First, they tried to get the case dismissed. But the federal judge overseeing the case denied their request in January of this year.

Then they argued against granting the case class action status. In May, the judge ruled that the case could proceed on behalf of all of the more than 10,000 children who depend on the state child welfare system for protection and care.

Now they are appealing the judge’s decision to a higher court, and they asked the judge to restrict our access to evidence about the system’s practices and the harm it is causing kids until the higher court issues its decision. On Wednesday, the judge agreed to do so.

His decision is perfectly reasonable, and the state left him little choice. It’s the state’s choices in this case that defy reason.

Children’s Rights brought this class action against the Oklahoma child welfare system after advocates there told us that they had been trying unsuccessfully for years to get its leaders to fix serious, persistent problems.

One of the system’s own employees, quoted in court papers filed by the Oklahoma Public Employees Association supporting the class action, said:

“We need this lawsuit and the kids need to win it. We know what to do and we’ve told [DHS] administration what it needs to do — administration just won’t do it.”

And the whole time Oklahoma has resisted pressure from advocates to take action to improve the exceedingly poor treatment children and families receive from its child welfare system, it has left thousands of children at risk of great harm.

For several years running, the rate at which children in state custody suffer abuse and neglect in their foster homes has been among the three highest in the nation.

The state employees association says child welfare workers have worked “for years under the burdens of a crushingly excessive caseload, staff shortages, inadequate pre-service and in-service training and supervision, the inability to adequately supervise and monitor children in foster care placements and a consequent inability to protect foster children from harm.”

And the result for Oklahoma’s children, again according to the state employees themselves?

Physical and emotional abuse, extended placement in overcrowded shelters, excessive multiple foster care placements, a lack of adequate permanency efforts, inadequate medical and psychological care, and death.

We have made it known time and again that we would prefer to stop fighting in court and sit down with state officials to negotiate a plan aimed at bringing about real change.

And time and again, they have shown that they would prefer to keep dragging the case out until we go away.

That’s not going to happen.

With yesterday’s decision, the state’s lawyers have succeeded in throwing up yet another obstacle to reform. But we intend to overcome it. We will continue gathering evidence about the seven children named as plaintiffs in our reform lawsuit. We will build the case for the full-scale reform of the Oklahoma child welfare system.

And we will keep fighting until the children and families who count on the system get the protection, services, and care they deserve.

The challenges are unquestionably daunting, and the decisions about what to cut and what to keep are agonizing. But there’s one program on the chopping block that plays such a vital role in keeping vulnerable families together, keeping children out of state custody, and saving taxpayers’ money in the process that it shouldn’t be negotiable. And we’re fighting hard to keep it intact.

It’s called the Voluntary Services Program, and it offers specialized treatment for children who have serious mental, emotional, behavioral, or substance abuse disorders when their families have nowhere else to turn. Created by the 1991 settlement of the class action lawsuit that Children’s Rights and Connecticut advocates brought to reform Connecticut’s child welfare system, the Voluntary Services Program has served thousands of families since its inception, providing services aimed at keeping troubled kids with their parents rather than leaving them at risk of being taken into foster care, the juvenile justice system, or other state institutions.

Governor Rell has proposed making this program unavailable to any and all new families at a projected cost savings of $1.5 million — just .001 percent of what she proposes to save in her budget for the next two fiscal years. This is miniscule in comparison to the cost in terms of both families destroyed and children relegated to state care if the program closes its doors.

Our friend and ally Martha Stone of the Center for Children’s Advocacy in Connecticut spoke out on this issue in yesterday’s Hartford Courant, writing in an op-ed of the potentially “devastating” effects of shuttering the Voluntary Services Program:

Many families simply will not survive intact. More children will enter state custody, endangering the sustained progress Connecticut has made in reducing its foster care population. Because children with emotional and behavioral problems are harder to place with foster and adoptive families, many will end up in the care of inpatient treatment facilities that are significantly more expensive to maintain than the Voluntary Services Program. And many will remain wards of the state until they age out of the system — without families, without homes and without any of the resources they will need to thrive as independent adults.

