Historic Settlement of Lawsuit Against New York City Child Welfare Agency Brings Prospect of Real Re

PRESS RELEASE

City and State acceptance of settlement provides unprecedented role for outside experts to guide reform within Administration for Children Services

All parties in the largest child welfare reform lawsuit in the country agreed today in federal court to an unprecedented joint mechanism that, for the first time, requires New York City to use independent outside child welfare experts to guide and assist reform within its child welfare system. The innovative agreement was signed in the class action lawsuit, Marisol v. Giuliani, brought on behalf of 100,000 children in the City's child welfare system against Governor Pataki, Mayor Giuliani and Commissioner Scoppetta for their failure to protect children in their care.

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The agreement requires the City to install a powerful Advisory Panel of distinguished child welfare experts and provide them with full access to the inside workings of the Administration of Children's Services (ACS). Under the agreement, plaintiffs' counsel will monitor progress of the Advisory Panel's recommendations for improvements in the system and can seek a federal court order against the City if the Advisory Panel finds the City is not acting in good faith to implement reforms. The Marisol settlement incorporates this agreement with the City and plaintiffs' agreement with Governor Pataki and the State agency responsible for monitoring and supervising the City's child welfare system.

The settlement was presented to Judge Robert J. Ward, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York by plaintiff's counsel, Children's Rights, Inc. (CRI) and Lawyers for Children (LFC) and their co-counsel, the law firms of Cahill Gordon & Reindel and Schulte Roth & Zabel, and by the City's Corporation Counsel and the State's Attorney General. The settlement agreement had been negotiated over several months by City, State, and plaintiffs' counsel and co-counsel. Pursuant to federal court procedure, Judge Ward will decide whether the agreement is a fair, reasonable, and adequate settlement of the Marisol lawsuit.

THE POWERS OF THE ADVISORY PANEL

The new Advisory Panel has begun a two-year process of recommending reform activity and monitoring progress of reform within ACS. Unconstrained by a court order, the Advisory Panel can decide what issues need to be addressed and in what order ACS should address them. As specified in the settlement, the Advisory Panel differs from traditional monitoring panels because it has:

*Full access to all aspects of ACS internal operations, including staff and records;
*Experience and skills to determine what ACS needs to do and whether it is properly doing it;
*Authority to issue progress reports evaluating City's reform efforts in specified areas;
*Power to issue a determination that the City is acting in bad faith in implementing reforms that will be considered prima facie evidence of such in court, putting the burden on the City to prove, contrary to the Panel's conclusion, that it is adequately safeguarding children.

If the Advisory Panel finds that the City is acting in bad faith in implementing reforms, further court action could result and lead the federal court to place the child welfare system into receivership, the relief initially sought by the Marisol lawsuit.

"This settlement is an historic victory for the children of New York," said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children's Rights. "The City's child welfare system has repeatedly failed to live up to its obligations, as has the State, because ACS had been unwilling to acknowledge that it needs outside help to protect and care for children at risk of abuse and neglect. Today the State and City agreed to outside help and enforceable requirements for improved child welfare performance with continuing federal district court supervision. The City must now either accomplish reforms in two years -- in which case children will be better protected and cared for by ACS -- or experts will determine that, even with outside help, the City is incapable of reforming ACS. In this case, court intervention into the operation of ACS after a finding of liability would be almost inevitable.

"For more than two years our counsel gathered evidence about the failures of the entire ACS system and the State's awareness of these failures - more documented evidence than had ever been previously collected," Lowry continued. "A trial would have proved that the City and State had consistently failed to meet their legal obligations to children and their families. But a lengthy trial and appeals by the City and State would have stalled urgently needed action by ACS for well over two years. This settlement will speed the pace of real reform for children in NYC."

Karen Freedman, Executive Director of Lawyers For Children, Inc., stated, "This settlement is both innovative and courageous because it represents the first time in New York State that the City and State have accepted that neither can accomplish reform of ACS without substantial guidance from independent child welfare experts. Today's settlement gives the children of this city reason to believe that real change will finally be made in every facet of a dysfunctional system."

ADVISORY PANEL TO GUIDE REFORM

The Advisory Panel created by today's settlement is comprised of national experts and child welfare administrators experienced in innovative approaches to child welfare reform. The Annie E. Casey Foundation will provide staff and necessary funding to the Advisory Panel. Panel members are:

Douglas W. Nelson, president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private philanthropy dedicated to helping build better futures for disadvantaged children in the United States. He is nationally known for his leadership and advocacy on behalf of family-centered, community-based responses to the needs of at-risk children, vulnerable families, and persons with disabilities. Nelson served as assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Social Services in Wisconsin and as head of its Division of Community Services.

