Childrens Rights filed a federal law suit against the Patrick Administration for inadequate care and treatment, as well as abuse, of children in foster care today. The Complaint runs some 76 pages and if you don’t find the facts disturbing, well, shame on you.
Coverage of the law suit indicates that children are at greater risk in DCF foster homes than many of them were before removal from their parents.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Western Massachusetts, was brought on behalf of 8,500 children in the state’s foster care system by Children’s Rights, a national children’s advocate.
Named in the suit are Gov. Deval Patrick, Health and Human Services Secretary JudyAnn Bigby, and Angelo McClain, the commissioner of the Department of Children and Families.
“There is absolutely no justification for what Massachusetts is doing to its most vulnerable children,” Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children’s Rights, said in a statement. “It is robbing them of their right to be protected from abuse and neglect and grow up in a safe and stable homes with loving, permanent families.”
According to the complaint, children in state foster care are abused at nearly four times the national rate. Children are further harmed by being frequently shuttled between foster homes, the suit contends, moving an average of five times while in state custody.
I would add that children in foster care are often placed in educational limbo, with no one authorized to sign education plans for special education, and teenagers out of school for months as they are shuttled from foster home to foster home.
The elimination of Guardian Ad Litems for education to oversee and protect the educations of vulnerable, disabled children in foster care has further placed these children at risk. The elimination of case workers at both DCF (formerly DSS) and DMH has reduced oversight still further.
Well done, Children’s Rights. It is unlikely that the care and treatment of children by DCF will pass muster; and a federal suit is the only way to protect these children’s civil rights, and right to equal protection under the law given the decision of the Supreme Judicial Court in Care and Protection of Jeremy which removed from Massachusetts judges the right to make decisions in the best interests of children in foster care, and Care and Protection of Sharlene where even the power of life and death, in the hands of DCF, received zero over sight.
Of course it’s disturbing to hear about children brutalized by insane sadists and neglected. No measures can prevent all brutality by sadists. In no way, shape or form am I providing a justification for what has happened to these kids. This is just an explanation for why something like this has occured. It is based upon political tendencies and economic interests in this nation and state at this time.
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p>There are certain economic factors behind the trends that increase this sort of thing.
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p>The first economic factor is stingy US Senators. For various reasons, because of these stingy Senators, the states do not get nearly enough money from the federal government to maintain services. State revenue falls during a depression like this, and the cuts increase problems like this.
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p>Another factor that squeezes state budgets is the “tax wars” between the states. If a state has taxes that are a lot higher than other states in the area, businesses and people leave that state to get a lower tax rate. Congress could harmonize state and local tax rates. They won’t do that because big business, who owns them, likes the tax wars.
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p>A Republican running for Governor in this state could say “tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts”, make a few folksy yarns about “$1,500 toilet seat covers” and “special interest lobbyists” who aren’t like us “just plain folks”, and win the Governorship.
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p>The big business media would let them get away with it, and would present the Governor doing the right thing outside of court as “giving into the special interest lobbies,” and taxing the money away from people. It sounds sick, but it’s how it would happen. And, if it was done outside of court, it would not be possible for the Governor to make increasing funding for these kids “revenue neutral” by paroling drug offenders that are imprisoned.
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p>With the “mean ole’ federal court” making the state take care of these kids, the Governor and other officials can do the right thing without getting flack from these media talking heads. And there’s a good chance that the state will parole drug offenders quietly without much fanfare to free up money to comply with what the “mean ole’ federal court” is making them do.
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p>And secretly, I bet the Governor hopes that he officially “loses” this one.
If it’s about abuse then it goes without saying that the abusive people should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. If it’s about money I’ve always been reluctant to have a court decision telling the state how to spend its money as it is for the executive and legislative branches to adopt a budget.
All 50 states have to compete with each other for businesses on the basis of tax rates. This hampers the ability of each state to collect money.
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p>These poor kids in foster homes are not voters in elections. And, often, their “down and out” relatives don’t vote, either.
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p>Many members of the “tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts” crowd are not rocket scientists, I know. But, they tend to be voters.
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p>I know that my analysis above is cynical, and down and dirty. But that is how it works.
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p>To me, the freedom that matters is for individuals, not for collective entities.
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p>A court case like this gets these poor kids what they need, without imperiling office holders with attack ads that will slime them for being “big spenders” for “the special interests”, spending the money of the “just plain folks” on waste for the cronies. No matter how important the work being funded is, this is how it will be presented.
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p>It is totally different subject matter, of course, but Brown V. Board of Education was argued in the Federal Courts. The US Supreme Court outlawed school segregation, and President Eisenhower send the National Guard To Little Rock, AR to guard black students at a high school.
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p>Sometimes, the Federal Court approach is the best approach for a group who can’t vote to get a favorable outcome. These foster kids don’t vote, and the African Americans in southern states in the 1950’s were prevented from voting by various means.
…of which Brown v. Board of Ed is a prime example. My understanding though is that that case did not mandate that states increase their budgets for education. It simply said that minority kids could not be bussed across town to keep them out of the white schools. Many states require balanced budgets so a court stepping in and saying you must spend x on a certain program which it thinks is deserving even if legislature and Governor say otherwise means requiring cuts elsewhere or requiring tax increases. I’m certainly on the side of finding the money on the merits for these programs, but unless there is a constitutional requirement for these programs, and I’m pretty sure there isn’t, I don’t think courts should be making spending decisions.
All states except Vermont require a balanced budget.
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p>The voters pick the government, right?
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p>WRONG.
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p>The government picks the voters. How do they do that? Simple. They outlaw voting by “ex-cons”. A lot of these people that are disenfranchised this way would not be Republicans.
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p>But you know who can vote and does vote?
