As of June of this year, 99 percent of case managers had appropriate caseloads; some had even fewer cases than required, making it the state’s best performance on caseloads to date. The state also turned in its best-ever performances with reducing maltreatment in foster care and the rate of “re-entry” — children who leave the foster care system, usually through reunification with their parents or adoption, and then suffer further abuse or neglect and re-enter foster care.

“We’ve found DHS Commissioner Reese very willing to discuss the agency’s progress and its remaining problems, and to be accountable for meeting all of the court-ordered reforms to improve the lives of foster children,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights, the national advocacy organization that filed the suit. “While the state has improved in a number of key areas, it’s falling far short on others. We will remain vigilant to ensure that all of the required improvements for children are realized.”

One problem is that despite an agency policy that requires every report of abuse or neglect of a foster child to be fully investigated, the independent monitors found multiple cases of reports of abuse or neglect of foster children were “screened out” without the required investigation. Another issue is that foster kids are not getting their required health checks ups — 52 percent of kids did not receive timely initial dental exams, 42 percent of kids did not receive timely initial mental health or developmental exams and 30 percent of kids did not receive a required medical exam before leaving state custody.

There is also a failure to provide timely permanent homes for foster children. The report found that only 67 percent of children who had been freed for adoption were adopted within one year, despite a requirement that at least 80 percent of children get adopted within that timeframe. While the agency has been doing better on this measure, significant improvements are still needed to ensure that foster children do not languish in state custody.

Children’s Rights, along with the Atlanta law firm Bondurant, Mixson, and Elmore LLP, filed the reform class action known as Kenny A. v. Perdue against the state of Georgia in 2002, on behalf of all children in foster care in Atlanta. In 2005, Children’s Rights and its Atlanta co-counsel reached a court-enforceable settlement agreement with state officials requiring Georgia to make sweeping reforms to the Atlanta-area foster care systems and to achieve specific benchmarks for progress. Today’s six-month progress report is the eleventh issued since the Kenny A. case was settled.

The full text of today’s report and all previous monitoring reports, as well as the initial complaint and recent contempt motion that Children’s Rights filed against the state of Georgia, can be found at www.childrensrights.org/georgia.

The rate of maltreatment of children in Atlanta foster care from July through December 2010 was the lowest since the monitors began tracking DFCS’s progress — a steady decline from the end of 2009, when the rate was nearly three times higher.

The report (PDF), issued today by the independent monitors appointed by the court to track reforms required under the 2005 federal court order, also credits the state’s Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) in Fulton and DeKalb Counties with ensuring children in foster care are placed closer to their home communities and have more opportunities to visit with their birth parents.

“Atlanta has made impressive progress in its treatment of abused and neglected children during 2010, and we are encouraged with the direction that DFCS has taken this reform campaign,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights. “The state has reached a critical point in this ongoing effort, and it must now work hard to not only sustain these critical improvements, but continue to address the areas still lacking.”

According to Lustbader, DFCS must work harder to improve its ability to complete child abuse investigations in a timely manner and ensure children’s service needs are appropriately addressed before they leave foster care. Additionally, the state needs to do a better job ensuring that children move quickly to permanency once they enter foster care — especially when the goal for the child is adoption or a permanent guardianship.

The report notes several highlights illustrating the important progress DFCS has made:

• Fewer children are suffering abuse or neglect in Atlanta foster homes. For the first time since 2008, the percentage of children maltreated in DFCS custody has dropped below the benchmark of 0.57 required by the court order. At 0.42 percent, DFCS’s rate of maltreatment of kids in foster care at the end of 2010 is nearly three times lower than it was one year ago.

• DFCS is placing children in foster care close to their home communities. Placing children close to their families and schools is incredibly important to creating a stable environment for children who have already experienced trauma. Atlanta is now placing 99 percent of the children in foster care within their home county or within 50 miles of the homes from which they were removed.

• More children are being placed with their brothers and sisters and are regularly visiting with their parents. Instead of being ripped apart from each other, brothers and sisters are now placed together 94 percent of the time, according to today’s report. Additionally, the more often children have an opportunity to visit with their parents, the more successful reunification efforts will be. According to the report, DFCS ensured 88 percent of children with a goal of reunification received appropriate visits with their parents while in foster care.

