LAWSUIT: Massachusetts Department of Children and Families UPDATED

In March 2010, Children’s Rights, a national watchdog group based in New York, filed a lawsuit on behalf of 8,500 children in care of Massachusetts DCF .

After a January 4, 2011 denial of a motion to dismiss the case, on Monday February 28, 2011 “[a] federal judge has ruled that a class action lawsuit against Massachusetts alleging the abuse and neglect of thousands of children in state care can proceed.”

The case, known as Connor B v Patrick, has an overview that can be found here.

The Febuary 28th ruling can be found here .

Judge Allows Foster Care Lawsuit Against Mass.

[The Boston Herald 2/28/11 by Associated Press]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update: Class Action Lawsuit to be heard in January 2013 in Federal Court in Springfield.

“She sits in a small office. The lights are off. Our cameras are on.
“Kids have said to me, ‘I’m not just a piece of trash. I shouldn’t just be moved around,'” she tells us.
As a social worker for the Mass. Department of Children and Families, this woman has seen everything. But, still — there are cases that haunt her. Like the 5-year-old girl she removed from her family and brought to a new foster home.
“There were dogs outside, trash all over the place,” she recalls. “The foster parent came to the door looking disheveled and I remember thinking, if they’re not caring for themselves, how are they going to care for one of our children?”
The social worker, who has asked not to be identified, says when they got inside, there was just a bare mattress on a bedroom floor and her colleague had to peel the screaming preschooler off of her — so they could leave her there.
We asked how the couple got approved by the Department of Children and families to be foster parents.
“Unfortunately, we’re so hurting for foster homes, anyone that’s interested we try to take.” she says. “As long as they meet the minimum standards, we open them up.”
DCF Commissioner Angelo McClain dismisses the assertion.
“I can hear someone saying that in frustration but that’s ridiculous. We have a process, we’ve got standards,” he says. McClain fiercely defends the agency’s foster parents and how they care for some of the roughly 7,500 children in state custody. “I mean parenting is a tough job and then, if you think of foster parenting, it’s even tougher. There aren’t necessarily people lining up to want to do that.”
The quality and quantity of foster homes is just one of the issues in a class action lawsuit that soon heads to federal court in Springfield. A national watchdog group — Children’s Rights — is suing Massachusetts, naming six foster children as plaintiffs. The suit alleges that state officials shuffle kids from placement to placement, that children are subjected to high rates of abuse and that DCF social workers are burdened with unmanageable case loads.
Sitting in the Children’s Rights offices in New York City, Marcia Robinson Lowry said, “The only redress these children have is unfortunately when our organization goes to court and says judge, look what’s happening to these children its unconscionable and you know what else? It’s also unconstitutional.”
Some social workers say reform needs to start with them. While the Council on Accreditation says social workers should take on no more than 18 cases — the Child Welfare League of America puts limits at 12-15. Massachusetts claims an 18 case maximum. But according to DCF data, even though the average caseload was 16 in the last 12 months, one in three social workers had 18 or more cases, with some juggling as many as 22 families at once.
We ask the social worker if it’s possible to do 18-20 cases well.
“No. Absolutely not,” she said. “I don’t even know if it’s possible to do the 15 well, to be honest. It’s a lot of going home every night, wondering, did I do the right thing? Did I cancel the wrong appointment? Just worrying — not sleeping at night.”
She says the pressure from upper management to meet their home-visit numbers is intense and it’s families that bear the brunt of it.
“Unfortunately it’s, as we call it, the drive by social work,” she says. “You kind of stop in a house for two minutes. Stop in, lay eyes on all the kids, make sure the general questions are answered, and leave and go on to next home.”
Does she worry kids could get hurt or even die? “Yes, absolutely,” she said.
Commissioner McClain said, “I’m actually surprised to hear you say that folks are doing that sort of drive by social work, because I’m out in the field quite a bit and talk to staff and what staff are telling me since we implicated our new case practice model two years ago, that they are actually spending more time with families and engaged with families in more positive more productive kind of way.” But, still he says, “We know we want to lower the case load, we are committed to lowering the case load.”
McClain says the state is also committed to lowering the number of foster placements. According to Children’s Rights, one third of all children in DCF foster care have been moved through five or more different placements in their time with the agency.
Case supervisor and union representative Peter Mackinnon says that shuffling can have devastating effects on a child.
“Now they’ve changed school districts, those social connections are lost,” he said, “The stigma of being a foster child creates mental health issues, depression, criminal behavior because they’re just dealing with this emotion that’s been sitting there forever.”
Twenty-three-year-old Lauren James was one of those kids. In 1997, when she was 8 years old, she says her mother had a mental breakdown and a social worker came to school to take her and her three brothers into state custody.
“We were all split apart and put into different homes and I wasn’t really sure what was going on,” James said.
James says that day started a tumultuous journey in and out of foster care. Her mother went on to kill herself, and James says over the next decade, she was shuffled through state group homes and at least 13 different foster homes — where she was verbally, physically and sexually abused.
“Just horrible abuses and things have happened to me,” she nearly whispers. “Basically my entire childhood just robbed of me.”
James says if you want to see the lasting effects of a broken system on a child, look at her life. She has no permanent place to live in New York, no job and trouble trusting people.
“I do not want to be a victim. I do not want to live in my past,” she said. “I want to move on, move forward and do beautiful, beneficial things in this world. And I’m struggling to find any way to do that right now.”
McClain says it breaks his heart to hear about kids who’ve been hurt, but for every tragedy are three more success stories. He insists DCF is moving forward. Despite crippling budget cuts, he says the agency has reduced the number of children in foster care by 2,000, shortened the time frame for adoptions and kept more children with extended family when they need to be removed from their primary home.  “I sleep good at night,” he said. “I sleep very good at night. The commitment I made that was every day when I walk into this place we are going to make this place a little bit better and we have done that.”
McClain asks for patience for the agency to do more, but James says her patience has run out.
“We cannot wait any longer for a system that has already failed myself, my entire family and thousands upon thousands of other families, it’s just not practical,” she said. “These kids are being hurt now, so we go and help them now.”
The class action law suit is expected to be heard in Federal Court in Springfield in January.”