Connecticut’s child welfare system has come a long way since the settlement of our lawsuit, implementing a great many of the improvements required as part of the court-enforceable reform plan. Children in foster care are being moved less frequently between different foster homes. The caseworkers responsible for safeguarding their well-being are no longer overburdened with impossible caseloads, enabling them to visit children in their foster homes to make sure they’re safe and well-cared-for. Children are being more quickly reunified with their parents — or, if reunification proves impossible, moved into adoptive homes.

These are changes to be proud of. It is critically important that those children who must enter foster care get the care and protection they need and deserve. But the state must also do everything it can to keep families together and protect children who are at risk of being taken into foster care — or worse — before that drastic measure becomes necessary. And we are going to continue to do everything we can to ensure they do.

Be sure to give Martha Stone’s op-ed a look. If you’re in Connecticut, take a moment to write a letter to the editor of the Courant — or, better yet, Governor Rell. We already have, notifying her that if the Voluntary Services Program gets cut, we may very well take further legal action on behalf of Connecticut’s kids.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

The report (PDF), issued Friday by the independent monitors appointed by the court to track the reforms, also credits the state-run Departments of Family and Children Services (DFCS) of Fulton and DeKalb Counties with improving visitation between parents and children slated for reunification, placing more children in foster care close to their home communities, and ensuring that foster homes are fully licensed and free from overcrowding.

But caseloads edged higher for child welfare workers responsible for both investigating allegations of child abuse and neglect and visiting children in their foster homes to ensure their safety and well-being. And the monitors express concern in the report that the effects of the economic downturn in Georgia — which have already forced the state to institute mandatory furlough days for DFCS workers — may further hinder progress. Budget and service cuts have deepened further since the end of the period covered by the report, which ran from July 1 through December 31, 2008.

Additionally, the agency’s performance remains unsatisfactory on some reform measures critical to children’s well-being that have long been areas of concern — including important health screenings for children in foster care and initial assessments of their treatment needs as they enter foster care.

“There are still some things about the Atlanta child welfare system that must be improved to ensure that the abused and neglected kids who depend on it receive the protection and care they need, but the progress highlighted in today’s report is encouraging,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights. “DFCS has demonstrated that it is capable of acting decisively to correct persistent problems, even in the face of difficult economic circumstances, and now the agency must keep up its efforts to address the remaining challenges noted by the report and guard against further backsliding.”

Lustbader cited several areas that the report says DFCS must work harder to improve:

• DFCS must reduce and control rising caseloads for frontline child welfare workers. The court order secured by Children’s Rights caps caseloads at different levels for different kinds of caseworkers to ensure that they can devote ample time to the individual case of each child or family they are assigned. While DFCS had previously reduced caseloads, Friday’s report shows that caseloads for some workers grew again in this monitoring period. Overall, 28 percent of the foster care caseworkers in this monitoring period and 40 percent of the child protective services workers carried caseloads that exceeded the court-ordered limits.
• DFCS must improve initial assessments and planning for the needs of children entering foster care. The agency is required under the court order to undertake a series of measures during the critical first month after children enter foster care to improve their treatment and ensure the timeliness of their return home or to other living arrangements. But today’s report shows that 20 percent of the children whose cases were reviewed by the monitors did not receive required initial health screenings; 33 percent did not receive initial mental health assessments; half did not receive initial dental check-ups; and nearly 40 percent did not meet as required with teams of social workers and others to plan for their treatment in foster care.
• DFCS must work harder to maintain connections between brothers and sisters in foster care. Although the agency is placing more siblings who enter foster care together in homes with one another, it is not keeping up with the monthly visits required between siblings who are placed separately. Of the children whose cases were reviewed by the monitors, only 34 percent were allowed to visit with their brothers and sisters every month of the prior year.

Among the highlights of the report illustrating the important progress DFCS has made:

• Fewer children are suffering further abuse or neglect in Atlanta foster homes. For the first time since early 2007, the percentage of children maltreated in DFCS custody has dropped below the benchmark of 0.57 required by the court order. At 0.51 percent, DFCS’s rate of maltreatment of kids in foster care at the end of 2008 was half of what it was just one year prior.
• DFCS is placing children in foster care close to their home communities. The agency placed 97 percent of the children whose cases were reviewed by the monitor in close proximity to the locations from which they were removed.
• DFCS is placing children in approved foster homes, and foster homes are not overcrowded. Ninety-seven percent of children in out-of-home care in the second half of 2008 were placed in fully licensed foster homes — more than ever previously documented. Only eight percent were placed in homes with more than three children, and none were placed in homes with more than six children.