• DFCS workforce has more manageable caseloads. During the second half of 2010, approximately 98 percent of DFCS caseworkers carried caseloads at or below the maximum required by the settlement agreement.

Despite the many improvements noted in today’s report, the monitors also cited several critical areas DFCS must work harder to improve:

• DFCS must move children more quickly to permanency. Only 62 percent of children entering care since 2005 have been reunified with their parents or placed permanently with relatives within 12 months of entering foster care; or have been adopted within 24 months. Additionally, when children are legally freed for adoption, adoptions are finalized within a year only 59 percent of the time.

• DFCS must continue to improve its ability to complete child abuse investigations in a timely manner. The state should be completing 95 percent of child abuse and neglect investigations within 30 days. However, while the state has made notable improvement since the last reporting period, DFCS is only completing 77 percent of child abuse and neglect investigations within that timeframe.

• DFCS needs to improve planning for the needs of children leaving foster care. While all children in foster care are required to receive a full medical exam prior to exiting the state’s custody, the monitor found that between 25 and 36 percent of children received their required medical exams.

Children’s Rights, along with the Atlanta law firm Bondurant, Mixson, and Elmore LLP, filed the reform class action known as Kenny A. v. Perdue against the state of Georgia in 2002, on behalf of all children in foster care in Atlanta. In 2005, Children’s Rights and its Atlanta co-counsel reached a court-enforceable settlement agreement with state officials requiring Georgia to make sweeping reforms to the Atlanta foster care system and to achieve specific benchmarks for progress. Today’s six-month progress report is the tenth issued since the Kenny A. case was settled.

The full text of today’s report and all previous monitoring reports, as well as the initial complaint and recent contempt motion that Children’s Rights filed against the state of Georgia, can be found at www.childrensrights.org/georgia.

ATLANTA – Georgia’s Fulton County (metro Atlanta) has made enormous strides in providing the county’s nearly 900 children in foster care with quality legal representation in their juvenile court proceedings, and now Children’s Rights, the national advocacy group that secured this court-ordered reform, is joining Fulton County officials to jointly request an end to federal court oversight.

According to a motion (PDF) filed today by the parties with Marvin H. Shoob, Senior U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Georgia, the Fulton County Office of the Child Attorney, which is responsible for providing legal representation to children in state custody, has reduced Child Attorney caseloads by expanding the office’s staff from just four attorneys to 16, supervised by a full-time director. As a result, caseloads have plummeted from an average of over 400 children per attorney to 63. The legal staff is now also getting support from additional full-time, trained investigators and social workers to address each child’s unique needs and help ensure that children in foster care are zealously represented in court proceedings where critical decisions about their lives are made.

“We are proud that our reform campaign, with the full cooperation of Fulton County, has spurred these improvements for kids, and we commend the Office of the Child Attorney for its commitment to providing quality legal services for kids in foster care,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights. “Together, we have ensured that children now get the individual and zealous legal advocacy they deserve from the attorneys charged with fighting for their interests.”

Legal action by Children’s Rights and co-counsel in 2005 resulted in a precedent-setting ruling by Judge Shoob that children have a constitutional right to zealous and effective legal representation throughout their time in foster care. In 2006, the lawsuit was settled when Fulton and DeKalb Counties agreed to respective court-ordered reforms of the legal representation that they provide foster children. (DeKalb County successfully exited from court oversight in 2008.) Another separate settlement resulted in a massive reform campaign to improve overall child welfare services in the Atlanta-metro area, which is ongoing.

Former Juvenile Court Judge William Jones of Charlotte, N.C., was jointly selected by Children’s Rights and Fulton County officials as the independent Accountability Agent in the reform effort and has been regularly assessing Fulton County’s progress in implementing the required reforms. Under the terms of the Kenny A. settlement, Fulton County has:

• Surpassed requirements for reducing attorney caseloads. The court-ordered reforms required that Fulton County Child Attorneys represent no more than 100 child clients per attorney. The most recent monitoring report shows attorneys carry even more manageable caseloads of approximately 60 children each.