Foster Care Failure?

[NECN 11/13/12 by Ally Donnelly]

Update 2: The trial begins.

“A class action lawsuit that accuses the state of Massachusetts of allowing thousands of foster children to suffer a wide range of abuse is set to go to trial in federal court.

The suit by the New York City-based advocacy group, Children’s Rights, accuses Massachusetts of “causing physical and psychological harm to the abused and neglected children it is mandated to protect.” It says the abuse include sexual assault, constant foster home uprooting and inappropriate prescribing of psychotropic drugs.

Opening arguments in the trial, which is expected to take weeks, are scheduled for Tuesday at U.S. District Court in Boston.

The Boston Globe reports (http://b.globe.com/VjZFoK) that Children’s Right’s first witness will be a woman who grew up in the Massachusetts system and suffered terrible abuse while being shuffled between foster homes.

“When taxpayers hear what they’ve been spending money on, they will be appalled,” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children’s Rights.

But the state plans to argue that Department of Children and Families officials are aware of the problems cited in the suit and have taken steps to improve the child welfare system.

“We’re hoping as we present our stories, the court will conclude that we’re very passionate about making improvements to the system and that we’ve had results,” Angelo McClain, commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, told the Globe.

The lawsuit is among more than a dozen filed in recent years by Children’s Rights against child welfare departments nationwide. Massachusetts is the first state to fight the accusations in court, rather than settle.

The lawsuit alleges Massachusetts violated children’s constitutional rights by placing them in dangerous and unstable situations. The suit seeks broad reforms on behalf of approximately 7,500 children in state care.

Reports cited or released by Children’s Rights said federal audits of 47 child welfare jurisdictions ranked Massachusetts 8th worst in mistreatment rates and 13th worst in timeliness of adoptions. They also indicate children in Massachusetts foster care are prescribed psychiatric medications at a rate far above children who aren’t in state care (40 percent to 10 percent).