The reform of the Atlanta child welfare system is required by the court-enforceable 2005 settlement of the federal class action known as Kenny A. v. Perdue, filed against the state of Georgia in 2002 by Children’s Rights and the Atlanta law firm Bondurant, Mixson, and Elmore LLP, on behalf of all children in foster care in Atlanta (approximately 1,900 at present).

Children’s Rights took further legal action in August 2008, asking the court to hold the state in contempt for its ongoing failure to find permanent homes for hundreds of children who had been languishing in foster care for years. Subsequent negotiations between state officials and Children’s Rights averted a contempt trial and produced an aggressive new plan in December 2008 to reduce the backlog of Atlanta foster children awaiting permanent homes. Although DFCS’s efforts on this measure are ongoing, the agency has yet to produce significant results.

Today’s report is the sixth since the settlement of the class action. To read the full text and learn more about Children’s Rights’ efforts to reform the Atlanta child welfare system, please visit www.childrensrights.org/georgia.

Related Press Coverage

Report: Georgia Agencies Improving Child Welfare (AP, June 19, 2009)

The report (PDF), authored by the independent child welfare expert appointed by the court to evaluate the reform effort, says DFCS will need to accelerate and intensify its efforts to implement the required reforms under the five-year timetable established by the 2007 settlement of the class action known as Olivia Y. v. Barbour, brought by Children’s Rights and co-counsel in 2004 on behalf of the approximately 3,500 abused and neglected children who depend on the agency for protection and care.

According the monitor, “the efforts and motivation of [DFCS's] promising leadership team, coupled with the strengths and talents of their staff, should result in substantial progress during Period 2 if this reform effort is adequately resourced and appropriately managed.”

Under the settlement, negotiated in November 2007 by Children’s Rights and state officials and approved in January 2008 by the federal judge presiding over the class action, each year of the reform effort has its own implementation plan. Most of the requirements of the first-year implementation plan were aimed at reorganizing and strengthening the structure and workforce of DFCS – including its senior management team — to enable the agency to effectively implement the reforms and provide better protection, care, and services to the children and families dependent upon it.

Delays in fulfilling the requirement to appoint a qualified new leadership team — a prerequisite for implementing all of the other reforms — prevented DFCS from completing most of the other first-year requirements, including assessments of its internal processes, external service providers, and delivery of vital child welfare services to identify problems that will need to be addressed as the reform effort continues.

Despite those delays, however, the agency has begun making significant progress following the July 2008 appointment of Lori Woodruff as deputy director of family and children’s services — and a significant budget increase that enabled DFCS to expand its staff with a net increase of 115 child welfare workers and 12 supervisors. The monitor and Children’s Rights officials say they are optimistic that the new leadership team will be able to pick up the pace of reform and produce steadily better results.

“It took much longer than we would have liked to hire the new management team, but bringing in good people was absolutely necessary to establish a strong foundation for the entire reform effort,” said Shirim Nothenberg, staff attorney for Children’s Rights.

In addition to hiring new leadership and expanding its child welfare workforce, DFCS underwent major changes in its organizational structure to streamline its operations, eliminate barriers to reform, and increase accountability. The monitor also credits DFCS with hiring a national expert to develop a new model of child welfare practice and establishing new training and quality assurance units necessary to prepare its staff for the challenges they will face in the field and continuously evaluate and improve the results of the agency’s work for vulnerable children and families.

But all of these projects — and the required assessments of DFCS’s processes, practices, and services — remain uncompleted and will now be built into the implementation plan for the second period of the reform effort.

“The next period of the reform effort is critical,” Nothenberg said. “Having addressed its leadership issues, DFCS will have to work very hard to really get these reforms off the ground and start producing better results for Mississippi’s children and families, and they will need the full support of the state legislature to do so. Children’s Rights will continue to work with them — and to take whatever action is necessary to keep the reforms on track.”