• Improved attorney performance through better training and more contact with child clients. When the reform effort began, attorneys were so overburdened that they often were unable to even meet with the children assigned to them. Today, Fulton County Child Attorneys routinely meet with children they represent and are well prepared to protect their rights at court appearances. Additionally, all Child Attorneys attend specialized trainings geared toward improving their capacity to represent children.

• Enriched services for children by hiring additional specialized staff. As part of the reform effort, the Fulton County Office of the Child Attorney has also hired an educational advocate and a social worker, both with Master’s-level educations, as well as legal, investigative, and social work interns, all of whom work together to assess and meet the complex needs of the county’s foster children.

The settlement in Fulton County is part of the federal class action known as Kenny A. v. Perdue, brought by Children’s Rights and the Atlanta-based law firm Bondurant, Mixson and Elmore LLP in 2002 on behalf of all approximately 3,000 children in the custody of the state-run Atlanta child welfare system. Attorney Erik S. Pitchal, assistant clinical professor of law at Suffolk University Law School, also serves on the plaintiffs’ counsel team.

“As Atlanta lawyers, we took on this fight to better protect the vulnerable kids of our city, and it is inspiring to see Fulton County make such extraordinary progress for children in our juvenile court system,” said Jeffrey O. Bramlett, a partner at Bondurant, Mixon and Elmore and co-lead counsel for the children in the lawsuit.

Said Pitchal: “Atlanta’s legal advocacy program for foster children now serves as a national model. The city’s efforts will be shining examples for prospective lawyers pursuing careers in child welfare.”

A similar settlement was reached with DeKalb County, which successfully implemented the reforms and was released from court oversight in October 2008.

Today’s motion and a complete archive of documents related to the Kenny A. reform class action can be found at www.childrensrights.org/georgia.

Before Children’s Rights brought the class action known as Kenny A. v. Perdue seeking widespread child welfare reforms on behalf of thousands of abused and neglected children in Atlanta, Fulton County had just four attorneys available to represent children in foster care, each carrying a caseload averaging well over 400 children. These overwhelming caseloads routinely prevented the attorneys from even meeting with the children whose interests they were appointed to protect.

Today, according to the report (PDF) issued by the independent, court-appointed Accountability Agent, the Child Attorney Office now employs a full-time director and 16 full-time attorneys with caseloads that average 63 children each. The legal staff is now supplemented by additional full-time, trained investigators and social workers tasked specifically with addressing the unique needs of each vulnerable child whose case comes through the office.

“There was a time just a few years ago when abused and neglected kids were considered lucky if they even met the attorneys assigned to them before court appearances at which life-changing decisions were being made,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights. “These reforms have guaranteed that foster kids now have dedicated and knowledgeable attorneys representing their wishes in major court proceedings about such issues as whether they can return home to their parents or, if they cannot, if they should be adopted or live with relatives.”

The reforms were mandated in a 2006 settlement that followed an unprecedented federal court order secured by Children’s Rights and co-counsel ruling that all children in foster care have a right to zealous and effective legal counsel at every major stage of their involvement in state custody. Neighboring DeKalb County successfully completed similar reforms and exited court oversight in 2008.

In addition to skilled attorneys with manageable caseloads, children in foster care need advocates who can consider their unique health and educational needs and track their progress as they move through the system. As part of these reforms, Fulton County has hired an educational advocate and a social worker, both with Masterâ��s-level educations, along with legal, investigative, and social work interns, which have greatly supported the work of the children’s attorneys. For example, these new staff members are:

• Facilitating regular trainings for attorneys on topics such as educational topics and federal requirements.
• Ensuring children are enrolled in school.
• Attending important school meetings on special education needs.
• Linking children and their families to necessary mental health services.
• Testifying in court on the child’s behalf.
• Performing home assessments for visitations or potential placements for children.

Having made great progress toward implementing the improvements outlined in today’s report, which covers the period from July 30, 2009, through June 30, 2010, Fulton County is now poised to exit federal court oversight once the independent monitor assesses the quality of legal representation for children whose cases are handled in a specialized drug court.

The children in the Fulton County right-to-counsel case are represented by attorneys at Children’s Rights, the Atlanta law firm of Bondurant Mixson & Elmore LLC, and Erik S. Pitchal of the Suffolk University Law School in Boston, MA.

