Litigation long overdue says head of foster parents group...

Litigation long overdue says head of foster parents group

http://www.projo.com/news/content/dc...M.2e7a494.html

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, July 1, 2007

By Edward Fitzpatrick

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — The state began to fail “David T.” as soon as he entered
foster care at age 2, according to a federal civil-rights lawsuit filed
by the state child advocate last week.

Despite “clear indications” that David had been sexually abused while in
his mother’s care, the state Department of Children, Youth and Families
failed to ensure he received a sexual-abuse evaluation or appropriate
treatment, the suit claims.

The state did find a foster mother for David, and he grew extremely
close to “Mommy Mary” over the next two years. But when she was unable
to continue caring for him, the state sent David to a shelter at age 4.

After three months in the shelter, David was sent to Michigan to live
with an aunt who expressed interest in adopting him. But the aunt ran
into “housing problems and other difficulties,” and the state ended up
bringing David back to the shelter.

“When he arrived there, he refused to get out of the car and pleaded
with the caseworker to bring him back to ‘Mommy Mary,’ ” the suit
states. “Shelter staff approached the car and told 4-year-old David,
‘The rules here have not changed.’ David silently got out of the care
and walked into the shelter.”

He would never live in a home again.

David is one of 10 young plaintiffs whose pseudonyms are on the U.S.
District Court lawsuit that State Child Advocate Jametta O. Alston filed
against Governor Carcieri and other state officials Thursday. Alston is
pursing class-action status on behalf of the 3,000 children now in state
custody, and the litigation is backed by a national watchdog group
called Children’s Rights.

Carcieri issued a news release Friday, saying he was “extremely
concerned” about the allegations but that some of the information in the
lawsuit “may be outdated and fails to take into account the reforms that
have been made under Department of Children, Youth and Families Director
Patricia Martinez.” Carcieri said the state has given DCYF caseworkers
greater flexibility in work schedules and is in the process of hiring 10
new caseworkers.

Martinez, who is named as a defendant, said Friday that the state may
pursue criminal charges and other disciplinary action against any state
workers, foster parents and foster homes that failed to protect children
from the abuse alleged in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit says another aunt expressed interest in caring for David,
but DCYF failed to pursue that option, and his “emotional state” kept
declining. When he was 6, the state put David in a psychiatric hospital
for five months and then sent him to a residential treatment facility,
where he was sexually abused by a roommate and began to wet his bed
almost every night, the suit states.

In 2003, David was moved to another institution, where he was restrained
by staff members 105 times over a three-month period. He stayed there
three years, and, at age 10, the state declared David “too damaged for
placement.”

The state did allow adoption recruitment staff to meet David in 2004,
eight years after it registered him for adoption, but officials decided
adoption would be inappropriate for him. In 2006, David moved to an
out-of-state treatment facility where he “engaged in sexual
self-mutilation” and gained more than 50 pounds.

Today, at age 13, David lives in an institution in Massachusetts, where
he has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, mild mental retardation and
“environmental influences, including his history of neglect and his
multiple placements,” the suit states.

“David entered care when he was only 2 years old, and finding him a
permanent, loving family was completely feasible,” the lawsuit says.
Instead, “As a direct result of defendants’ actions and inactions, David
has been and continues to be irreparably harmed.”

LISA GUILLETTE, executive director of the Rhode Island Foster Parents
Association, said she cried while reading about David and the other
foster children in the lawsuit.

“The summaries of the named plaintiffs and the types of failures they
document are, to me, indicative of a systemic breakdown,” she said.
“While we don’t usually see cases that horrible, we have seen a
breakdown in staffing and oversight that could lead to those conditions.”

The lawsuit begins by recounting how a 3-year-old boy, Thomas “T.J.”
Wright, was beaten to death in a foster home in Woonsocket in 2004.
Guillette said, “I don’t want to see another T.J. Wright. I don’t want
to see another child die, and we are in danger of that.”

The litigation is “long overdue,” Guillette said, praising Alston for
being “courageous” enough to sue the governor who appointed her.

Guillette said the system’s problems have been developing over the
course of successive administrations, and the goal of the litigation is
to find solutions — not to point fingers. But, she said, the crisis has
been mounting for years and it seemed to grow worse during this year’s
budget crisis as the General Assembly cut funds and Carcieri talked
about laying off 1,000 state workers. “We are not moving in the
direction of solving problems,” she said.

“If people are outraged by this,” Guillette said, “they bear some
responsibility because these are all our kids. We need people who are
willing to serve as foster parents or as mentors or as CASA [Court
Appointed Special Advocate] volunteers.”

Guillette’s association has a state contract to support foster parents
and help them navigate the DCYF system. “We try to defend our work, but
at some point the breakdowns in our system are not defensible,” she said.

THE LAWSUIT CITES data collected from states by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, saying that in five of the six years between
2000 and 2005, Rhode Island had “the single highest rate of
substantiated child abuse or neglect occurring to children in foster
care among all states that reported data.” And those rates “far exceeded
benchmarks set by the federal government.”