As DFCS enters the second period of the reform effort, the monitor cites several “formidable challenges” that the agency must overcome:

• DFCS must strengthen its administrative systems, including processes related to ensuring that the agency secures all of the federal funding for which it is eligible; tracking hiring and other personnel issues in real time; and contracting with other organizations and agencies.
• Mississippi must invest in the DFCS workforce by funding and hiring a sufficient number of qualified employees and providing them with both required training and the equipment they need to serve the state’s abused and neglected children and vulnerable families.
• DFCS must implement quality assurance and performance management systems and significantly improve the quality and accuracy of the data available to guide decisions related to both the child welfare system as a whole and the cases of the individual children and families it serves.

The Olivia Y. class action charged Mississippi with failing to provide legally required care and protection to thousands of abused and neglected children in state custody, and denying them opportunities to be placed in safe, stable, permanent homes through either reunification with their parents or adoption. Longstanding problems cited in the lawsuit included dangerously overburdened and untrained caseworkers, a shortage of safe foster homes, and widespread failure to provide basic health care services.

Counsel for the class of child plaintiffs includes Children’s Rights; Wayne Drinkwater and Melody McAnally of Bradley Rose Arant & White of Jackson, MS; Stephen Leech, attorney at law of Jackson, MS; and John Lang, John Piskora, and Christian D. Carbone of Loeb & Loeb LLP of New York, NY.

More information about Children’s Rights’ campaign to reform the child welfare system of Mississippi, including the full text of today’s report and an archive of documents related to the Olivia Y. class action, can be found at www.childrensrights.org/mississippi.

The BMCW should also limit the number of cases carried by its staff to 15 children per worker, the study says, to enable workers to better ensure children’s safety in their foster homes and plan for moving children out of foster care and into permanent homes as quickly as possible, through either safe reunification with their families or adoption.

The independent study (PDF), required under a Corrective Action Plan negotiated by Children’s Rights and state officials in December 2008, also finds that the BMCW must increase and streamline access to supports and services needed to ensure the stability of children’s foster care placements, develop a system for tracking foster placements and available foster homes, and change its institutional culture to emphasize the importance of preventing placement instability and its harmful effects on children.

The most recent report on the BCMW’s compliance with the court order mandating its reform, issued in March 2009, found that one in four children in BMCW custody continue to be bounced around to four or more different placements during their time in foster care — and that the agency still lags in implementing many court-ordered reforms critical to the well-being of the more than 2,500 children in its custody. Caseloads average 21 children per worker.

“Too many children in Milwaukee are having their lives uprooted repeatedly because of the lack of an adequate pool of foster homes, drastically reducing their chances of ever returning home to their biological families or getting adopted,” said Eric Thompson, senior litigation counsel for Children’s Rights. “This assessment provides a blueprint for reform, and Children’s Rights will ensure that the BMCW implements its recommendations.”

Today’s assessment, authored by the national child welfare expert Paul Vincent of the Child Welfare Policy and Practice Group, was based on a review conducted by a team of experts of BMCW data and the case records of a sample of children who were moved three or more times in the past twelve months, plus interviews with the children, their caseworkers and foster parents, the staff and leadership of BMCW and its main private service providers, groups of foster parents, family court judges, attorneys, and others with detailed knowledge of the Milwaukee child welfare system.

This assessment is the first of two studies required by the Corrective Action Plan secured by Children’s Rights; BMCW has also contracted an independent expert to assist in the development of a foster family recruitment and retention plan to be completed in July. The Corrective Action Plan requires BMCW to make diligent and good-faith efforts to implement both studies’ recommendations.

The court order under which the BMCW is operating is the result of the federal class action known as Jeanine B. v. Doyle, filed by Children’s Rights and co-counsel in 1993, which charged that the Milwaukee child welfare system was grossly mismanaged and failing to protect the safety and well-being of the children in its care. In 1998, the state took control of the previously county-run system with the creation of the BMCW. A court-enforceable settlement agreement mandating a complete overhaul of the child welfare system and better outcomes for children was reached in 2002.