Today’s report and a complete archive of documents related to the Kenny A. reform class action can be found at www.childrensrights.org/georgia.

The Georgia Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) has been under federal court order to reform the Atlanta child welfare system since the 2005 settlement of a class action brought by the national advocacy organization Children’s Rights and the Atlanta law firm Bondurant, Mixson, and Elmore on behalf of several thousand children in the custody of the failing Atlanta child welfare system.

Although the state had previously made important progress in improving its care and treatment of abused and neglected children, today’s report (PDF) shows that DFCS’s performance in the second half of 2009 on several key measures was its worst to date.

The rate of maltreatment of children in Atlanta foster care from July through December 2009 was the highest since the monitors began tracking DFCS’s progress, with the majority of increased maltreatment happening in group homes and institutions — settings where the monitors previously raised serious concerns about DFCS’ ability to oversee children. Additionally, DFCS performed poorly in its delivery of health care services to children during the six-month monitoring period and child welfare workers’ caseloads are on the rise.

“Atlanta’s performance on measures critical to keeping children in foster care safe is inexcusable,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights. “If DFCS does not act swiftly to fix these problems, we will return to court to ensure that the state makes these required improvements in the state’s oversight and protection of these vulnerable kids.”

The report noted some areas in which DFCS had continued to make progress — including placing children in foster care closer to their homes, reducing overcrowding in foster homes, and ensuring that foster homes are appropriately licensed. But it also detailed several areas in which reforms deteriorated in the latter half of 2009:

• DFCS is failing to provide safe homes for children in foster care. The rate at which children suffer abuse and neglect in Atlanta foster care has continued to increase over the last six months and is now more than three and a half times the national standard. Additionally, the latest report found multiple incidents of child maltreatment and almost 100 children kept overnight — some for several days — in a Fulton County assessment center strictly limited by federal court order to 23-hour placements. The assessment center was created when the Children’s Rights lawsuit forced the closure of DFCS’s dangerous, overcrowded emergency shelters in 2006.

• DFCS is falling short in its efforts to provide health and dental care for kids. Recent data has indicated that as many as 28 percent of children in foster care needing follow-up medical or dental check-ups never received them.

• Child welfare workers’ caseloads have significantly increased. Caseload sizes for at least a third of DFCS’s workforce are above the standard of 12 to 17 cases per worker — sometimes as high as 30 to 40 cases per worker — during a time when the number of families and children in the system has stayed stable. According to the monitors, the spike in caseloads — the state’s poorest performance in this area since the 2005 settlement — may be due to high turnover rates and the state’s failure to replace workers due to budget constraints.

Children’s Rights and Bondurant, Mixson and Elmore filed the reform class action known as Kenny A. v. Perdue against the state of Georgia in 2002, on behalf of all children in foster care in Atlanta. In 2005, Children’s Rights and its Atlanta co-counsel reached a court-enforceable settlement agreement with state officials requiring Georgia to make sweeping reforms to the Atlanta foster care system and to achieve specific benchmarks for progress.

In 2008, Children’s Rights filed a motion requesting the state be held in contempt for failing to find permanent homes for hundreds of children who had languished in foster care for years. Four months later, Children’s Rights agreed to withdraw its contempt motion in exchange for DFCS’s court-enforceable commitment to take specific aggressive measures, including working with national experts to find permanent homes for all children who remained in state custody.

The full text of today’s report and all other legal documents pertaining to Children’s Rights’ lawsuit in the state of Georgia can be found at www.childrensrights.org/georgia.

Related Press

Foster care abuse and neglect up in Fulton and DeKalb (Atlanta Journal Constitution, 07/23/2010)

We filed papers in federal court two months ago seeking documents related to the state child welfare agency’s use of strategies aimed at avoiding child abuse and neglect investigations in certain cases and allowing parents to voluntarily place children with relatives or family friends while accessing community services or being investigated for abuse or neglect.

Citing multiple investigations conducted by the Georgia Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) over the last three years, we presented evidence that the state has been using these strategies inappropriately — and argued that if these allegations are true, DFCS’s actions are not only violating children’s constitutional rights and a longstanding federal court order secured by Children’s Rights to reform the Atlanta child welfare system, but also putting a great many kids at risk of serious harm.