In the 2004 federal fiscal year, 1.32 percent of foster children in
Rhode Island were maltreated, which was twice the federal benchmark of
0.57 percent. In federal fiscal year 2005, the rate of maltreatment in
Rhode Island rose to 1.59 percent, the suit says, and since then the
federal benchmark has fallen to 0.32 percent.

Those numbers had apparently never been widely reported before in Rhode
Island, but state officials certainly were aware of them because they
provided the data to the federal government, said Susan Lambiase,
associate director of Children’s Rights, a nonprofit legal organization
based in New York City.

Lambiase noted Rhode Island’s abuse and neglect rates were so high that
children in state foster care were more likely to be maltreated than
children in the general population. “It’s outrageous,” she said. “They
are getting removed from their parents because the state is saying their
parents are unable to care for them, and then the state is even less
able to care for them and is damaging them worse.”

The suit attributes that abuse and neglect to a variety of shortcomings
in the child-welfare system. For example, the suit says, “DCYF assigns
such large caseloads to its social workers that they are unable to make
the regular face-to-face visits to plaintiff children that are essential
to ensuring that these children are safe.”

Last year, Alston, the state child advocate, issued a report saying DCYF
had failed to make some of the most important changes that a review
panel called for after T.J. Wright’s death. Most significantly, she said
the state had failed to hold caseloads to the recommended average of 14
families per caseworker. At that time, caseloads stood as high as 20.04
families per caseworker in the region of the state where T.J. died.

On Friday, Alston said the most recent figures from a couple of weeks
ago show caseloads are still averaging 18 to 25 families, and she
emphasized that families often have more than one child.

The lawsuit cited other problems, saying, “DCYF has so few foster homes
that it places children in homes without licenses, depriving them of
basic protections of foster parent background checks and training.” And,
the suit says, “Instead of appropriately investigating and addressing
abuse or neglect in foster placements, DCYF continues to rely on foster
care settings known to pose a risk of harm to children.”

Guillette said the state could help retain and recruit foster parents by
increasing payments for the room and board of foster children. She said
Rhode Island’s “foster care board rates” are $14.39 per day for children
from birth through age 3; $13.64 per day for age 4 to 11; and $15.79 per
day for age 12 and above. By comparison, the rates in Massachusetts are
$17.10, $17.96 and $18.59, and the rates in Connecticut are $24.85,
$25.22 and $27.42, she said.

Each year, a bill is introduced to raise the rates in Rhode Island, and
each year the bill dies in committee, Guillette said.

Guillette said those payments cover just a portion of child-care
expenses, so people don’t get into foster care to “make a quick dime.”
But increasing the rates would be especially helpful in retaining foster
parents related to the children they care for, she said, citing the
example of “a grandmother who’s retired, on fixed income, and her
daughter develops a drug problem and she needs to step up to the plate
to care for her grandchild.”

Lambiase, of Children’s Rights, said, “The bottom line is these are the
most vulnerable, underprivileged children in your state. They don’t
vote. They don’t have a strong, powerful lobby to protect their
interests. They don’t even have their parents. The state is their
parents, and the state is failing them.”






CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A
DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NATIONAL
SECURITY AGENCY/CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY WIRETAPPING PROGRAM....

CPS Does not protect children...
It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even
killed at the hands of Child Protective Services.

every parent should read this .pdf from
connecticut dcf watch...

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com/8x11.pdf

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com

Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the US
These numbers come from The National Center on
Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington. (NCCAN)
Recent numbers have increased significantly for CPS

*Perpetrators of Maltreatment*

Physical Abuse CPS 160, Parents 59
Sexual Abuse CPS 112, Parents 13
Neglect CPS 410, Parents 241
Medical Neglect CPS 14 Parents 12
Fatalities CPS 6.4, Parents 1.5

Imagine that, 6.4 children die at the hands of the very agencies that
are supposed to protect them and only 1.5 at the hands of parents per
100,000 children. CPS perpetrates more abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse
and kills more children then parents in the United States. If the
citizens of this country hold CPS to the same standards that they hold
parents too. No judge should ever put another child in the hands of ANY
government agency because CPS nationwide is guilty of more harm and
death than any human being combined. CPS nationwide is guilty of more
human rights violations and deaths of children then the homes from which
they were removed. When are the judges going to wake up and see that
they are sending children to their death and a life of abuse when
children are removed from safe homes based on the mere opinion of a
bunch of social workers.

BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...

Rhode Island's "foster care board rates" are $14.39 per day for children
from birth through age 3

431.70 per month for one child

; $13.64 per day for age 4 to 11;

409.20 per month for one child

and $15.79 per day for age 12 and above.

473.20 per month for one child

By comparison, the rates in Massachusetts are
$17.10, $17.96 and $18.59, and the rates in Connecticut are $24.85,
$25.22 and $27.42, she said.

Wow 822.60 per month for one teen in CT

This is before even considering the "special needs" categories
which pay much more. Wasn't this "damaged" kid SPECIAL NEEDS
before they gave up on Foster care?