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Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Arizona Medicaid Fraud Control Unit Neglects State Children

The rise in foster care rates is a reflection of social and economic policy.

In this case, the reflection is not very good.

The case revolves around the horrid conditions of children in foster care.  This includes the undocumented rapes, beatings, starvation, over-medication, etc...all at the expense of Medicaid billings.

At a different angle, the reflection also shows images of indolence in the state Medicaid Fraud Control Unit in dealing with children.

Arizona sued over poor foster-care conditions

Arizona's neglect of children in foster care "shocks the conscience" and amounts to an official shrug to the plight of nearly 17,000 children, a class-action lawsuit filed today in U.S. District Court alleges.
The suit, filed on behalf of 10 children currently in the Arizona foster care system, names the directors of the state departments of Health Services and Child Safety and alleges the state:
  • Neglects its duty to provide adequate health care for children in state custody.
  • Has a severe shortage of foster homes.
  • Fails to promptly investigate reports of neglect and abuse involving children in foster care.
  • Hampers efforts to maintain family relationships by separating siblings in foster care and not providing required parental visits.
Although the state is aware of these conditions, many of which the suit documents using the state's own data, it has not corrected them, the lawsuit states.
Because of that, the lawsuit states, Arizona's actions show "a policy, pattern, custom and/or practice that shocks the conscience, is outside the exercise of any professional judgment, and amounts to deliberate indifference to the constitutionally-protected rights and liberty and privacy interests" of the children named in the suit, as well as all children under state care.
Officials with the Department of Child Safety and the Department of Health Services didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lawsuit seeks actions that will reverse this neglect, ranging from an increase in foster homes to timely medical attention. The suit uses only the first names of the 10 children, ages 3 to 14, listed as plaintiffs. It seeks class action by the court on behalf of all children in state foster care. As of September, there were 16,990 Arizona children in state custody, according to the latest data from the Department of Child Safety
The Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, the local law firm of Coppersmith, Brockelman LPC and the New York-based Children's Rights organization are handling the case. Children's Rights filed a similar complaint last month in South Carolina and a nearly 4-year-old suit alleging neglect of Texas children in foster care is proceeding.
"It is time that someone gives voice to the thousands of children in foster care who have no say about where they live, where their siblings go, or what happens in their future," Kris Jacober, president of the Arizona Association for Foster and Adoptive Parents, said in a statement released with the lawsuit.
"Children are still sleeping in DCS offices because there is nowhere else for them," she said. "They're not receiving timely or needed mental health services. The children in this lawsuit represent thousands with similar stories. The state can't simply bring them into custody and provide for them on the fly."
The filing comes seven months after the state created a stand-alone child-welfare agency in the wake of the discovery of nearly 6,600 reports of child abuse and neglect that went without investigations over nearly four years.
But while the state has focused on fixing problems that likely worsened conditions for children living with their parents, issues affecting children in foster care have taken a back seat. For example, the nearly 6,600 abuse-and-neglect reports have been reopened and, where needed, assigned for further investigation. But nearly three-quarters of similar reports involving harm to children in foster care had not been looked at and resolved in the 60-day time frame required by law, the suit states.
The filing is laced with stories of the 10 children and the state's failure to meet their needs, ranging from delayed or denied medical and dental treatment to therapy. As a result, children like "Beth K.," the lead plaintiff in the case, has spent half of her 10 years in state custody. After four years, she showed signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, talked about harming herself and was denied dental care while living in a group home.
The state has also hindered efforts to keep families together, as the case of four siblings shows.
The two girls and two boys, ages 3 to 7, were put in state custody a year ago. They were initially placed with a relative who lived 21/2 hours away from the family's home, a distance that apparently hampered the ability for state caseworkers to do "urgent responses" on their cases.
Over the last year, the four, identified only as the "C-B siblings," were split into two separate foster homes, reunited for two weeks with their father before he returned them to state custody, sent to three different foster homes, and denied the therapy the state Department of Child Safety determined they needed.
In July, a juvenile court found the agency's action, or lack thereof, "appalling," noting DCS failed to follow through on therapy sessions, and didn't back up its promise to the father that it would help him with transportation to get the children to therapy.
Their case illustrates the lapses of the state in meeting its goal of maintaining family bonds, the suit states.
The problems are not new, the lawsuit states: A 2003 report by the Maricopa County Attorney's Office highlighted the persistent lack of foster homes and concluded the state's child-welfare system was "overloaded without the proper resources to ensure the safety of all children."
Later that same year, an action plan commissioned by then-Gov. Janet Napolitano cited a shortage of foster homes and inadequate services for those children as among the shortcomings in Arizona's child-welfare system.
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