children’s Rights’ campaign to reform the Rhode Island child welfare system, including the full text of the 2007 complaint and today’s appeal, please visit www.childrensrights.org/rhodeisland.

According to today’s report (PDF), issued by an independent monitor appointed by the federal court to track the state’s progress, DCF continues to meet or exceed its targets to recruit and license foster and adoptive families, giving the state a large pool of available homes for children entering care. Children are also continuing to move quickly to permanent, adoptive homes when they cannot return to their parents, with 85 to 95 percent of adoptions finalized within nine months of children’s placement with adoptive families.

However, the state has also committed to implementing a statewide model of case practice focused on giving families a greater role in how their cases are handled and designing case plans around what a family needs. According to the monitor, DCF is facing considerable challenges meeting those benchmarks meant to improve the system’s day to day interactions with families, which includes developing comprehensive case plans and holding family team meetings.

Additionally, DCF has been without consistent leadership for the last six months; however, just this month Governor Chris Christie named Allison Blake, a former administrator at Rutgers School of Social Work, as DCF’s new acting commissioner.

“There is no question New Jersey has come far in its efforts to fix child welfare statewide, but to continue building on this success and truly create sustainable reform, it is absolutely vital for DCF to have strong, stable leadership focused on immediately identifying ways to fix the areas where the state is falling short,” said Susan Lambiase, associate director of Children’s Rights. “At this stage of the reform, the state needs to focus on deficiencies in key practice areas to better demonstrate that the lives of kids and families are in fact improving.”

The report, evaluating DCF’s performance over the six-month period between July 1 and December 31, 2009, notes the state also achieved new progress tracking and increasing the number of children in foster care with access to health care, placing more children in family-like settings, and keeping sibling groups together while in foster care.

DCF has also continued its success in maintaining the foundation for reform. New Jersey now has one of the lowest rates of abuse in foster care in the country, and the number of children in foster care continues to decline. The state has also dramatically reduced the number of children sent out-of-state for behavioral and mental health services by building better capacity within the state.

Despite these accomplishments, the federal monitor reports DCF is having trouble implementing several critical areas of the statewide model of child welfare practice, which emphasizes giving families a stronger voice in critical decisions.

DCF is reporting dismal progress facilitating Family Team Meetings — a hallmark of the state’s new model of practice that gives families an opportunity to bring together their extended family, friends, and community leaders as helpful partners in their cases — for families living in areas where case practice training has been fully implemented. A mere 14 percent of families participated in a family team meeting at all — falling far short of the required benchmark to hold such meetings for 75 percent of those families within 30 days of placing their child into state custody.

Today’s report also finds that the state is only reporting 42 percent of children entering care had case plans developed within 30 days, failing at a crucial benchmark designed to identifying what a child and family needs to succeed, and mapping out how a caseworker can help them achieve it. Additionally, for those families who actually have case plans, only 69 percent received the appropriate six-month follow-up from their caseworkers to ensure the plans still reflect the family’s current needs.

The federal monitor points to other significant challenges facing the department in the last monitoring period. Less than 20 percent of families were adequately assessed within 30 days of their case closure for safety and risk of abuse, when the state should be performing safety and risk assessments for at least 98 percent of families before ending involvement with the family.

Frequent visitation is critically important at the beginning of a family’s involvement with DCF, and while the state is exceeding its target to visit children at least once per month, only 15 to 26 percent of children are being visited twice per month at the beginning of their DCF involvement. The state has also seen a surprising reduction in the number of young adults accessing the NJ Scholars program, indicating less youth aging out of foster care are accessing available supports for post-secondary education.

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.

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 Media

Monitor finds progress in NJ child welfare reforms (AP/Philadelphia Inquirer, June 1, 2010)

Federal monitor finds progress, some setbacks for foster care in N.J. (Star-Ledger, June 1, 2010)

We filed papers in federal court two months ago seeking documents related to the state child welfare agency’s use of strategies aimed at avoiding child abuse and neglect investigations in certain cases and allowing parents to voluntarily place children with relatives or family friends while accessing community services or being investigated for abuse or neglect.

