Lawsuit: Florida Foster Care Provider Kids In Distress

One major problem that occurs in every state’s foster care system is the lack of disclosure of children’s full conditions and circumstances prior to being placed with a foster family. If we could only remove the lying and omissions from a child’s history when it comes to placing a child, it would naturally remove the ripple effect that occurs when the families learn of the child’s history after something horrible happens. So many of today’s issues would not be there if the truth meant something to these service providers.

The foster parents are appealing the lower court’s “summary judgment entered in favor of Kids in Distress, a provider of social services to abused and neglected children. The judgment determines that Kids in Distress (“KID”) had no duty to disclose the perpetrator’s history of engaging in sexual abuse, because section 39.202, Florida Statutes (2004), prohibits the dissemination of this information to the afterschool program, run by the City of Wilton Manors.”

Florida law does not allow disclosure of child’s history to general child care providers. BUT, disclosure to the foster family and principal of the school IS allowed. Unfortunately, neither the foster family nor the principal was ever informed that this five-year-old boy was involved in previous sexual deviant behaviors.

In the after-school program, the five-year-old boy allegedly sexually assaulted another five-year-old boy in the bathroom. If any party had known of the child’s history, then supervisory cautions would have prevented the child from being alone with another child. The principal of the school testified this in the trial.

The defense of KID appears to be that the foster mother enrolled the child, not KID and therefore, KID is not to blame.

The complete text can be found at Appeal MS v. Kids in Distress .
[Leagle ,M.S. v. KIDS IN DISTRESS, INC case]

 

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