Recently in Child Welfare News Category

Appellate decisions regarding foster care are rare and decisions that focus on foster children are rarer still. So when two decisions appear in the space of about a week they deserve some commentary. One is from the Maryland Court of Appeals, Maryland's highest court, and addresses an issue of great interest: under what circumstances and to what extent does a foster child's attachment to foster parents impact the rights of the biological parents when such parents are confronting the termination of their parental rights? The other case, from the New York Appellate Division, also addresses an issue of interest: can foster children sue foster parents for negligent supervision?

A lesson that can be learned from both cases is that the laws that affect foster care in general and foster children in particular are far from uniform. Each case provides insight into these important issues and suggests how the law may evolve.

The first law review article on the topic of wrongful death of children in foster care has just been published. It is co-authored by Daniel Pollack, Professor at the School of Social Work at Yeshiva University in New York City and a frequent expert witness in child welfare lawsuits, and Gary Popham, Jr., an attorney in Arizona. For a PDF of the article please contact Professor Pollack.

For more articles on ChildLaw by Professor Pollack click here.

This just in from blogger Jeff Katz of the Huffington Post:

The simple fact is that it is virtually impossible to adopt a foster child across state lines in the United States.

In the most recent year for which we have data, states reported that only 71 children in the entire country were adopted from foster care across state lines by non-relatives.

Why is interstate adoption so rare? The primary reason is that we do not have a national adoption system. Instead, we have 50 different child welfare systems, each with its own process for adoption eligibility, recruitment, approval, and training.

Even worse, our current system has created profound disincentives for states to facilitate and support adoptions across state lines.

It is a national scandal that 25,000 children age out of foster care each year while willing adoptive parents are ignored because they are in the wrong state or even the wrong county. It shouldn't be harder for a New Jersey family to adopt a child from Manhattan than Moscow. We must change the incentives in our adoption system so that everyone wins when a hurt child finds a forever family.

Check out the complete post here.

Look who's back! Was it adoption for love? Child trafficking via surrogacy? Or something else? The bizarre case of birdman Stephen Melinger is back in the news, this time in a New York Times article on the perils and pitfalls of surrogacy. Do check out this story in the Times, but just remember from Melinger to womb outsourcing, snowflake adoptions and sperm donor introductions for lesbians, this blog gave you the scoop first.

Powerful mood-altering drugs were prescribed to hundreds of Illinois foster children without the required consent of state child welfare officials, a Chicago Tribune analysis of government data has found.

And increasing numbers of young wards were diagnosed with bipolar disorder and given a class of anti-psychotic medicines that some physicians consider risky for youths because they can cause such side effects as metabolic abnormalities and pronounced weight gain.

Psychiatrist Michael Naylor, MD, who reviews psychotropic medicine regimens for DCFS, said that he worries that "marketing efforts" by pharmaceutical companies are driving increasing diagnoses of bipolar disorder leading to more prescriptions for antipsychotic medicines, and that some "physicians are skirting the consent laws."

A separate report by the University of Illinois at Chicago's department of psychiatry finds that an Illinois psychiatric hospital used medications as chemical restraints on kids. Streamwood Behavioral Health Center, "one of Illinois' largest psychiatric hospitals, dosed foster children with dangerous combinations of mood-altering" medications, "sometimes using the medicines as 'chemical restraints' to control youth who needed counseling."

The report also found that the center, "which has treated roughly 475 Department of Children and Family Services wards since 2007, is 'so understaffed as to be counter-therapeutic,'" and that "hospital staff resorted to extraordinarily high rates of emergency psychiatric medications, physical restraints, and seclusion."

On December 14, 2009, at 9:00 a.m. E.T., the Urban Institute and the Center for the Study of Social Policy will host an audio Webcast on the impact of the Adoption and Safe Families Act on the safety, permanence, and well-being of abused and neglected children.

The nearly 2-hour session will be moderated by Susan Notkin, New York Director, Center for the Study of Social Policy. Panelists include:

• Olivia Golden, Fellow, Urban Institute
• John Mattingly, Commissioner, New York City's Administration for Children's Services
• Carmen Nazario, Assistant Secretary for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• Jeanette Vega, writer, "Rise" magazine
• Nancy Young, Director, National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare

To obtain further information and register for this Webcast, visit www.urban.org/events/Safe-Families-Act.cfm. Information about attending the session in Washington, DC, is also available on that page.

