Oklahoma DHS Fails To Meet Key Requirements of Foster Care Settlement Agreement
Defendants have not developed therapeutic foster homes, are not operating in “Good Faith”
Defendants have not developed therapeutic foster homes, are not operating in “Good Faith”
Click to learn more about the case here.
(Huntington, West Virginia, October 1) – Twelve children in the West Virginia foster care system filed on Tuesday a federal class-action lawsuit against Governor Jim Justice asserting that the state’s child welfare system is failing to protect its most vulnerable and defenseless citizens.
Lawyers for the plaintiff children who range from two to 17 years old, cite a range of damning statistics and charge the state and its Department of Health and Human Services (DHHR) with failing to provide the necessary services that will protect these and the other 6,800 children in West Virginia foster care for whom the state is now the legal parent .
West Virginia suffers from the highest age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths involving opioids in the nation and caregiver addiction and deaths from substance abuse are driving more and more children into the system. The lawsuit, Jonathan R. v. Justice, alleges these children are housed in temporary shelters, hotels, institutions or expensive, out-of-state for-profit facilities, where they never see their caseworker and are often subjected to abuse. Statistics tell the story:
Today’s lawsuit seeks a court order directing the fundamental reform of West Virginia’s long-neglected system. The lawsuit names Jim Justice, governor of West Virginia, Bill Crouch, DHHR Cabinet Secretary, Jeremiah Samples, DHHR Deputy Cabinet Secretary, and Linda Watts, Commissioner of the Bureau of Child Welfare, a division of DHHR.
The suit is brought as a class action, seeking to represent all of the 6,800 children in foster care in the state, and focuses as well on three sub-classes of children:
The children’s action against DHHR is an opportunity to transform West Virginia’s child welfare system by addressing these problems:
The lawsuit was filed by three organizations, A Better Childhood, a national advocacy group for children; Disability Rights West Virginia, a statewide disability rights organization; and Shaffer & Shaffer, PLLC, a West Virginia law firm.
“Governor Justice is far from providing justice to the thousands of foster children most in need of it,” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of A Better Childhood. “For years, the state has ignored repeated recommendations about how to fix the damaging West Virginia foster care system. Children are being sent to institutions, placed in foster homes without any services, and abandoned by the state. West Virginia has some of the worst child welfare statistics in the country, and the state can no longer use the opioid epidemic as an excuse to avoid responsibility for this shameful system.”
“The foster care crisis in West Virginia is not an issue that just arose in the last 4-5 years, it’s a systemic problem that has festered in the state for almost 20 years. The nominal effort put forth by DHHR to improve the system over this period of time hasn’t come close to working,” said Jeremiah Underhill, the legal director of Disability Rights West Virginia. “The children of West Virginia deserve a system that works.”
“Not only are we failing to provide federally mandated care, but we are also failing to prepare these children for what lies ahead and instead condemning many of them to a life of abuse and homelessness once they age out of foster care,” said Richard Walters, a senior attorney with Shaffer & Shaffer, PLLC. “West Virginia’s foster care system has been broken for decades, it is simply unacceptable to say that we are doing the best we can with limited resources when we are talking about the abuse and neglect of young children in our care. We must do better and this litigation is a step in that direction.”
After conducting an exhaustive investigation into the allegations made by the plaintiff children, and interviewing hundreds of stakeholders in the state system (foster parents, service providers, former foster children, former state employees, and lawyers who represent children) the three organizations concluded that a lawsuit was necessary in order to force reform and protect West Virginian children.
These six failures—present in each of the 19 children’s case files—contributed to the children’s extended stay in foster care and increased their risk of harm while in care. They also result in New York City having one of the highest maltreatment rates in the country; a vast majority of contract agencies had maltreatment rates above the federal standard.
“ACS has abdicated its responsibility to the children in its custody,” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, Executive Director of A Better Childhood. “It fails to ensure that the agencies with which it contracts meet even the most basic requirements of the law, and thousands of New York City children are thus experiencing protracted and harmful stays in a system that is fundamentally broken.”
“The foster care crisis in West Virginia is not an issue that just arose in the last 4-5 years, it’s a systemic problem that has festered in the state for almost 20 years. The nominal effort put forth by DHHR to improve the system over this period of time hasn’t come close to working,” said Jeremiah Underhill, the legal director of Disability Rights West Virginia. “The children of West Virginia deserve a system that works.”
“Not only are we failing to provide federally mandated care, but we are also failing to prepare these children for what lies ahead and instead condemning many of them to a life of abuse and homelessness once they age out of foster care,” said Richard Walters, a senior attorney with Shaffer & Shaffer, PLLC. “West Virginia’s foster care system has been broken for decades, it is simply unacceptable to say that we are doing the best we can with limited resources when we are talking about the abuse and neglect of young children in our care. We must do better and this litigation is a step in that direction.”