Last Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Marvin H. Shoob agreed that “the OCA reports raise at least the possibility that diversion, safety resources, and temporary guardianships are being used in Fulton and DeKalb Counties to keep children out of foster care inappropriately.”

His decision (PDF) requires state officials to provide Children’s Rights with all policies, practices, and procedures related to diversion, safety plans, and temporary guardianships in Fulton and DeKalb counties — along with a list of all children who accessed these services in 2009 — within 10 days. Once the documents have been turned over, Children’s Rights can then select cases to be reviewed in depth to determine whether the child welfare agency is, in fact, putting children in danger.

Children’s Rights believes strongly that children should be able to remain with their families whenever it is safe and possible to do so. However, programs that “divert” child abuse reports must include the intensive services and oversight needed to help these families stay together and ensure that children are safe. Otherwise, these programs can be misused as a means to save state funds, deny families vital services and supports, and potentially keep vulnerable children in unsafe homes and at risk of being harmed again.

We remain committed to ensuring that children and families in Atlanta — and across the United States — are not being inappropriately shuffled away from the supports and services they need.

Children’s Rights is asking the federal court to allow the organization access to DFCS records that advocates believe will demonstrate the state agency is attempting to artificially suppress child abuse and neglect investigations and lower the number of children in foster care by misusing alternatives to foster care. The result of such actions would be denying abused and neglected children vital legal protections offered to kids who are brought to the attention of the Juvenile Court.

If the evidence sought by Children’s Rights bears out these charges, DFCS’s actions would constitute a violation of a longstanding federal court order to reform the Atlanta child welfare system — itself the result of a class action brought by Children’s Rights and the Atlanta law firm Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore LLP on behalf of thousands of abused and neglected children in Fulton and DeKalb Counties. Today’s motion comes on the heels of a recent report showing DFCS is backsliding in its implementation of the reforms mandated by the federal court.

“Intensive family preservation services are important and can be very effective tools to reduce the need for foster care and avoid the unnecessary trauma of separating families, but only if they are used appropriately and safely,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights. “The misuse of these programs to suppress the number of investigations and the number of kids in foster care can be extremely dangerous for both the child and family, and we must immediately determine if that is the case in Atlanta.”

Today’s motion (PDF) draws heavily on multiple investigations conducted by the Georgia Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) over the last three years, which showed that dramatic reductions in the number of children in foster care and the number of reports of abuse that even get investigated have been accomplished in part by the state agency’s misuse of two strategies — diversion and safety resources — designed to support families and prevent children from being placed into foster care unnecessarily.

Diversion, also referred to as family support, aims to avoid conducting a formal child abuse investigation by helping families who struggle with problems that may primarily stem from poverty issues and do not present an immediate threat to the child’s safety. According to the OCA investigations, there is evidence that DFCS is too quick to shift families to family support programs, even in cases of actual child maltreatment, and in that process is failing to investigate serious allegations of abuse and neglect.

The other strategy employed by DFCS is the use of homes called safety resources, where parents can voluntarily place their child with a relative or family friend while accessing community services or being investigated for abuse or neglect. Though the state’s policies clearly state that safety resources must pass basic safety screens and should only be used as a short-term solution, OCA reported that many children have been found left in unscreened and unmonitored homes for extremely long periods of time without any support from the agency.

OCA’s most recent report from July 2009 (PDF) concluded that DFCS appears to use these tactics to “avoid the involvement of the juvenile court in the child protection process, thereby depriving the child and family of the many legal and practical benefits the court offers and circumventing purposeful federal and state child protection schemes.”

Children’s Rights has exhausted several good-faith efforts over the last several months to obtain necessary documents both through DFCS and the independent monitors appointed by the federal court. Both the agency and the monitors claimed the requests were outside the scope of the 2005 federal court order secured by Children’s Rights.

Today’s filing argues that if the state is in fact misusing diversion and safety resources, as evidenced by OCA’s research, the agency is not only cheating these families and their children of the due process benefits of court involvement, but is also denying them the protections of the federal class action. Therefore Children’s Rights is requesting federal court intervention for access to the state’s policy and procedures related to diversion and the use of safety resources, as well as information on all children and families involved in either program in calendar year 2009.

