A3
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 2019
Foster children sue state over ineffective care
Class-action suit
alleges inadequate
protection
By CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE
Oregon Capital Bureau
Foster children have fi led a class-action lawsuit against the
state alleging inadequate care.
‘THE SYSTEM IS SO OVER-
WHELMED, UNDER-RESOURCED,
AND INEFFECTIVE THAT OLDER
CHILDREN AND CHILDREN WITH
EVEN RELATIVELY MILD BE-
HAVIOR PROBLEMS ARE OFTEN
NOT PLACED BY DHS IN FAMILY
HOMES WITH NECESSARY SUP-
PORTS AND SERVICES.’
skills and resources nec-
essary to survive on their
own when they leave foster
care. ”
And the state , the law-
suit claims, doesn’t support
foster parents with enough
training or money.
The lawsuit points in par-
ticular to how frequently
Oregon foster children
are moved from home to
home, and sometimes to out
of-state facilities. Moving
frequently can compound
the trauma that foster chil-
dren already experience.
“The system is so over-
whelmed, under-resourced,
and ineffective that older
children and children with
even relatively mild behav-
ior problems are often not
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don’t go through what they
went through,” Shank said.
“They’re not getting any-
thing out of this, other than
change in the foster care
system. And they still want
to do it. I mean, that really
speaks to how resilient the
human spirit is — they still
care about other people
around them.”
In his statement, Pak-
seresht outlined steps being
taken by the state already,
including dealing with fos-
ter children placed out of
state. He said they are being
assessed to ensure they “are
getting the services and sup-
ports they are eligible for
and confi rm they are in the
appropriate level of care,
returning to Oregon those
who can be served safely
here.”
The Oregon Capital
Bureau is a collaboration
between EO Media Group,
Pamplin Media Group and
Salem Reporter.
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SALEM — A new
class-action lawsuit fi led
Tuesday accuses the state of
inadequately protecting fos-
ter children.
Ten foster children, rep-
resenting the roughly 8,000
children in the state’s care,
want a federal court to fi x
long-standing issues at the
state Department of Human
Services.
The children are repre-
sented by Disability Rights
Oregon, law fi rm Davis
Wright Tremaine and A Bet-
ter Childhood, a New York
organization that advocates
for kids in the child welfare
system.
They sued the state
agency and its director, Fari-
borz Pakseresht, the agen-
cy’s director of children
welfare, Marilyn Jones, and
Gov. Kate Brown.
“We take the care of our
foster children seriously and
work with urgency and dili-
gence to achieve this goal,”
Pakseresht said in a state-
ment issued soon after the
suit was fi led in U.S. Dis-
trict Court in Eugene. “Over
the past 18 months we’ve
been building the founda-
tion needed to balance staff
workload, so they can spend
more time with children
and families and add sup-
ports to serve children and
families holistically in their
communities.”
The lawsuit alleges the
state is violating foster kids’
civil rights, including fed-
eral laws that safeguard the
rights of children in state
custody.
The complaint chron-
icles in detail the experi-
ences of the foster children
— including a 9-year-old
girl who was sent to a res-
idential treatment facility in
Montana.
The suit contends she
was secluded, held and
injected with medications
to calm her down from tan-
trums. The suit also tells of
a transgender boy sent to a
residential facility for girls
and an infant boy who was
mistakenly administered his
older brother’s medication
for a congenital heart defect,
resulting in a hospital stay
for the baby.
The lawsuit alleges that
the state is also failing to
protect the rights of foster
kids with disabilities, who
are LGBTQ, or those 14 and
older who are poised to age
out of the system.
The lawsuit alleges that
the Department of Human
Services doesn’t assess chil-
dren properly and quickly
enough to fi gure out what
they need in terms of treat-
ment and placement.
There aren’t enough fos-
ter homes, which means that
children are put in places
that may not be right for
them, including hospitals,
homeless shelters, and refur-
bished juvenile detention
facilities, the suit contends.
A key issue that the law-
suit points to is the agency’s
shortage of child welfare
workers compared to the
number of children who are
removed from homes.
The caseworkers the
agency does have are over-
whelmed by high work-
loads, get burned out and
leave the agency at a rapid
rate. About one-third of
caseworkers, according to a
2018 state audit, have been
on the job for 18 months
or less. Despite efforts by
the agency, high turnover
continues, according to the
lawsuit.
The lawsuit says LGBTQ
children aren’t in safe, sta-
ble homes that are accept-
ing of their sexual orienta-
tion or gender identity. Kids
with emotional, intellectual,
psychological and physical
disabilities are deprived of
proper treatment. And many
kids aging out of foster care
are “forced into institutions
or homeless shelters,” or
left out in the cold, with no
planning for their transition
to adulthood, and “without
placed by DHS in family
homes with necessary sup-
ports and services,” the
lawsuit states. “Instead,
DHS places these chil-
dren in inappropriate insti-
tutions, ships them out of
state where they are placed
in costly and questionable
for-profi t congregate pro-
grams that do not address
their needs, or largely aban-
dons them so they wind up
in homeless shelters or on
the streets.”
The state’s use of out-
of-state facilities, at great
expense and with little mon-
itoring, has garnered atten-
tion during this year’s
legislative session. The
Department of Human Ser-
vices is now working on a
plan to bring those children
back to Oregon.
Oregon removes children
from their homes and puts
them into foster care at a
comparatively high rate .
In 2017, Oregon ranked
20th among states when it
came to the number of chil-
dren placed in foster care
per 1,000 children living
in poverty, according to
the National Coalition for
Child Protection Reform.
Oregon has twice as
many children in foster
care as New Jersey, yet
half the population of that
state, said Chris Shank,
an attorney for Disability
Rights Oregon.
Shank says Disabil-
ity Rights Oregon sees the
lawsuit as an “opportunity
to transform” the foster
care system.
The foster children she
has met are eager to help
other kids like them, Shank
said.
“When you talk to them
about being involved in a
lawsuit, they want to be
involved so that other kids
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