Lowry acknowledged the state has made some improvements, but she said the changes haven’t been broad or comprehensive enough.

“The state’s had initiatives. It’s just they haven’t succeeded,” she said. “In some degree, it’s too little too late.”

But McClain said that in 2008, the state implemented an effective new model for managing cases that ensure children don’t fall through the cracks. He said fewer than 1 percent of children are now being abused or neglected in foster care. And he said the number of stable foster care placements has improved to nearly 80 percent.

McClain said he was concerned that the resources being used to defend the case could be better used to help Massachusetts children.

“I don’t question (Children’s Rights’) motives, and I think they believe that we could be doing a better job,” he said. “But I don’t know how much they’ve taken into account the improvements we’ve made since 2008.”

Suit: Massachusetts allowed abuse of its foster children

[Massachusetts Live 1/21/13 by The Associated Press]

“Beginning at age 8, Lauren James bounced among at least 14 different foster homes, along the way being forced to scrub floors, clean up after dogs, miss meals and take up to five psychiatric mediations at a time.

Now 24, she was the opening witness Tuesday in a case aimed at putting the Massachusetts foster care system on trial.

The federal class-action lawsuit was filed in 2010 by Children’s Rights, a New York-based child advocacy group that alleges that thousands of children in state foster care are being abused and neglected. The group claims the state Department of Children and Families has violated the constitutional rights of children by placing them in unstable and sometimes dangerous situations.

James described a turbulent childhood marked by the death of her father just before her 6th birthday and her mother’s suicide when she was 12. She said she was shuttled between foster homes and sent to live with her mother between ages 8 and 11. Then, after her mother died, she hopped from foster home to foster home.

In most of the homes, she wasn’t given enough to eat, and her weight dropped from 100 pounds to 73 pounds, she said.

In one home, she was forced by the foster parents to do a lot of housecleaning, including scrubbing floors on her hands and knees and cleaning up after six Chihuahuas, she said.

In another home, her foster parents made fun of her biological mother, James said. At one point, while she was grieving her mother’s death, her foster parents told her that her father had “killed himself because he didn’t want you,” she said.

James said she often felt depressed but didn’t express her feelings to her case workers very often. She said she was always told there were not enough foster homes.

“Really, it doesn’t matter because they can’t do anything about it,” she said.

James said she was given lithium beginning at age 6.

“I remember them saying that because my father had bipolar, I was predisposed to it,” she said.

After that, she said, she was put on various psychiatric medications, up to five at once. She said the medications made her feel “absolutely dreadful” and caused her to develop sleep problems. At one point, after she was given a new drug to take, she gained 45 pounds in three or four weeks, she said.

Under cross-examination from Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Collins, James acknowledged she first began taking psychiatric medication before she was ever placed in foster care. She acknowledged that both her biological mother and father had spent time in psychiatric hospitals. She also said a boyfriend her mother had after her father’s death was sometimes violent and abusive.

She said she herself spent time in a psychiatric hospital as a child and was diagnosed over the years with various mental illnesses, including oppositional defiant disorder, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and reactive-attachment disorder.

She acknowledged that the state had provided services intended to stabilize her family and allow her to remain at home with her mother, but that the services did not work, she said.

Collins asked James whether she blamed DCF, at least in part, for her mother’s suicide.

“I don’t blame anyone for my mother’s death except my mother,” she said.

She also said her mother had spent 4 1/2 years of her childhood in foster care.

“With that cycle, I have inherited things that I despise and that the Department of Children and Families has not truly helped to fix, to help mend,” she said.

The lawsuit seeks reforms on behalf of approximately 7,500 children in foster care in Massachusetts. The non-jury trial is being heard by U.S. District Judge William Young.

A lawyer for DCF told Young that the department has increased the number of children being safely cared for at home, with about 2,000 fewer children in foster care than just a few years ago.”

Ex-foster child testifies in Mass. class action

[Huffington Post 1/22/13 by Denise Lavoie]