Children’s Rights, along with the Atlanta law firm Bondurant, Mixson and Elmore LLP, filed the reform class action known as Kenny A. v. Perdue against the state of Georgia in 2002, on behalf of all children in foster care in Atlanta. In 2005, Children’s Rights and its Atlanta co-counsel reached a court-enforceable settlement agreement with state officials requiring Georgia to make sweeping reforms to the Atlanta foster care system and to achieve specific benchmarks for progress.

All related information on Children’s Rights’ campaign to reform Atlanta’s child welfare system can be found at www.childrensrights.org/georgia.

The report (PDF), covering the first six months of 2009, was issued by the independent monitors appointed by the court to track reforms required under the settlement of a class action brought by Children’s Rights and Atlanta co-counsel on behalf of several thousand abused and neglected kids who depend on the state-run Atlanta child welfare system for protection and care.

Six months after the monitors lauded the lowest rate of abuse of foster children while in state custody since the court-ordered reforms began in 2005, that statistic has skyrocketed to 1.06 percent — three times the national standard of 0.32 percent — and “represents the highest . . . rate measured thus far,” according to the report.

The report notes serious systemic deficiencies that may be contributing to the spike, including relaxed monitoring and enforcement of private agencies contracted by the state to provide foster homes and other living arrangements for children in foster care. The state’s Division of Family and Children’s Services (DFCS) consistently fails to make unannounced visits to foster homes managed by private agencies, the report says, and only does so when an agency’s contract has been suspended or is under corrective action plan.

“We are extremely concerned that children in the Atlanta foster care system are simply not safe, and that DFCS is not doing enough to provide the necessary safety net for the vulnerable youth whose lives and well-being depend on it,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights. “If DFCS fails to address this problem quickly, we are prepared to take whatever action is necessary to protect these kids from further harm.”

Due to the lack of progress in these critical areas, Children’s Rights formally asserted in a letter delivered last week that state officials responsible for DFCS are violating the 2005 court order. Children’s Rights, state DFCS officials, and the independent monitors are scheduled to discuss the state’s violation of the court order on Monday to attempt to resolve these issues without the need for additional court action.

In addition to the slippage noted in today’s report, Children’s Rights has separately received recent evidence showing that child protective services workers — who perform the critical job of investigating reports of child abuse or neglect — may be carrying caseloads as high as 33 cases per worker, far in excess of the limit of 12 cases mandated by the settlement agreement.

“Maintaining manageable caseloads is a prerequisite for keeping kids safe,” Lustbader said. “If caseloads are too large, workers investigating child abuse simply cannot do their jobs and devote enough time to each case.”

While the report shows DFCS has made or sustained progress in some areas, which include placing children in foster homes closer to their own communities, ensuring that foster homes are not overcrowded, and ensuring that children are placed in licensed foster homes, today’s report cited several additional areas requiring improvement:

• DFCS is still failing to ensure that foster children are regularly visiting with siblings placed in different foster homes. According to today’s report, only 50 percent of children in custody who have siblings placed in different homes are having at least one monthly visit, far short of the 95 percent required by the court-order.

• DFCS is still failing to ensure that foster children receive required health check-ups. Under the court order, foster children must receive health check-ups at required intervals. But today’s report notes that the state’s progress has remained static — showing approximately 19 percent of the children whose cases were reviewed by the monitors did not receive initial health screenings, 50 percent did not receive initial dental check-ups, and 40 percent did not receive a health screening before being discharged from foster care.

Children’s Rights, along with the Atlanta law firm Bondurant, Mixson and Elmore LLP, filed the reform class action known as Kenny A. v. Perdue against the state of Georgia in 2002, on behalf of all children in foster care in Atlanta. In 2005, Children’s Rights and its Atlanta co-counsel reached a court-enforceable settlement agreement with state officials requiring Georgia to make sweeping reforms to the Atlanta foster care system and to achieve specific benchmarks for progress. Today’s six-month progress report is the seventh issued since the Kenny A. case was settled.

The full text of today’s report and all previous monitoring reports, as well as the initial complaint and recent contempt motion that Children’s Rights filed against the state of Georgia, can be found at www.childrensrights.org/georgia.