Citing multiple investigations conducted by the Georgia Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) over the last three years, we presented evidence that the state has been using these strategies inappropriately — and argued that if these allegations are true, DFCS’s actions are not only violating children’s constitutional rights and a longstanding federal court order secured by Children’s Rights to reform the Atlanta child welfare system, but also putting a great many kids at risk of serious harm.

Last Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Marvin H. Shoob agreed that “the OCA reports raise at least the possibility that diversion, safety resources, and temporary guardianships are being used in Fulton and DeKalb Counties to keep children out of foster care inappropriately.”

His decision (PDF) requires state officials to provide Children’s Rights with all policies, practices, and procedures related to diversion, safety plans, and temporary guardianships in Fulton and DeKalb counties — along with a list of all children who accessed these services in 2009 — within 10 days. Once the documents have been turned over, Children’s Rights can then select cases to be reviewed in depth to determine whether the child welfare agency is, in fact, putting children in danger.

Children’s Rights believes strongly that children should be able to remain with their families whenever it is safe and possible to do so. However, programs that “divert” child abuse reports must include the intensive services and oversight needed to help these families stay together and ensure that children are safe. Otherwise, these programs can be misused as a means to save state funds, deny families vital services and supports, and potentially keep vulnerable children in unsafe homes and at risk of being harmed again.

We remain committed to ensuring that children and families in Atlanta — and across the United States — are not being inappropriately shuffled away from the supports and services they need.

Naming six child plaintiffs who have been badly harmed in Massachusetts foster care, the lawsuit (known as Connor B. v. Patrick) charges the state’s Department of Children and Families (DCF) with violating the constitutional rights of children by routinely placing them in dangerous and unstable situations once removed from their parents’ care and failing to take necessary actions to meet the legal and moral obligation of the state-run child welfare system to ensure the safety and well-being of children in its custody.

According to the children’s complaint, the rate at which children in Massachusetts foster care suffer abuse in state-supervised foster homes and institutions is nearly four times the national standard. DCF further traumatizes children by moving them frequently between foster placements; one-third of children in state foster care get shuffled around to at least five different placements during their time in state custody, according to the complaint. The complaint also points to the state’s decade-long failure to adequately prepare and support families to be successfully reunified with their children in foster care.

“There is absolutely no justification for what Massachusetts is doing to its most vulnerable children. It is robbing them of their right to be protected from abuse and neglect and to grow up in safe and stable homes with loving, permanent families,” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children’s Rights. “With this class action, Children’s Rights joins advocates throughout the state in seeking a court-enforceable commitment from the state to reform its failing child welfare system and dramatically improve its treatment of the thousands of abused and neglected children who depend on it.”

The lawsuit names six children as plaintiffs to represent the class. They range in age from nine to 15 years old and share a history of harm in DCF custody. They include:

• Nine-year-old Connor B., who suffered severe sexual abuse as DCF shuffled him around to seven different foster homes over the last three years. Connor now struggles with severe mental, behavioral, and emotional challenges as a result.

• Adam S., a 15-year-old boy who has spent his entire life since the age of eight bouncing in and out of foster care — and enduring repeated physical and psychological abuse at the hands of his foster parents. Now he is a few years from aging out of the system — and DCF has provided him with no prospects for a permanent family and no preparation for living independently as an adult.

• Camila R., 13 years old, who was separated from her two sisters and returned to her abusive mother, has lived in at least 11 different placements while in foster care. Even now, DCF continues to deny her vital educational and mental health services.

• Fifteen-year-old Andre S., who has been legally free for adoption for over 10 years and spent seven of 12 years in the state’s care in a residential facility rather than a foster or relative home. Andre now faces adulthood with no stable family or plan for adequate services from DCF to support him.

• Seth T., 13 years old, who was bounced around to five different foster placements in just his first year of foster care. Still in foster care after five years, DCF has effectively cut Seth’s ties with his family, managing visits with his brothers only a few times a year and never properly exploring the possibility of placing him with available relatives.

• Fifteen-year-old Rakeem D., who entered foster care two and a half years ago and was not only immediately separated from his three siblings, but also denied the opportunity to live with relatives who may have been able to care for him. As DCF has bounced Rakeem around to at least eight different foster and group homes, his education and behavioral health has suffered, and he now resides in an institution 50 miles away from his nearest relative.