John B. Mattingly, senior program associate at the Casey Foundation and its team leader for child welfare policy. He is a nationally recognized expert on improving services to children and families. Mattingly served for six years as head of the public child welfare agency serving Toledo, Ohio. He also served as executive director of the Ohio Institute for Child Advocacy and the West Side Community House in Cleveland, Ohio.

Judith Goodhand, a consultant with the University of North Carolina Graduate School of Social Work. She served six years as executive director of the Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services in Cleveland, Ohio. Under her direction, the agency built numerous partnerships with neighborhoods, assigned all of its caseworkers by community, closed its large emergency children's shelter, and increased the number of foster families by 70 percent.

Paul Vincent, director of the Child Welfare Policy and Practice Group, a non-profit organization in Montgomery, Alabama that improves child welfare practices and is currently assisting child welfare systems in 10 states. From 1988-1995, Vincent was director of Alabama's Division of Family and Children's Services, where he was responsible for implementing child welfare reforms as a result of a class action lawsuit. The improved performance of Alabama's child welfare system under Vincent's direction earned him the 1994 Award for Excellence in Child Welfare Administration from the National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators.

WILDER LAWSUIT

The agreement restates, reformulates and strengthens requirements placed on the City by a long-standing consent decree in another lawsuit, Wilder v. Bernstein, that established city obligations regarding evaluations and placements of children in foster care. These Wilder requirements will now be incorporated into the overall reform of the system under the Advisory Panel's guidance and review, and will become enforceable rights under the Marisol settlement.

TATE AGREEMENT

Discovery in the Marisol lawsuit established that New York State repeatedly failed to exercise its obligation to supervise and monitor ACS performance and to ensure that the City was adhering to applicable statues, regulations and standards of professional social work practice to protect and care for the City's children. Under this settlement agreement, the State has agreed to, among other obligations:

Create for the first time a regional office in New York City with a specified number of personnel that will focus solely on monitoring ACS performance to ensure compliance with the laws and social work practice designed to protect children;

Complete within two years a review of ACS case records in nine specified areas. If deficiencies or failures in ACS performance are found, the State must first direct ACS to undertake specified corrective action and monitor ACS progress in implementing such corrective action;

Complete on a timely basis required child fatalities reports to uncover problems that are life threatening and to use these reports to require ACS to correct deficiencies or failures;

Develop a long overdue State-wide computerized information system covering all aspects of ACS's operation so that its performance can be checked, and;

Meet periodically with and provide documents and information to Plaintiffs' counsel to update them on its supervision of ACS and its compliance with the settlement terms.

The State settlement has the Governor's approval and will last for two years, unless extended by the court. Plaintiffs' counsel will monitor State compliance with the agreement, which also requires the State to meet with and provide plaintiffs with numerous documents and information on specified occasions. If disagreements arise and cannot be resolved, plaintiffs may return to the federal court to seek judicial enforcement of children's rights under the agreement.

ABOUT MARISOL V. GIULIANI

The federal civil rights lawsuit, Marisol v. Giuliani, filed December 13, 1995 by CRI and LFC, was certified as a class action on behalf of an estimated 100,000 New York City children who are either in the City's foster care system or reported as abused and neglected. The suit by Plaintiffs broke new legal ground by extending the constitutional rights of all children affected by a child welfare system. Previously, courts recognized the right to constitutional protections for children in State custody, but had not extended those rights to children in danger of abuse and neglect but still living at home. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld on appeal the class certification.

Lawyers for Children, Inc. founded in 1984, provides free legal and social work services to children before the courts in foster care, abuse and neglect, termination of parental rights, and custody proceedings. LFC's experience in providing direct services to over 15,000 children has led to a commitment to impact litigation and innovative projects which enhance LFC's ability to advocate for and protect children in foster care.

In 1996 and again in 1997, CRI and LFC petitioned the American College of Trial Lawyers, an organization of the most proficient trial lawyers in each state, limited to 1% of members of the Bar in each state, to obtain attorneys to assist them as co-counsel. Thomas P. Curnin of Cahill Gordon & Reindel entered the litigation in early 1996 and David M. Brodsky of Schulte Roth & Zabel entered in early 1997. Together, they and as many as fifteen lawyers from their firms devoted hundreds of hours to the litigation.

Children's Rights works throughout the United States in partnership with national and local experts, advocates and government officials to document the needs of children in the care of child welfare systems. Children's Rights helps develop realistic solutions and, where necessary, uses the power of litigation to ensure that reform takes place.