San Bernardino County, CA
Gary G. v. Newsom
Plaintiffs: 11 children in foster care, representing the general class of over 5,800 children in foster care in San Bernardino County, California. The lawsuit includes a general class and a subclass: the Americans with Disabilities Act subclass, which represents children with physical, cognitive, and psychiatric disabilities.
Read the complaint here, filed May 25, 2023.
Read the press release here.
Read the decision on the Motion to Dismiss here.
See news stories about the case here.
Sign up for case updates here.
about the San bernardino foster care system
California is failing the children in its foster care system and has spent the last decade embroiled in controversy. According to a Grand Jury investigating the system, The Grand Jury concluded that CFS is so “complicated, secretive, and inefficient” that it is “too broken to fix.” Children in the system are being shuffled across many placements, ending up in homes far distances from their families, in foster homes that don’t speak their language, or—in extreme cases— staying overnight in San Bernardino’s Child and Family Services (“CFS”) offices. CFS fails to support foster children and families and provide adequate services they are entitled to and and fails to provide timely case plans and adequate permanency planning. Other problems include:
CFS fails to adequately vet foster homes or monitor foster children once placed in homes. As a result, children are often placed in unsafe homes, and have even been placed in homes with known, registered sex offenders.
CFS fails to protect foster children from maltreatment while in care. Maltreatment-in-care statistics show that San Bernardino County ranks second-worst out of 58 counties in California. And if San Bernardino County were a state, it would rank 12th worst in the United States, based on 2019 data.
CFS permits Its caseworkers to carry dangerously high caseloads. The Child Welfare League of America recommends that caseworkers maintain caseloads of between 12 and 15 children in out-of-home care. In San Bernardino, the average caseload is between 70 to 90 children per caseworker.
The needs of foster children with disabilities are unmet. CFS fails to assist children in obtaining adequate services, timely health assessments, and case plans- all which compound the systemic issues for children with disabilties.
ADVOCACY GOALs
Gary G. v. Newsom asks the courts to find that the Defendants’ actions and inactions violate federal statutory law, the U.S. Constitution, the California Constitution, and the Americans with Disabilities Act and seeks an order directing CDSS and San Bernardino County to, among other things:
Keep children safe while in foster care;
Lower caseloads of individual workers to professional standards;
Plan steps towards a permanent family for each child;
Ensure that services recommended in the child’s case plans are actually provided;
End the practice of housing children overnight in offices;
Develop a process to properly match children with appropriate and safe foster home placements; and
Ensure that children with disabilities are provided with the services they need in their home communities.
Progress
We have won the motion to dismiss in this case; defendants sought to appeal the decision to the Ninth Circuit but the district court declined to authorize an appeal. We have begun the discovery process, and will submit a planned schedule to the court that will bring the case to trial in 2028.
Meet OUR PLANTIFFS
(All names below are pseudonyms)
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Gary is an 18-month-old infant who has several medical issues that are affecting his language and motor skills development. Despite this, CFS has failed to provide him with the medical services that he needs. And CFS is still taking steps to reunify Gary G. with his father, who is still homeless and was recently incarcerated.
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David, Greg, and Arnold are three siblings who have been in CFS’s care since March 2021. In just two years, David has lived in nine different placements, while his younger brothers have lived in four placements. David is currently living in a group home several hundred miles from home. And Greg and Arnold, who speak only English, are living in a Spanish-only speaking home. David has not seen either of his brothers in fourteen months. All the boys have substantial service needs for which CFS is not fully providing.
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Teddy who is four years old, has lived in four different placements since CFS took him in April 2022. During this time, CFS has never held a child and family team meeting or discussed his case plan with any of his foster parents. Moreover, he has delayed language skills, but CFS has not enrolled him in any services.
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have been in CFS’s custody since 2016. Before entering foster care, Francesca and Delilah (and possibly Xander) were sexually abused by their father. Despite this, years went by before CFS enrolled them in any kind of therapy. And several of their placements aggravated their trauma. In one placement where Francesca and Delilah were living together, the foster parents repeatedly beat the girls and placed their heads underwater. As a result, Delilah still walks with a limp. Xander, for his part, suffers from a type of kidney disease that requires constant medication and a particular diet—he has already been hospitalized three times for flare-ups. Despite this, CFS recently placed him in a group home where he went 30 days without medication.
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Kevin and Sam, 13-year-old twins, have been in CFS’s care since 2017. They have lived in approximately seven different homes in the last six years. Despite this, CFS has not engaged in meaningful case planning, hasn’t consulted these youngsters about what is going to happen to them, and whether they are ever going to find a permanent family. Unsurprisingly, these boys feel frustrated and are losing hope.
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Henry has been in CFS’s custody since December 2019. Despite having been placed in multiple different placements, he is currently in a good foster home and is a sophomore at a good public high school. That said, he is currently without a CFS caseworker, and his previous caseworkers hardly ever checked in on him. He has not had visits with either his brothers or his father in more than a year. And no one from CFS has communicated with him about his permanency plan or sought his opinion on where he would like to live.