“We believe it is necessary to file a class action lawsuit because children’s constitutional rights are being violated as a result of the shortcomings of the child welfare system,” said Mary K. Ryan, a partner at Nutter McClennen & Fish LLP. “I think most people would be shocked to learn that Massachusetts, which has done so much for the education and health of children, falls in the bottom ten among states on so many measures related to the well-being of children in foster care.”

Citing evidence that DCF and state officials have been aware of serious problems throughout the state-run child welfare system for many years without taking appropriate action to solve them, the child plaintiffs ask the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts to enjoin the state from further violating their constitutional rights and order relief via widespread reforms. Among the failures detailed in their complaint:

• Children are frequently subjected to abuse or neglect while in foster care. The high rate at which children suffer maltreatment in state custody makes DCF the fourth most harmful child welfare system in the nation in this regard.

• Children are routinely bounced from one foster home or institution to another at alarming rates. One third of children in foster care have been moved around five or more different foster placements in a single stint in foster care, causing repeated emotional trauma with every move. DCF often aggravates this trauma with the inappropriate practice of shuttling children each night to different temporary “hotline” homes until a longer-term placement becomes available.

• Families are not provided adequate visitation with their children in foster care or sufficient services and support to successfully bring their children home. In order for children to be safely reunified with their parents after spending time in foster care, parents must have access to vital services to help them overcome their challenges and ample opportunities to visit one another. DCF regularly fails to provide sufficient visitation and services for families, thus placing children at risk of lingering in care longer than necessary or even returning to foster care.

• Too many children are literally growing up in foster care. Many of the 2,500 children currently waiting to be adopted from DCF foster care are likely to linger in foster care for several years. Among children adopted between 2002 and 2005, more than half waited more than three years before finding permanent, adoptive families.

• Children are aging out of foster care without permanent families and vital support and resources. Approximately 900 children age out of the state foster care system each year with no permanent family at all, and approximately half of those children have spent three or more years in state custody. Additionally, DCF fails to prepare these children for life as adults, placing them at a higher risk of experiencing homelessness, unemployment, and incarceration than their adopted and reunified peers.

The children’s complaint links these problems to DCF’s failure to effectively manage its workforce, resources, and practices:

• DCF has failed to recruit and maintain a sufficient number of safe and appropriate family foster homes and other out-of-home placements. The pool of available foster homes has been steadily shrinking over the last several years, and DCF has not done enough to find ways to both recruit and retain licensed foster homes. This serious shortage of placements has caused overcrowding in foster homes and forced excessive moves of children between multiple foster homes.

• DCF caseworkers are overloaded with unmanageable caseloads. DCF routinely assigns its child welfare workers 22 to 27 families each — far in excess of the Child Welfare League of America’s caseload standard of 12 to 15 children per worker. When workers are so overburdened with large caseloads, they are often too busy to engage with families and develop vital safety plans and services for families and children in foster care.

Over the last 18 months, DCF and state officials have exacerbated these systemic problems by depleting vital resources, including cutting the child welfare workforce, failing to provide promised increases to foster parent maintenance payment rates, reducing funding for essential services for children and families, and decreasing the resources and administrative support necessary to support a full continuum of foster care placements and services.

Additionally, the complaint cites evidence that Massachusetts continues to be one of the worst states in the nation with respect to drawing down funding from the federal government, which provides matching funds for state-managed foster care systems. DCF continues to miss out on millions of dollars in available federal funds to finance the state’s overburdened foster care system.

“While short resources and tight budgets have forced states across the nation to make tough decisions, DCF’s failure to meet the most basic needs of vulnerable children in state foster care cannot be simply blamed on difficult fiscal times,” said Sara Bartosz, senior staff attorney for Children’s Rights and lead counsel on the case. “DCF’s management has failed to take the necessary steps to ensure quality case practice and positive outcomes for children. Quite simply, this is a serious management problem that has existed for a long time.”

Related Press

Children’s rights group files suit against state over foster care (Boston Herald, April 15, 2010)

Advocacy group sues state over foster care system (Boston Globe, April 15, 2010)

Group files foster care lawsuit against Mass. (AP via WBZ Radio, April 15, 2010)

Children’s Rights and their Connecticut co-counsel asserted DCF’s violation of the court orders today in a letter (PDF) to DCF’s attorney and the independent monitor appointed by the court to track the ongoing reform effort. DCF consistently fails to adequately plan for and meet the basic needs of more than half the children in the Connecticut child welfare system, according to the latest monitoring report — and advocates say DCF must act swiftly to address the problems or risk further legal action.