After conducting an exhaustive investigation into the allegations made by the plaintiff children, and interviewing hundreds of stakeholders in the state system (foster parents, service providers, former foster children, former state employees, and lawyers who represent children) the three organizations concluded that a lawsuit was necessary in order to force reform and protect West Virginian children.
# # #
A Better Childhood, (ABC) is a national child welfare advocacy organization that represents abused and neglected children in dysfunctional child welfare systems. ABC also represents children in child welfare lawsuits in West Virginia, Indiana, Oregon, Minneapolis, MN, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Texas, New York City, and the District of Columbia. is a national child welfare advocacy organization that represents foster children in dysfunctional child welfare systems. .Click to read the proposed court motion and memo in support here.
The child advocacy group, A Better Childhood, and the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, today filed a memorandum of law quoting testimony from New York City and State officials and citing detailed reports from national child welfare experts that assert the City’s foster care system is not working as promised.
This brief, filed in support of class certification in the lawsuit Elisa W. v. The City of New York et al, was filed after Plaintiffs took numerous depositions and reviewed over one million pages of documents produced by the City and State. Filed in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, the brief offers the most comprehensive examination to-date of how Mayor de Blasio’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), under Commissioner David Hansell, is failing to provide for and protect the 8,300 children in New York City’s foster care system.
This filing demonstrates—often in the actual words of city and state employees—just how wide the gap is between New York City’s policies and its practices for the treatment and protection of foster children. Furthermore, the filing demonstrates how Governor Cuomo’s Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) fails to oversee ACS and keep the City’s children safe from harm while in care.New York City currently has one of the highest maltreatment rates in the country for children in its child welfare system.
A core revelation of the brief is that the Improved Outcomes for Children (IOC) model, wherein ACS delegates day-to-day care of children to 27 Contract Agencies, is not working, and the city knows it. ACS conducts only cursory case reviews, has no minimum requirements for agency performance, no minimum requirements for training of agency caseworkers, and fails to impose consequences when agencies have consistently poor performance outcomes.
Nationally recognized social work experts from both The University of Michigan and The University of Maryland reviewed the case files of the nineteen child plaintiffs in the case. Some illustrative examples of what those children’s case files revealed are below.
These experts found that, even though the children were placed in different agencies with different permanency goals and life circumstances, there were six key case failures common to all of the children’s cases. The brief asserts that those six failures are likewise common to all 8,300 children in ACS’s custody. Those failures are:
These six failures—present in each of the 19 children’s case files—contributed to the children’s extended stay in foster care and increased their risk of harm while in care. They also result in New York City having one of the highest maltreatment rates in the country; a vast majority of contract agencies had maltreatment rates above the federal standard.
“ACS has abdicated its responsibility to the children in its custody,” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, Executive Director of A Better Childhood. “It fails to ensure that the agencies with which it contracts meet even the most basic requirements of the law, and thousands of New York City children are thus experiencing protracted and harmful stays in a system that is fundamentally broken.”
The city and state will submit their opposition brief (followed by Plaintiffs’ reply brief), and Judge Laura Taylor Swain will determine whether to grant the plaintiff children class action status.
Examples of three of the named plaintiff children’s stories are below, and expert reports with full descriptions of the cases are available upon request.
The T-C Children are four siblings who entered foster care when they were all under six. Despite being Spanish-speaking children, they were placed with English-speaking foster parents, who had a history of domestic violence. The children were removed from that home and the siblings were separated. Two of the siblings were removed from yet another home due to their foster parent’s medical neglect. Even though their birth mother completed her service plan approximately six months after the children had entered care, none of the children were trial discharged to her until after they had been in care for 2 ½ years, and one of her children was not trial discharged for over four years.
Ayanna entered care as a newborn and has spent her entire life in foster care—over 6 ½ years. Though her mother cannot even have unsupervised visits with her, due to her involvement in the violent death of Ayanna’s older sister, Ayanna has still not achieved permanency. Her case record has numerous examples of untimely and incomplete documentation.
Tyrone spent the first ten years of his childhood in foster care. He entered care as a newborn because his mother was incarcerated. He was placed with in a foster home in which he was exposed to serious domestic violence and drug abuse. He was eventually removed from that home after five years, but was placed in a home with a foster parent who was not willing to adopt him. He was then moved to a third home. He was not freed for adoption until he had been in care for over five years, and spent over ten years in care before being adopted.
# # #
A Better Childhood, (ABC) is a national child welfare advocacy organization that represents abused and neglected children in dysfunctional child welfare systems. ABC also represents children in child welfare lawsuits in Indiana, Oregon, Minneapolis, MN, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Texas, New York City, and the District of Columbia. is a national child welfare advocacy organization that represents foster children in dysfunctional child welfare systems. .