The sold out crowd at the ninth annual Helping Children Soar benefit enjoyed a beautiful evening on the Kennedy Center's Roof Terrace Restaurant among fellow CLC supporters, advocates and leaders in the legal community. The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr. received the 2009 Distinguished Child Advocate award. Mr. Holder was recognized for his long time support of CLC and dedication to the District of Columiba's children. Here are two great photos from this amazing event.




For more pictures from this fabulous event visit CLC's 2009 Benefit Photo Gallery

A 1970s-era Texas law that allows parents to show "harmful material" to their children has come under fire after a prosecutor said he couldn't file charges against a man accused of forcing his eight- and nine-year-old daughters to watch hardcore online pornography.

The law apparently was meant to protect the privacy of parents who wanted to teach children about sex education, but it states clearly that parents can't be prosecuted for showing "harmful material" to their children.

Randall County District Attorney James Farren has asked for an opinion from Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott about a law Farren says makes no sense and needs to be changed.

Farren says the argument that government has no right to tell parents how to raise their children doesn't fly here. "The government should and does respect the right of parents to raise their children, but that doesn't mean a parent can do anything they want to their child. Obviously, the government can step in when parents are acting in a way that is sufficiently detrimental to the mental health and the physical health of children. I understand that this is a conservative community. I'm conservative. I don't like big government. I don't want government too intrusive, and I certainly don't want government intruding into the family more than necessary. . . . but I don't think very many people would believe that it's appropriate to show true pornographic material to their children simply because they're the parent and they choose to do that - just because they're twisted enough, they want to watch it, that they then want to subject their children to it."

More on this story here.

When I created the Children's Law Center in 1996, my biggest dream (and worst nightmare) was that we'd have enough money to keep the doors open for a month. Well I guess I must have been dreaming in color because now we have VIDEOS! See why CLC is the nation's leading grassroots child advocacy organization. I couldn't be prouder!

Yesterday, the Miami Herald revealed that in a report "expected to be released publicly later this month," a "panel of child-welfare experts, including two top administrators from the" Florida Department of Children & Families, "says child welfare authorities too often rely on the potent medications to manage abused and neglected children -- but fail to offer psychiatric treatment to help them overcome the trauma they suffered."

The report states that "caregivers for children in state custody frequently use powerful mind-altering drugs to manage unruly kids, rather than treat their anger and sadness." According to the report, "psychotherapeutic medications are often being used to help parents, teachers, and other child workers quiet and manage, rather than treat, children." The Herald adds that "the use of psychiatric drugs among children in state care is widespread." In fact, "records updated by DCF last week show that, among children in state care aged six to 12, more than 22 percent are being given psychiatric" medications.

The critics and plaintiffs’ attorneys are out there. They seethe with frustration in their assertion that there are child protection workers who are as dysfunctional and flawed as some of the abusive and neglectful parents they investigate. They feel mistreated, ambushed, without recourse to a neutral oversight authority, and fume that the courts will believe the word of child protection workers over their clients. And yet, when there is a credible allegation that a child protection worker has knowingly made misleading or false statements which resulted in the wrongful removal of a child, their criticism and anger seem justified. Such misrepresentations may involve highly contested issues of material fact that more properly should be examined by an agency supervisor or in court on the merits. The supervisor or court, inadvertently giving credence to the worker’s misrepresentation, may thereby be swayed in favor of the worker’s recommendations.

Guest Feature Article by Daniel Pollack, MSW, JD

More on this important topic from the Miami Herald:

A first detailed look at the youngest foster children on mental-health drugs offers a disturbing glimpse into the state's failure to heed a 2005 law -- and its own policies.

Florida child-welfare administrators are largely ignoring a host of rules put in place to protect children from potentially dangerous -- and sometimes unnecessary -- drugs, according to a detailed state review of the records for more than 100 young foster children who are being given powerful psychiatric medications.

Caseworkers under contract with the state Department of Children & Families are failing to comply with almost every benchmark governing the use of psychotropic medication among foster children, according to the DCF report, obtained Tuesday by The Miami Herald.

Recent revelations come only four years after state lawmakers passed legislation to curb the use of mental-health drugs among children in state care. The law requires, among other things, informed consent from a parent or judge, second-party review of doctors' prescriptions for the youngest children, and annual reports to the state Senate.

Among the most troubling findings, child advocates say, is the state's almost complete failure to seek a second opinion from a psychiatrist under contract with DCF before administering mental-health drugs to the youngest children in state care -- younger than age 6.

Front-line social workers, judges and child welfare administrators, how are you addressing this issue in your states?