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From the Minutes of the November 1, 2006
meeting of the Michigan Child Care Task Force: Report from
Elizabeth Carey, Executive Director, Michigan Federation for
Children and Families, on the current Children’s Rights lawsuit
that has been filed against the State of Michigan/Department of
Human Services regarding Michigan’s foster care system.
Children’s Rights, an advocacy organization, has filed a lawsuit
against the State of Michigan/Department of Human Services
regarding Michigan’s foster care system.
-The full lawsuit filing can be found at
www.childrensrights.org
-There are roughly 19,000 children in the Michigan child welfare
system. The lawsuit names children with case examples of child
welfare system failures. Overall, the child welfare system is
extremely under-funded both publicly and privately. Children’s
Rights has sued many states. Some states, like Georgia, have
chosen to fight the lawsuit and have spent millions over several
years while others have chosen to negotiate and settle. Michigan
began formal negotiations and a settlement process in September
2006. Michigan is using a mediator between the state and
Children’s Rights. Michigan’s Department of Human Services has
put together an advisory group, including private providers, to
assist in the process. DHS will have private discussions with
Children’s Rights, but will use the advisory group to reflect
ideas before committing to Children’s Rights.
*Excerpts from the federal lawsuit filed by Children’s Rights
Inc. in August 2006 against Michigan’s child welfare system.
From the Children’s Rights lawsuit: “As a result of serious
systemic deficiencies that have been known to Defendants for
many years, the Michigan child welfare system inflicts numerous
harms on Plaintiff Children, including:
a. Maltreatment or neglect of foster children while in state
custody.
Too often children brought into Michigan’s foster care custody
because they have suffered abuse or neglect are subject to
further maltreatment while in the custody of DHS. This
maltreatment occurs because of Defendants’ failure to (i)
appropriately screen and oversee foster homes; (ii) segregate
sexually reactive children (often themselves victims of prior
sexual abuse) or physically aggressive children from other
foster children; and (iii) adequately monitor and support
caregivers, including unlicensed caregivers, who provide homes
for children in the foster care custody of DHS.
b. A lack of basic physical and mental health services for
foster children. Michigan’s foster children are routinely denied
the services necessary to address known psychological,
behavioral and emotional issues due to the absence of a
minimally adequate mental health system. Moreover, due to agency
cost-cutting measures, children are frequently left in foster
homes that are unable to meet their special needs and in which
their mental health further deteriorates. Foster children are
also routinely denied timely basic medical and dental
examinations and services.
c. Excessive lengths of stay in state custody. Michigan’s foster
children are unnecessarily spending large portions of their
lives – and sometimes their entire childhoods – in foster care
custody. Defendants fail to provide foster children with
appropriate case management, case plans and the services,
including adoption-related services, required to prevent
children from growing up in state custody. Michigan’s foster
children who cannot return home are routinely denied the
opportunity to be adopted, and many are discharged from the
foster care system at the state’s age of majority without the
life skills necessary to live independently.
d. Frequent moves among multiple placements. Subjecting foster
children, who have already undergone the trauma of being removed
from an abusive or neglectful home, to repeated changes in their
primary caregivers causes serious harm to their development and
psychological health. Yet, data collected by DHS and reported to
the federal government shows that over 62% of the children in
DHS foster care custody during fiscal year 2002, the last year
for which such data is available, had been in foster care for
more than 12 months, and over 40% of these children had already
experienced three or more different placements during their
lengthy foster care episodes.
These continuing harms to Plaintiff Children are caused by a
number of severe deficiencies in Michigan’s foster care system,
including:
a. A severe shortage of foster homes. Defendants fail to
maintain an adequate number and variety of foster homes and
other appropriate placements for foster children. Foster
children are placed wherever a bed or “slot” is available and
not according to their individual needs. As a result, foster
children are too often moved from one foster home to another
because their needs are not being met, repeatedly suffering
emotional harm.
b. High caseloads and turnover. Caseworkers responsible for
overseeing the care and protection of children in Defendants’
foster care custody often have dangerously high caseloads that
are frequently multiples of the national standard of 12-15
foster children per caseworker. High caseloads and an
unsupportive environment for many caseworkers have led to
soaring caseworker turnover rates of almost 40%. The DHS early
retirement programs implemented in 1997 and again in 2002 caused
significant numbers of experienced DHS caseworkers to retire,
resulting in a largely inexperienced frontline and supervisory
child welfare workforce.
c. Poor monitoring of child safety. Michigan’s foster homes are
often inadequately screened for safety. The State Auditor’s 2005
“Performance Audit of the Children’s Foster Care Program”
identified more than 320 homes that had never undergone a safety
assessment as required by DHS policy. Additionally, high
caseloads prevent caseworkers from devoting the time needed to
adequately monitor the safety of foster children assigned to
them. As of March 2006, DHS reported that more than 30% of
foster children statewide were not receiving even the minimally
required monthly contact from their caseworker.
d. Poor planning and services to move children out of foster
care and into permanent homes. Defendants routinely fail to
provide foster children with the appropriate case-planning and
adoption-related services required to ensure that children do
not languish in their care. As a result, there are more than
6300 children in the foster care custody of DHS who are legal
orphans – or “permanent wards” – for whom parental rights have
been terminated, but no adoptive home has been identified. More
than 400 of these children age out of the child welfare system
each year, ill-equipped for adult life.
e. Grossly inadequate payments to foster care providers. The
payments that Defendants provide to those caring for foster
children do not even approach the actual cost of care for a
child. DHS pays foster parents as little as $433 per month to
raise a two-year-old foster child, though the federal government
estimates that the average monthly cost of raising a similarly
aged child in the urban Midwest is $733, net of health care
expenses. Though Defendants increasingly rely upon relatives,
such as retired grandparents, to care for its foster children,
Defendants provide inadequate, and often no, financial support
to these caregivers who are themselves frequently of limited
means.
f. Fiscal waste. Michigan regularly fails to collect available
federal funds for foster children in state custody, foregoing
many millions of dollars that could be used to provide
desperately needed homes and services for children. The State
Auditor reported in December 2005 that the State now may be
exposed to over $99 million in reimbursements to the federal
government due to the mismanagement of its federally-subsidized
child welfare programs including Title IV-E foster care,
adoption assistance, and the Chafee independent living program
for teen youth. These failures to properly access and manage
federal funding are particularly glaring given that Michigan is
among the nation’s bottom 12 states in the ratio of state and
local funds to federal funds directed to support its child
welfare system.
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