The settlement produced significant results — notably a drastic reduction in caseloads for Milwaukee child welfare workers and an equally dramatic upswing in face-to-face visits between caseworkers and the children assigned to them. But serious problems remain, and in December 2008, Children’s Rights and state officials worked collaboratively to reach agreement on a court-enforceable Corrective Action Plan aimed at bringing BMCW into full compliance with the requirements of the settlement agreement, which remains in effect.

The full text of today’s assessment — and more information about Children’s Rights reform efforts in Milwaukee — can be found at www.childrensrights.org/milwaukee.

Joined in court by members of our distinguished co-counsel team, and before a courtroom whose benches were lined with child advocates, members of the press, parents, and at least one former foster care youth, Children’s Rights Executive Director Marcia Robinson Lowry presented the case for certifying all of the children involved in the state child welfare system as a class.

More than 10,000 children throughout the state, she said, are “dependent on a system that cannot provide what the Constitution requires” to keep them free from harm during their time in Oklahoma’s custody — and the only way to bring about the systemwide reform that they all need is to allow the case to move forward as a class action.

To illustrate the point, she presented the stories of the nine children named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. As she spoke, television screens around the courtroom lit up with slides listing the number of times the children were bounced from one unstable foster home to another — sometimes suffering severe abuse and neglect while supposedly under the state’s protection.

The figures were stark and startling. Eight of the nine plaintiffs had been abused or neglected in state foster care. Among the nine of them, they had been moved a total of 110 times — and assigned a total of 330 different primary and secondary caseworkers.

“What these children have in common is that they have had so many different workers, it’s as if they’ve had no one to care for them at all,” Lowry said. “These children are being harmed.”

Furthermore, she said, the state’s rate of abuse and neglect among children in state custody is nearly four times the federal standard. Between 2004 and 2006, there were more than 1,700 confirmed incidents of abuse or neglect in foster care. More than 6,000 children in Oklahoma have been bounced around to at least three different foster homes — and nearly 2,000 have been through six or more.

The judge’s questions — for both Children’s Rights and Oklahoma’s attorneys — were tough, and the hearing went on for about two and a half hours before the judge announced a recess and said he would rule from the bench later in the afternoon.

When the court reconvened, he read his lengthy decision aloud — concluding at last that the legal requirements for class certification had been satisfied, and the case could proceed on behalf of all children dependent on the Oklahoma child welfare system.

“It’s a tremendous victory for abused and neglected children across the state,” Lowry said. “Thousands of children continue to suffer daily in the custody of an agency that simply cannot provide the care and protection to which they are entitled under the law, and now the federal court has authorized us to fight for reform on behalf of every single one of them.”

Related Press

Tulsa Judge Designates Class-Action Status (KOTV-TV Tulsa News on 6, 04/05/2009)

Lawsuit Against DHS Will Go Forward As Class Action (KJRH-TV Tulsa, 04/05/2009)

Oklahoma DHS Plaintiffs Swell to 11,000 (The Oklahoman, 04/06/2009)

Oklahoma: Judge OKs Class Action for Child-Care Lawsuit (AP, 04/05/2009)

Learn More About Our Oklahoma Reform Campaign

www.childrensrights.org/oklahoma

The report (PDF) was issued by the independent monitor appointed by the federal court to track reforms required by the class action known as LaShawn A. v. Fenty, brought by Children’s Rights in 1989 on behalf of thousands of children dependent on the DC child welfare system.

According to the report, unacceptably large numbers of children in foster care in the District continue to be placed in shelters and other non-family homes, moved between too many different foster homes, and left to languish too long while awaiting adoption. The number of children adopted out of foster care has steadily declined for more than four years running. Services aimed at keeping families together and reunifying foster children with their biological families remain badly inadequate.

While the report credits the District with correcting some of the serious, ongoing problems that led Children’s Rights to file a motion for contempt of court in July 2008, it says the District has succeeded only in stabilizing its Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) after it had fallen into crisis, and it notes that CFSA’s current performance could be described in terms similar to those used in a progress report issued nearly two years ago, in June 2007, in which the monitor wrote: “Many children and families continue to receive less than optimal services and supports. High quality planning, decision making, and service delivery is not yet the norm.”