“This is now and has been a leadership and management issue. While other states have made great progress in better meeting the needs of vulnerable kids and families and decreasing the use of institutions for kids, Connecticut has continued to backslide on reforms,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights. “These kids simply cannot wait another eight months for a new administration and for state officials to begin to make good on its promises.”

According to the most recent progress report issued by the court-appointed monitor (PDF), DCF continues to fall short of court-enforceable benchmarks for reform in several fundamental areas, including the recruitment of new foster families and the provision of vital treatment and services to vulnerable children and families.

Children and families in Connecticut continue to experience longstanding shortages and waitlists for behavioral health and substance abuse services; dental services; life skills and transitional services for teens in foster care; and in-home preventive services. Additionally, even where services are readily available, kids and families are frequently unable to access them due to a lack of “timely referrals, timely assessments, [and] follow up” by DCF, according to the monitor’s latest report.

Despite a court-enforceable agreement negotiated by Children’s Rights and state officials in 2008, which averted contempt proceedings initiated by Children’s Rights to address DCF’s poor performance on the same critical measures highlighted today, Connecticut continues to fail to meet benchmarks state officials helped to set. In addition to failing to meet the basic service needs of the families who depend on it, the state also continues to fall short in the following key areas:

• Unsuccessfully recruiting new foster and adoptive families. DCF had agreed to launch a massive effort to recruit 850 new foster families by June 2010, but according to the latest monitoring report, DCF has recruited only approximately 145 homes in the last two years.

• Failing to reduce the state’s reliance on institutions and group homes for children in foster care. DCF had previously negotiated an agreement to decrease the state’s use of institutional settings, shifting 10 percent of children in foster care out of institutions and into homes with foster families. But according to the latest monitoring data, the number of children placed in facilities and institutions has actually increased. Additionally, DCF still keeps over 230 kids age 12 and under in temporary facilities, group homes, and institutions.

Children’s Rights’ assertion of noncompliance with the federal court order and contempt triggers a mandatory 30-day period of negotiations aimed at resolving the issues identified by the advocates. If negotiations between Children’s Rights, DCF, and the monitor fail to produce a successful remedy for these problems, Children’s Rights can return to federal court and take further action.

Children in the class action known as Juan F. v. Rell, originally filed in 1991, are represented by Children’s Rights and local co-counsel Steven Frederick of the Stamford law firm Wofsey Rosen Kweskin & Kuriansky. The case was filed 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.

For more information about Children’s Rights ongoing campaign to reform the Connecticut child welfare system, and complete archive of documents related to the Juan F. case, please visit www.childrensrights.org/connecticut.

Today’s ruling (PDF) resolves more than a year and a half of legal wrangling during which Children’s Rights asserted that the District continues to fall short of court-enforceable benchmarks for reform — including provisions requiring D.C.’s Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) to reduce the number of times children in foster care are bounced from one foster home to another, improve visitation between children and parents slated for reunification, and reduce the long periods of time children eligible for adoption wait for adoptive homes.

District officials claimed that they had complied with the court order sufficiently to be released from court oversight; U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan, in today’s ruling, disagreed.

“Although the District’s child welfare system has improved drastically from the dismal state it was once in, the defendants have yet to deliver a fully satisfactory child welfare system,” wrote Hogan in the 45-page opinion. “While the consent decree is not a permanent intervention, supervision must persist until the defendants demonstrate that the District reliably satisfies its responsibilities.”

The ruling holds the District in civil contempt for failing to implement a satisfactory annual strategy plan approved by the independent monitor appointed by the court to monitor the reform effort. The court also specifically holds Mayor Fenty in civil contempt for failing to consult with the monitor and Children’s Rights before appointing a new director of the CFSA, a stipulation that was explicitly agreed upon by all parties in 2008. The court will schedule a hearing at which it can impose remedies or sanctions.

