The lawsuit claims psychotropic drugs are often prescribed as “chemical straight-jackets” for foster care children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or conduct disorder even though there are few to no Food and Drug Administration-approved uses for the drugs among children.

“For too long, Missouri’s most vulnerable children have been subjected to powerful drugs with little state accountability or oversight,” Samantha Bartosz, an attorney at the national advocacy group Children’s Rights, said in a statement.

Among other key reforms, the settlement says all children will get a mental health assessment before being prescribed a psychotropic drug and monitoring appointments at least every three months.

Texas will have to submit to a federal court’s supervision of plans for relieving the “crushing” workloads of Child Protective Services caseworkers who track foster children, a federal appeals court has ruled.

“Our faith traditions teach us to treat everyone, especially those in need, with the dignity and respect we want for ourselves,” said Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary, in the statement. “That’s why the Interfaith Coalition was formed: to focus on children in foster care.”

As Michigan moves to pull the plug on a computer system whose poor performance has made it difficult to track progress in foster care reform, Samantha Bartosz comments on improvements the state has committed to: “They can say, ‘This home is unsuitable.’ They can demand certain things be done.”

Samantha Bartosz, the deputy director of litigation strategy for Children’s Rights, told the judge she feels the group and the state have reached a “sound resolution” in moving forward on the issues that prompted the lawsuit.

Sandy Santana and Ruth Messinger condemn federal and state policies that allow discrimination in foster care and adoption, which limit the number of available homes to foster children.

Mentally ill students at Iowa’s State Training School for Boys are “exquisitely vulnerable” to long-lasting psychological harm from being placed in isolation cells or being strapped to a bed with a large Velcro device, a psychiatrist testified in federal court this week.

In a case brought by Children’s Rights and our partners, Iowa teens present testimony in an ongoing federal trial challenging the constitutionality of Iowa’s treatment of troubled youth at the State Training School for Boys in Eldora.