The report comes just two days before District officials and Children’s Rights are scheduled to appear in court for a hearing before United States District Court Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan to determine whether the District can put on witnesses at an upcoming hearing on the District’s motions to end court oversight of its child welfare system — and Children’s Rights’ motion for contempt. The report flatly states that, “as of January 31, 2009, the District has not met the expected performance set forth by the court.”

“The federal court has found time and again that DC’s abused and neglected children and vulnerable families are entitled to a level of care and service that the District is still simply failing to provide,” said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children’s Rights. “It is difficult to imagine what evidence the District could present that would offset the long list of crystal-clear statistics indicating that its child welfare system continues to fall far short of its obligations to both the court and the children and families who depend on it.”

Among the measures on which the report shows that CFSA’s performance remains inadequate:

• The number of children adopted out of DC foster care continues to plummet. Between 2005 and 2008, the number of adoptions finalized in DC annually fell from more than 250 to less than 100. CFSA continues to fall far short of court-ordered requirements for the timeliness of adoptions.
• Too many children are being placed in non-family homes, including shelters and overcrowded group homes. As of January 31, 2009, 30 percent of children in DC foster care were living in non-family foster homes — and the number of children placed with families has decreased steadily over the past four years. At the end of January 2009, 442 children were living in group homes or institutions, and 22 percent of the children in group homes were living in homes that exceeded their licensed capacity of eight children.
• DC children spend too much time in foster care. Of the 2,237 children in foster care in the District, 60 percent had been in custody for 24 months or more at the end of 2008, and nearly 600 children had been languishing in foster care for five years or more.
• Children in DC foster care get moved around to too many different foster homes. Of children who had been in foster care for 24 months or more as of January 31, 2009, 69 percent had been shuffled between three or more different homes. The LaShawn A. court order requires that no more than 50 percent of these children experience more than two different placements; the District has also failed to meet court-ordered requirements for placement stability among children in foster care for shorter periods of time — often leading, the report says, to disruptions in school attendance, developmental delays, and other poor outcomes.
• CFSA is not providing adequate support and services to vulnerable families. In January 2009, only 46 percent of children in out-of-home care received required weekly visits with their biological parents — which are critical in supporting the goal of reunification. The LaShawn A. court order requires these visits in at least 85 percent of cases. CFSA is also providing appropriate services to only 42 percent of children and families involved in the DC child welfare system, the report says, and is falling short of court-ordered requirements for caseworker visits to families receiving in-home services or slated for reunification.
• Children placed in shelters and group homes remain there too long. The LaShawn A. court order prohibits CFSA from keeping children under age 12 in group homes longer than 30 days, and children under six are not to be placed in group homes at all. As of January 31, 2009, however, 14 children under age 12 had been in group homes longer than 30 days and nine children under six had been placed in group homes. Eighteen children (nine of whom are under age six) had been left in emergency shelters longer than 30 days, and one child had been living in a shelter for more than three months.

Children’s Rights filed the class action known as LaShawn A. v. Fenty in 1989 on behalf of the more than 2,500 abused and neglected children then dependent on the District’s child welfare system. Following a 1991 trial on the merits and a finding by the court that the system violated applicable law, a court-enforceable reform plan was negotiated between Children’s Rights and defendants in 1993 and approved by the court. In the years that followed, the District made only minimal progress toward achieving the court-mandated reforms, prompting the court to impose the unprecedented remedy of a federal takeover of the system’s management in 1995.

The District regained control of the beleaguered agency in 2000, after establishing the cabinet-level Child and Family Services Agency. CFSA initially made improvements in its performance but still has not achieved compliance with the court-ordered reform plan. It remains under court oversight.

In recent years, CFSA’s overall performance has declined sharply, prompting Children’s Rights to file a motion for a finding of contempt against the District in July of 2008. Subsequent negotiations produced a new court order in October 2008 requiring the District to work with external consultants to stabilize the failing system and develop a plan for meeting the remaining requirements of the LaShawn A. court order.

After achieving most of the requirements of the October 2008 court order, District officials filed motions seeking the end of court oversight altogether, prompting Children’s Rights in January 2009 to renew its earlier motion for contempt.

The full text of today’s report — and a complete collection of documents related to LaShawn A. v. Fenty — are available at www.childrensrights.org/dc.