Additionally, the ruling denies the city’s attempts to terminate the consent decree, and the federal court’s oversight, within one year. Judge Hogan describes the city’s actions as “unacceptable,” and notes that the “defendants have not illustrated any [measures to buttress reform], at least not in a manner that inspires enough confidence to support a conclusion that the agency’s progress is ‘durable and self-sustaining,’” as the District has previously argued.

“Today’s ruling affirms what we have been saying since we first went to court to get these reforms back on track in July 2008,” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children’s Rights. “It is time for Mayor Fenty to stop trying to find a way out of court oversight and commit himself and the District unequivocally to fixing persistent problems and maintaining a child welfare system that truly protects the thousands of abused and neglected kids who depend on it.”

Children’s Rights filed the class action known as LaShawn A v. Fenty in 1989. Following a 1991 trial on the merits and a finding by the court that the District’s child welfare system violated applicable law, a court-enforceable reform plan was negotiated between Children’s Rights and defendants in 1993 and approved by the court. In the years that followed, the District only made minimal progress toward achieving court-mandated reforms, prompting the court to impose the unprecedented remedy of a federal takeover of the system’s management in 1995.

The District regained control of the beleaguered agency in 2000, after establishing the cabinet-level Child and Family Services Agency and committing to major reform. CFSA initially made some improvements, but began to deteriorate and, 10 years later, the District remains in violation of the court-ordered reform plan.

Children’s Rights filed a motion for contempt in July 2008 that resulted in a new plan to address serious problems at CFSA – but renewed its motion in January 2009 after District officials asked the judge to approve a six-month plan that had been rejected by the independent court monitor. The motion charged the administration with impeding the implementation of court-mandated reforms and placing the District’s desire to escape court oversight ahead of the safety and well-being of the city’s abused and neglected children.

The full text of the court’s decision and a complete collection of materials related to the LaShawn A. reform class action are available at www.childrensrights.org/dc.

In a new motion (PDF) filed today seeking documents that the advocates say DHS has refused to produce regarding child welfare workers’ caseloads, the organization cites evidence that actual caseload totals may be much higher than those reported by DHS – and that DHS itself says it has no way of knowing how many children it has assigned to its workers in total.

A class action brought by the advocates in 2008 seeking the comprehensive reform of the Oklahoma child welfare system on behalf of more than 10,000 abused and neglected children statewide alleges that DHS caseworkers are saddled with excessively large caseloads which prevent them from providing adequate care and oversight to children in DHS custody.

Also filed with today’s motion was a supplement to an earlier report issued by an independent national child welfare expert linking failures in DHS’s management and practices with extremely severe abuse and neglect suffered by the child plaintiffs in the class action. The report describes the harm sustained by the children as “incomprehensible, unimaginable, outrageous, and immoral,” and concludes, “These tragic stories were wholly preventable.”

“If DHS, by its own admission, is not paying attention even to the number of children it assigns to its workers, how can it expect to provide adequate oversight, treatment, and care to the children themselves?” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children’s Rights. “The stories of the children bringing this reform class action illustrate in harrowing detail the terrible price abused and neglected kids throughout Oklahoma are paying every day for DHS’s utter failure to protect them.”

The expert report filed with today’s motion tells the stories of two such children:

• GC, a young girl who entered DHS custody at the age of nine and had, by the time her case was reviewed in February 2008, suffered neglect and repeated physical, sexual, and emotional abuse for three-quarters of the four years and three months she had spent in state custody. According to the report, DHS failed to even formally refer more than half of the 16 abuse and neglect allegations for investigation during GC’s time in foster care — a “potentially life-threatening and ongoing agency practice.” In spite of behavior clearly demonstrating the severe emotional problems GC experienced as a result of her trauma — including cutting herself “to release the pain” — DHS failed to refer the child for psychological and psychiatric evaluations for two full years after her entry into custody. And though a shelter worker urged DHS to place GC in a therapeutic foster home, the agency instead placed her in inappropriate foster homes where she was repeatedly beaten, neglected, and abandoned.

