Law firm Baker McKenzie and non-profit group Children’s Rights on Tuesday filed the class action lawsuit against DCF on behalf of about 2,000 children in foster care in Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office and lawyers representing foster children slugged it out Thursday over whether a federal appeals court should make Texas obey a judge’s demands while the state appeals her ruling that its long-term foster care system is “broken.”

Sandy Santana is quoted in this article about the opioid epidemic and the Family First Prevention Services Act: “For the government now to redirect funding for substance abuse and preventative services to keep those kids that are at risk of entering foster care with their families is a big, big deal.”

Ruling that the Texas foster care system continues to place children at risk, U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack ordered Texas officials to adopt almost 100 changes, including reduced workloads for caseworkers, a ban on children sleeping in state offices and steps to better monitor and reduce sexual abuse

CPS officials are trying to persuade the federal appellate judges to lift a stay of U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack’s remedial order in a long-running class-action suit originally brought by the New York-based group Children’s Rights.

Attorneys for Children’s Rights, the National Center for Youth Law and Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics filed a federal lawsuit in June on behalf of Missouri children currently or formerly in foster care.

Claims that Missouri has historically and unconstitutionally failed foster children by prescribing psychotropic drugs are surviving challenges in federal court.

Children’s Rights’ lawsuits in Missouri and Iowa, which both allege failures to monitor the use of psychotropic medications for children in state custody, are cited in this article about a man who was prescribed psychotropic medications as a child.

“The absence of the medical records itself creates an unreasonable risk of harm and the defendants are aware of that risk as well,” Laughrey wrote in a 33-page opinion.

Sara Bartosz, a lawyer for Children’s Rights, said the lawsuit and its proposed settlement, which still needs a federal judge’s final approval, was about restoring “basic and fundamental” procedures into Rhode Island’s child welfare system.