Operating under court order, the state has thoroughly reformed the structure, management, and workforce of its child welfare system, creating the cabinet-level Department of Children and Families (DCF), hiring hundreds of additional caseworkers, reducing caseloads for workers throughout the state, and implementing more comprehensive training for its staff. With the help of national and local child welfare experts, DCF has also developed and is implementing a new statewide model of child welfare practice that emphasizes keeping children with families, preferably their own, and engaging children and families in critical decision-making.

At the same time, the report (PDF) says, the state has substantially increased the number of children adopted out of foster care annually and expanded its pool of available foster families, reduced the number of children it places in foster homes out of state and in shelters rather than with foster families, and expanded health care, family preservation, and other services for children in need.

Although the report notes some areas of concern as the state moves into the second phase of the reform effort — during which the emphasis of the court-ordered benchmarks for improvement shifts even more heavily toward ensuring better outcomes for children and families — it commends Governor Jon S. Corzine and DCF’s leadership for their continued commitment to progress, and calls on state officials to remain focused as they confront the challenges ahead.

“New Jersey’s child welfare system is being transformed by this court-ordered reform effort in ways that are producing increasingly clear and significant improvements in the lives of the state’s abused and neglected children and their families,” said Susan Lambiase, associate director of Children’s Rights. “Now DCF must not only maintain the reforms it has made, but also translate them into still better results for the kids and families who depend on it, and Children’s Rights will continue to monitor its progress closely.”

Today’s report, the fifth issued by the independent monitor appointed by the court to track the reforms since the 2006 settlement agreement requiring their implementation, evaluates DCF’s performance from July 1 to December 31, 2008, and summarizes the agency’s overall performance over the past two and a half years. Among the measures of DCF’s progress:

• More children have been adopted into permanent families. After setting a new state record by finalizing 1,540 adoptions in 2007, DCF maintained a steady pace in 2008, finalizing 1,374 adoptions for the year.
• More foster and adoptive homes are available for children. DCF licensed 2,169 new foster and adoptive homes in 2008, including 903 new kinship-care licenses enabling children in foster care to live with relatives rather than in unfamiliar foster homes. For the second consecutive year, the state posted a net gain of more than 800 foster and adoptive homes — a vast improvement over the net losses it routinely posted in previous years.
• DCF has improved health care, family preservation, and other services for children in need. DCF has begun creating specialized units in each local field office to manage the health care needs of children in foster care, and has expanded the capacity of state-run substance abuse treatment centers for parents and children. DCF has also launched a new initiative to provide preventive services to pregnant women and young children deemed at risk of abuse or neglect, and created new centers to provide locally-based services aimed at keeping families together.
• DCF has increased financial support for foster families. As of January 2009, the state had met its court-ordered obligation to increase monthly support payments to foster parents — provided to help them cover cost of food, clothing, and other basic needs of children in foster care — to reflect the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s estimated child-care costs. In 2008, DCF increased these payments by an average of $168 per month.
• Child welfare workers are better trained and have more manageable caseloads. In 2008, DCF met or exceeded all court-ordered caseload targets and training requirements for DCF caseworkers and supervisors. Approximately 99 percent of DCF caseworkers now carry manageable caseloads in line with national standards. As recently as September 2006, workers in 39 percent of DCF local offices were overloaded with caseloads that were higher than national standards.

Amid the substantial progress, the report notes some challenges that remain as New Jersey enters the second phase of the reforms, which began in January 2009. DCF is still placing some children inappropriately in shelters rather than foster homes, including five children under the age of 13 for whom such placements are completely prohibited under the court order. Of the 421 children over 13 who were placed in shelters in the second half of 2008, 46 were placed there inappropriately, according to today’s report. Additionally, despite an increase in the total number of foster and adoptive homes licensed, the state fell short of the requirement to complete the licensing process within 150 days.

Children’s Rights filed the class action now known as Charlie and Nadine H. v. Corzine in 1999 on behalf of the more than 11,000 children dependent upon New Jersey’s child welfare system. In 2006, after a previous settlement agreement with the state failed to yield improvements, Children’s Rights and co-counsel Drinker Biddle & Reath reached a new agreement with the Corzine administration, mandating top-to-bottom reform of New Jersey’s long-failing child welfare system and resulting in the creation of a separate Department of Children and Families.