• KT, who entered DHS custody when she was five and waited a full two years before DHS referred her for mental health evaluations in spite of her threats of suicide and other clear evidence of the abuse she had suffered. As of February 2008, KT had spent ten years and nine months in foster care, moving 81 times between foster placements — on average, a move every 49 days — and getting shuffled through a total of 28 placements during her time in DHS custody. KT was placed twice with a relative whose home had not been approved by DHS and who permitted KT’s abusive father to live in the home as well; despite two abuse and neglect referrals while KT lived there, DHS kept her in the home for more than nine months total. Over a period of more than five years, DHS placed KT in one foster home that, according to DHS documentation, continually failed to protect KT from injuring herself and others as she physically assaulted her foster parents, threatened to kill herself and others. During her more than 10 years in DHS custody, KT was assigned a total of 97 workers and 88 supervisors — a new worker on average every 39 days.

Regarding the caseloads carried by Oklahoma child welfare workers, today’s motion asserts that DHS maintains records on only the primary cases assigned to each worker — failing to account for secondary assignments added to their workloads when children are transferred from other counties. In response to requests for documentation of these secondary assignments, DHS’s attorneys reported in February 2010 that “no reasonably identifiable documents exist” which show the number of secondary case assignments and the number of children they represent.

But while DHS, by its own admission, fails to systematically track the full caseloads of its workers, some DHS workers provide full reports to their immediate supervisors. Today’s motion cites two such instances: One worker’s total caseload included 43 children as of November 2008 according to her own report to her supervisor, while DHS’s report on her primary assignments showed only 27 children; another was responsible for 60 children as of February 2009 while DHS’s report showed only 31 kids.

These total caseloads vastly exceed those recommended under national standards, say Children’s Rights advocates — and support allegations leveled in both the class action and the expert report that excessive caseloads are preventing Oklahoma child welfare workers from providing children with the level of protection, care, and supervision they need.

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 a federal appeals court unanimously upheld the district court’s decision, allowing the case once again to proceed as a class action, in February 2010.

The Oklahoma firms Day, Edwards, Propester & Christensen; Frederic Dorwart Lawyers; and Seymour & Graham serve as the children’s co-counsel in the class action.

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

Related Media

New Accusations Filed Just As Oklahoma DHS Reports Progress (News on 6 Tulsa, March 24, 2010)

Motion Filed in Foster Care Lawsuit (Fox 23 Tulsa, March 24, 2010)

Report decries Oklahoma DHS caseloads (The Oklahoman, March 25, 2010)

As a direct result of legal action we took to block a law that violated children’s rights and endangered their lives, that law is on the way to being repealed.

And vulnerable kids throughout the state of Tennessee are safer as a result.

Since September, we’ve been fighting a law enacted by the state that compromised the fairness of children’s hearings in juvenile courts — the ones at which judges determine whether children who have been reported as victims of abuse or neglect can be returned home safely to their families or must be taken into foster care for protection.

State officials were explicit about the law’s aims: They were trying to reduce the number of children placed in foster care by imposing fiscal penalties on counties whose local judges exceeded a pre-set limit. Judges — who are legally bound to consider only the facts of the children’s cases before them — were forced by the law to track the total number of kids they committed to foster care and to weigh also the fiscal consequences their decisions would have on their cash-strapped counties.

It was not only an egregious violation of children’s legal rights. It also put their safety and well-being at great risk. And we went to federal court to put a stop to it.

Last night, the Tennessee legislature voted unanimously to repeal the part of the law aimed at putting pressure on juvenile court judges — and retained a provision requiring the state child welfare agency to work collaboratively with counties and local judges to ensure they’re getting the services and supports they need to keep kids safely at home with their families whenever possible.

For Tennessee’s abused and neglected kids, it’s the best of both worlds — protecting their rights to fair hearings and preserving safeguards designed to keep as many as possible safely out of foster care.

Children’s Rights is still involved in a massive effort to reform the entire child welfare system of Tennessee — a successful campaign that has kept children safer in foster care and brought increasing numbers of kids home to loving families and permanent homes.

We will continue to work with child welfare officials in Tennessee — and across the nation — to dramatically improve the lives of the many thousands of abused and neglected kids who need our help.

And we will continue to take action to defend vulnerable children when their lives and legal rights are endangered by the actions of the agencies and officials who are supposed to protect them.

To learn more about our campaign to reform Tennessee child welfare, please visit www.childrensrights.org/tennessee.

To find out what you can do to help, visit www.childrensrights.org/support.