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p>Middle aged to old white people from the suburbs who like “tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts” and want to “hang ’em high”, and aren’t concerned with the welfare of the down and out. This is not how all white people from the suburbs are, but there is a subset that is like this. They are not the majority, but they are out there in significant numbers.
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p>In the governor’s race, these people have two “flavors” to choose from.
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p>Tim Cahill is the “Mr. Regular Guy” type who “don’t like no high and fancy” and “ain’t having none of that tutti-frutti” either. It is a very anti-intellectual style, and appeals to base instincts that want to “stick it to them eggheads.”
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p>Charlie Baker is the classical Republican Mr. CEO candidate, who presents himself in that light.
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p>Between the two of them, they seem to go for the same policies, but just present it in a different light.
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p>What happened to these kids is horrible, and must be stopped. I know times are tough, but these kids are desperate. If something is not done for them now, some of them will go “off the wall”, commit crimes, and go to jail. The cost of keeping them in jail then will make the cost of helping them now seem like nothing.
people with mental retardation in Massachusetts would still be warehoused in “snake-pit” conditions in institutions and elsewhere. Many people don’t realize the degree to which U.S. District Court Judge Tauro’s oversight during the 1970s and 1980s resulted in improved care and conditions in both the state and community system of care. (Until the Patrick administration started to let conditions deteriorate during the past year at the Fernald Developmental Center, the conditions there were world class.)
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p>MS is right. Children in foster care don’t vote, and neither do the developmentally disabled in state care. Their families and guardians have little political clout. Without the protection of the federal courts, these vulnerable groups would be completely neglected by our political system.
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p>It may be an unpopular notion that the courts should make spending decisions for the states; but unless we are willing to say that there are certain groups that don’t deserve equal protection under the law, then we will have to accept the intervention of the courts at times.
“We were just following orders” about how to spend state money is no justification for the neglect of its duty to its vulnerable wards by this state. Other states, in fact, repose the best interests of children in the hands of judges who are elected – not faceless beaurecrats counting beans while kids die.
I actually don’t believe that these officials picked this voluntarily.
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p>When someone is being squeezed for money they don’t have, they do crazy, off the wall things just to survive.
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p>That goes for private individuals as well as governments and businesses.
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p>This nation is in a depression. Nowhere near enough is being done about this depression.
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p>All states except Vermont are legally required to have balanced budgets.
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p>Elsewhere on this site, I have proposed outlawing this balanced budget requirement for state(s) with an amendment to both the Massachusetts and US constitution prohibiting it.
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p>That’s a tall order, but should the budgets be balanced on the backs of the disabled and abused kids?
That is part of what is heinous – and by both Republicans AND Democrats.
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p>The short-sighted tax cuts fueled by magical thinking like “we will always have a roaring economy” cut what would have been 4 BILLION MORE DOLLARS.
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p>The Isaac & Jeremy decisions that stripped Massachusetts judges of the ability to make decisions in the best interests of kids happened in 1994 and 1995.
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p>The decision to close all such cases was part of the founding document of our Juvenile Courts in Massachusetts – remember seven other states have jury trials and 27 other states have all such proceedings open (like divorce proceedings or criminal cases) unless there is a motion to impound.
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p>The decision that treatment of abused kids is entitled to no more oversight by the Courts then treatment of lemon cars is, again, something done by the Supreme Judicial Court in Isaac and in Jeremy (two terrible appellate decisions crying out for legislative action) back in 1994 and 1995.
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p>The awful G.L.c.210 Sec.2 allowing for walkaway parents is ancient, classic, and harmful. The failure to even define or ever uphold “reasonable efforts before removal” is ancient, class based, and harmful – not due to the depression/recession at all but rather to an entrenched loathing of the “undeserving poor” going back to Brahmin times.
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p>And I could go on, but I have work to do for some of these families, so “bye for now”.
The way I see it there is no requirement constitutionally that these services be provided at all, so I have a hard time seeing what role the courts even have. Of course I believe on the merits that society should take care of the least among us, but unless there’s a federal law involved states are legally competent to make these decisions. You can’t just go to court and say, “That’s not fair” You have to be able to cite a law or constitutional provision, the obligations for which the state is not fulfilling. In the Brown v. Board of Ed example cited elsewhere, for example, there is no constitutional requirement to provide public education to anyone, and I’m not sure if there is even a statutory requirement at the federal level. The reason that case was justicible is that once a state DOES decide to provide a service, the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment applies and it was on that basis that the Court ruled.
http://nysccc.org/fostercare/l…
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p>That site indicates that there are federal STATUTES on the books that require certain standards to be met for a state to get federal money for foster children.
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p>Do you know why the law says that you must be 21 to buy alchohol, but you can die in war at 18? Because car insurance companies lobbied the federal government to not give highway money to any state that would not make the drinking age 21.
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p>Real great justice. You can die in war but you can’t have a beer.
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p>There is almost no chance that Massachusetts doesn’t get federal money for foster children.
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p>I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.
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p>As far as I am concerned, WHAT is to be done is EVERYTHING, HOW it is to be done is NOTHING.
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p>If you must riot in the streets to get it done, riot in the streets.
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p>If you must control the Council, control the Council.
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p>And, if you must go to federal court, then, for God’s sake, go to federal court.
…does seem actionable in the courts. Toward the end of this comment you go a little too far towards ends justifying the means for my tastes.
You’re not usually one for giving out 3s.
Have you READ the Connor B. Complaint? If not, please do.
PDFs and my computer don’t mix very well, but I’m sure I’d find the facts as disturbing as anyone. I’m not disputing that. People get so emotional sometimes that they can’t answer a question about the law without getting offended. I asked a serious and good faith question. In general a question should not be considered offensive, neither should my comment about the court’s role. Your first response to that was just fine.