The complete monitoring report and more information on Children’s Rights’ campaign to reform New Jersey’s child welfare system can be found at www.childrensrights.org/newjersey.

Related Press

Higher Marks for Child Welfare System (The Star-Ledger, 04/28/2009)

Child Welfare Agency Progressing, Report Says (The Philadelphia Inquirer, 04/28/2009)

Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported anecdotal data suggesting that incidents of family violence may be on the rise. Yesterday Reuters wrote about drastic upswings in child abuse cases reported by hospitals in Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and elsewhere. In New Jersey, calls to the state child welfare hotline increased by more than 1,000 between February and March. Substantiated reports of child maltreatment have risen in Michigan. The list goes on.

And just as more and more fragile families appear to be cracking under the pressure of their mounting financial burdens, more and more states are responding to their own budget shortfalls by cutting back on critical services — including the child welfare programs responsible for protecting and caring for children when they suffer abuse and neglect.

An astonishing report by Erik Eckholm in last Sunday’s New York Times noted that in Ohio — where abuse and neglect reports have surged past 100,000 for the first time in the state’s history — some counties stand to lose as many as 75 percent of their child protective services investigators due to budget cuts. Arizona, which carries one of the nation’s highest budget deficits, has simply stopped investigating some reports of abuse and neglect — while simultaneously reducing counseling for families at risk of violence.

In an economic crisis as severe as the current one, some cutbacks are inevitable. But because children — especially those dependent on public child welfare systems — lack the political influence necessary to defend their interests as difficult fiscal decisions are debated, child welfare programs too often absorb more than their fair share of the impact.

There are, however, some places where Children’s Rights has succeeded at softening the blow. In Michigan and New Jersey — as well as Connecticut, Mississippi, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia — the federal court orders we have secured to mandate the reform of their dysfunctional child welfare systems have also ensured that children’s services remain a fiscal priority even in times of economic distress. In Wisconsin, where we recently negotiated a new, court-enforceable plan to revitalize ongoing reforms to the Milwaukee child welfare system, the governor actually proposed an increase in this year’s budget for key child welfare programs.

It seems clear that the recession is going to continue to deepen, and that the pressures on state budgets will only continue to grow. While no public programs can be expected to emerge from the current crisis completely unscathed, Children’s Rights remains committed to ensuring that the interests of the abused and neglected children we represent are not simply swept aside — and that the child welfare agencies responsible for their protection are not starved of the resources they need to provide it.

Yesterday, The New York Times turned its spotlight on former foster care youth facing similar challenges closer to Children’s Rights’ home in New York City, in an article noting the additional hardships of aging out in a city hit increasingly hard by the recession.

As we’ve noted previously, the risks for these teens are exceptionally high under the best of circumstances. Young people who age out of foster care are disproportionately likely to experience homelessness, health problems, unemployment, incarceration, and other poor outcomes.

But in a job market suddenly flooded with people out of work due to the economic crisis, former foster care youth have it particularly hard.

“I feel overlooked all the times I do go apply for these jobs,” says one young man quoted in the Times piece. “But I have to do this, or else I’ll be out on the street.”

Aging out is a key concern of Children’s Rights’ advocacy, here in New York and across the United States. Our policy research seeks to understand the reasons why kids linger for many years in foster care without returning home or getting adopted, and our policy and legal advocacy aims to fix the systemic problems that stand in the way of better outcomes for children and families.

Right now, in fact, we’re working on a major study of the barriers that keep children in New York City foster care from regaining the stability of permanent homes — individually reviewing the cases of 150 children who have languished in foster care for two years or more while being slated for reunification or adoption, and meeting with child welfare workers, parents, foster parents, and others working in the child welfare system who have firsthand insight into why the system fails to move quickly enough in getting these kids out of foster care.

We’ll release a report of our findings and recommendations this summer, which can serve as an important resource for the many child welfare systems across the country that struggle with this issue.

More immediately, we will advocate strongly in partnership with others for the implementation of key recommendations here in New York City — so that, in the future, fewer teens will have to confront the difficult realities of adult life without the support of the families they deserve and desperately need.