Related Press

Foster Children Experiencing High Rate of Abuse and Neglect (Atlanta Journal Constitution, Jan. 24, 2010)

According to the report (PDF), the third issued by the independent monitor appointed by the U.S. District Court in Atlanta to track the county’s progress, dramatic improvements in the Fulton County Child Attorney Office between December 2008 and September 2009 have resulted in smaller and more manageable caseloads for child attorneys, increased contact between the attorneys and the children they are assigned to represent, and greatly enhanced representation for children in juvenile court.

When Children’s Rights launched a class action to reform the Atlanta child welfare system in 2002, Fulton County had only four child attorneys, each carrying caseloads of as many as 500 children. As a result, children facing life-altering juvenile court decisions — about where they would live and whether they could be returned home to their parents or freed for adoption — generally did not meet the attorneys assigned to represent them before their court dates, and the quality of representation was exceedingly poor.

As of September 30, 2009, the county had 16 attorneys — plus paralegals, investigators, social workers, and administrative staff. Caseloads are now consistently smaller than 100 children per attorney (and smaller than 80 for all but one lawyer), and the attorneys are receiving high marks from the court-appointed monitor for the effectiveness of the counsel they provide.

If Fulton County remains in compliance with the court order requiring these reforms for eighteen continuous months, it may petition to exit court oversight. (Neighboring DeKalb County, which was also the target of legal action by Children’s Rights on these issues, successfully completed a similar reform effort and exited court oversight in October 2008.)

“This reform effort is transforming the legal representation provided to Atlanta’s abused and neglected children, ensuring that their voices are heard loud and clear on decisions that will profoundly affect their lives,” said Ira Lustbader, associate director of Children’s Rights. “There is still more work to be done, and Children’s Rights will continue to ensure that Fulton County makes all the improvements required under the federal court order, but this is great progress that deserves to be commended.”

Children’s Rights and attorneys at the Atlanta law firm Bondurant, Mixson, and Elmore LLP filed the class action known as Kenny A. v. Perdue in 2002 on behalf of the approximately 3,000 children in the custody of the state-run Atlanta child welfare system, seeking widespread reforms. In an unprecedented 2005 decision, the federal judge in the case ruled that all children have a constitutional right to zealous and effective legal representation throughout their time in foster care.

Under a court-enforceable settlement negotiated by Children’s Rights and county officials, Fulton County has established a Child Attorney’s Office independent of the juvenile courts, expanded its staff, strengthened its resources and operations, and lowered caseloads significantly. A workload study required by the settlement and conducted in 2007 recommended caseloads no larger than 80 children per attorney — a target that Fulton County has met for all but one of its staff.

Today’s report cites a few areas in which further improvement is needed in the quality of the representation provided to children by their attorneys. The attorneys must advocate more strenuously, the report says, for reasonable efforts by the state Department of Family and Children Services to keep children safely at home with their parents rather than placing them in foster care. Once children are in foster care, the report says, the attorneys must strengthen their advocacy for regular visits between the children and their parents and siblings, stability in their foster care placements, and other actions critical to moving children as quickly as possible out of foster care and into permanent homes.

Additionally, the report notes several problems in DFCS’s practices with respect to juvenile court hearings that may hinder the child attorneys’ ability to carry out their responsibilities. The state agency has been inconsistent providing attorneys with important documents related to children’s cases, including the child attorneys in meetings about the children they represent, and bringing the children to juvenile court hearings.

The juvenile court itself contributes further to delays in children’s cases, the report says, by assigning individual cases to more than one judge, failing to consistently enforce children’s right to counsel and to participate in hearings, and employing a confusing system for scheduling hearings.

Nevertheless, says the report, “while the progress of the Fulton [child attorneys] was previously characterized as slow but steady, the advances made during the preceding 15 months have catapulted the Fulton CA Office within the parameters of Kenny A. compliance.”

Attorney Jeffrey O. Bramlett of the Atlanta law firm Bondurant, Mixson, and Elmore LLP and attorney Erik S. Pitchal, assistant clinical professor of law at Suffolk University Law School, serve as co-counsel on the case.

For the full text of today’s report and more information about Children’s Rights’ ongoing reform efforts in Georgia, please visit www.childrensrights.org/georgia.

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)