Massachusetts Judge raises reform bar in child welfare

Here is the Conclusion of the judge who dismissed Children's Rights' class action lawsuit against Massachusetts:

"This is a dispiriting opinion to write. In alleging 

violations of substantive due process, the Plaintiffs set 

themselves to climb a virtually unscalable peak. They have 

failed in the ascent. Nothing is really resolved. The state 

defendants today avoid the litigation bullet but the stage is 

set for further costly litigation as all attempts at settlement 

have failed. 

 In the process, the Court may have done a disservice to the 

hundreds of overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated case 

workers and foster home providers whose dedication has never 

been questioned here. There is, of course, a certain aridity in 

marshalling the statistics necessary to sustain or refute the 

class-wide institutional claims made in this case. 

 Yet this is not a case about statistics but about children 

-- our children -- and this much is clear, the flaws noted 

herein are more about budgetary shortfalls than management 

myopia. We are all complicit in this financial failure. 

When next you bemoan your tax burden, remember that, at 

that moment, somewhere in Massachusetts there is a youngster who 

Case 1:10-cv-30073-WGY Document 373 Filed 11/22/13 Page 83 of 84 84

has just been taken from her parents’ home.43 She is confused, 

inexpressibly lonely, homesick, and desperately afraid. Because 

of Massachusetts’ penury, her future is murkier than in most 

places in America. 

Do you care?"

 /s/ William G. Young 

 WILLIAM G. YOUNG 

 DISTRICT JUDGE 

Judge Young is raising the bar for reform as the current adversarial models of litigation do nothing but pump more money into a dysfunctional system. There needs to be a new approach to child welfare.  A good place to start would be an economic departure from the out-dated-sunken-costs legal arguments.

"Why keep pumping money into something which has generationally proven not work?  Why not ameliorate the issues which created the need for the system in the first place?"

Poverty is not a crime and foster care should not be the gateway to mental health services.

In the DeShaney v. Winnebago County, SCOTUS rendered its decision to the question:

Does a state's failure to protect an individual against private violence constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

"No. The Due Process Clause does not impose a special duty on the State to provide services to the public for protection against private actors if the State did not create those harms. "The Clause is phrased as a limitation on the State's power to act, not as a guarantee of certain minimal levels of safety and security; while it forbids the State itself to deprive individuals of life, liberty, and property without due process of law, its language cannot fairly be read to impose an affirmative obligation on the State to ensure that those interests do not come to harm through other means."

The Rehnquist Court demonstrated a severe lack of awareness in the parens patriae doctrine in DeShaney v. Winnebago County , because, that defendant did in fact violate the Due Process clause to protect the child, as child protection had been placed under Trade and Commerce Law back in 1976, federally funded by CAPTA in 1974, solidifying the basis of the initial argument that it was the inherent right of the state to protect its heir in perpetuity. Therefore, the state violated federal anti-commerce law and the due process contained within of 15 U.S.C. 15 (c), obfuscated within child welfare policies.


Learn more: BEVERLY TRAN: SCOTUS Errs on Precedent http://beverlytran.blogspot.com/2010/05/scotus-errs-on-precedent.html#ixzz2x6J4vbIF
Stop Medicaid Fraud in Child Welfare

Advocacy group appeals judge’s decision in DCF suit

The federal judge who handed the state’s embattled child welfare system a victory in a closely watched lawsuit last year set the bar too high for the plaintiffs to meet and either “ignored or misinterpreted” the law, a New York advocacy group charged in a sharply worded appeal of the decision.

Children’s Rights, which unsuccessfully sued state officials in a class action suit first brought in 2010, blasted U.S. District Court Judge William G. Young’s ruling, writing in a massive, 263-page appeal that it should be reversed.

Young’s so-called “two-pronged” approach — in that the group needed to prove the Department of Children and Families’ failures not only veered substantially from accepted practice but “shocks the conscience” — was unnecessarily high, Children’s Rights said.

It also argued that the deference he showed to state lawmakers to better fund the agency, and thus correct its ongoing problems, could set a dangerous precedent.

“Constitutional and statutory violations are rampant in DCF foster care,” Children’s Rights attorneys wrote in the appeal, filed late yesterday. “If this Court were to accept the district court’s view that federal judges must yield to executive and legislative prerogatives when such priorities are inconsistent with the state’s constitutional obligations to the state’s most helpless citizens, the consequences would be far-reaching.”

Furthermore, the group wrote, by putting the responsibility on lawmakers to fund DCF appropriately, “it likewise excused the abject failure by DCF.”

“Vulnerable children who are wholly dependent on the state for their safety and well-being, were erroneously held to a standard of proof no less burdensome than the standard to be met by an incarcerated felon,” the appeal states.

Children’s Rights had accused Bay State officials of failing to protect children under their care from abuse, allowing kids to flounder in the foster care system and doling out too many psychotropic drugs. It has successfully sued more than a dozen other states, and had gone to trial only once before in this type of case, winning against Washington, D.C., officials more than two decades ago.

Young had ripped DCF in his 84-page ruling released in November, concluding it failed to “not only to comport with national standards of care and state and federal requirements but also to comply with its own internal policies.”

But he said the plaintiffs, represented by Children’s Rights, had embarked on a “virtually unscalable peak” to win their suit.

“This is not a case about statistics but about children — our children — and this much is clear: The flaws noted herein are more about budgetary shortfalls than management myopia. We are all complicit in this financial failure,” Young wrote in November. He noted he wasn’t going to substitute his judgment “for that of duly elected Massachusetts lawmakers, who properly are endowed with the power to direct the reserves of the commonwealth’s coffers to whatever issue of public import they see fit.”

State officials have said that DCF’s budget had been cut by roughly $100 million between fiscal year 2009 and fiscal year 2012.

But Children’s Rights argues in its appeal it was wrong for Young to treat “fiscal constraints as a defense” and that he did so without “any valid legal basis.”

Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office, which is defending the state in the suit, will have 30 days to respond.

The situation has thrown the Democrat into an awkward position of balancing the actions of her office and her own calls for reforms at DCF as a leading gubernatorial candidate. Coakley has repeatedly said she feels there is no conflict.

The ruling likely saved the state from a costly court-mandated reform plan and the possibility of shelling out millions more in attorney fees. Last year, a judge ordered Oklahoma officials to launch a $100 million-a-year initiative to fix their system — on top of $6 million in legal costs for Children’s Rights — after the group successfully sued that state.

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