Management Evaluation of New Jersey Foster Care System Reveals

PRESS RELEASE

Expert states "DYFS has ... turned its back on the children in its care time and again."

An independent evaluation of the management of New Jersey's Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) released today reveals that "DYFS has egregiously failed the children in its care on a long-term, routine basis." The expert author of the report provides a comprehensive list of recommendations calculated to bring dramatic changes for children, almost none of which are currently planned by DYFS.

The evaluation--set up to determine if the child welfare system was meeting the basic needs of children in foster care, to identify systemic deficiencies, and to offer recommendations for reform--found that DYFS had known about all of the identified problems for years but "turned its back on the children in its care time and again." The evaluation was conducted as part of the class action lawsuit, Charlie and Nadine H. v. McGreevey, filed by Children's Rights and Lowenstein, Sandler in U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

Ira Schwartz, a nationally and internationally recognized expert in child welfare, juvenile justice, and children's mental health examined recent DYFS data and reports turned over to Children's Rights in the lawsuit as well as transcripts from the depositions of various DYFS top managers taken by plaintiff children's attorneys. Schwartz, the Provost of Temple University and former Dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania, concludes that:

In order to ensure that meaningful reform occurs within DYFS, significant real changes have to occur, some immediately and some only after long-range planning and thoughtful implementation. These changes are essential to repairing this dysfunctional, mismanaged child welfare system. DYFS must implement bold, innovative reforms to bring about meaningful change. If these reforms are not implemented, another tragedy will befall this state, and once again people will clamor for an explanation as to why it happened.

Among the reforms that should take highest priority, according to Schwartz:

*Launch an aggressive campaign to finalize the adoption of at least 60% to 75% of those children now awaiting adoption. This goal can be accomplished by significantly increasing the amount of money paid to prospective adoptive parents. Funds for this initiative could be generated through a partnership between the state and private entities, including private foundations;
*Implement a risk assessment tool using contemporary technology that can assist in screening of prospective foster parents;
Ensure that children are not placed in foster homes where anyone has been convicted of a felony unless approval has been granted by the Director of DYFS after receiving advice from an independent screening committee comprised of professionals and lay persons competent to provide such advice;
*Never place children in homes where there has been substantiated abuse or neglect;
Implement random on-site monitoring of all DYFS placements;
*Swiftly investigate and take action on all allegations of abuse or neglect of children in foster care;
*Reduce the number of children in residential treatment centers without sacrificing quality of services to these children;
*Require full and complete assessments of parents before reunification, in order to ensure that children are not returned to parents who are unwilling or unable to care for them; and
*Provide adequate supports and services for parents who wish to regain custody of their children, but are otherwise unable to do so without these supports and services.

A monitoring group should be established, made up of professionals, foster parents and biological parents who have successfully had their children returned home, to review all returns home for the next three years to ensure that decisions to return children home are being carefully made.
"Children in New Jersey are suffering needlessly," stated Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children's Rights and a lead attorney in the lawsuit. "This expert's thorough and thoughtful evaluation offers specific solutions for this terrible situation, but state officials have never really tried to implement any of them. It's still an open question whether they will do that now, or just paper over the problems once again."
Schwartz notes that Kevin Ryan, Governor McGreevey's Deputy Chief of Operations conceded in a recent newspaper interview that, "The child welfare system in this state has not been a priority. There was an institutional decision year after year to neglect these children."

An examination of DYFS' own data demonstrates that DYFS has critical deficiencies in numerous areas. For example, Schwartz finds that:

*In 2001, the last year for which DYFS data is available, the rate of abuse and neglect for children in DYFS custody was three times the national standard;
*The rate of abuse and neglect for children in the Adoption Resource Centers ("ARCs"), the entities which oversee children whose plan is to be adopted, is over twelve times the national standard, and for one particular office, the rate is thirty times the national standard;
*Children in DYFS custody who are shuffled through multiple placements remain in custody an average of 38.76 months, a staggering amount of time for any child to lack permanency;
*Children in DYFS custody who do not achieve permanency in 18 months or less will languish there, and often times remain in care for more than four years;
*Children ping-pong back and forth between biological families and DYFS custody. In 2002, 67.5% of those children who were returned to DYFS custody after being sent home were returned because their parents were unwilling or unable to care for them. This demonstrates that DYFS is either sending children home prematurely, or failing to provide adequate supports to ensure that when children return home they do not have to re-enter care;
*More than 63.75% of all children in DYFS custody are shuffled through multiple placements;
Caseloads for DYFS caseworkers are extraordinarily high, with none of the four DYFS regions and only one of the six ARCs meeting recommended national standards. According to DYFS' own data, in order to meet national caseload standards, DYFS would have to hire approximately 300 additional caseworkers.

According to the Staffing and Outcome Review Panel ("SORP"), a legislatively-mandated panel created to review issues relating to the management of DYFS, DYFS should in fact hire 1,027 caseworkers, supervisors and aides over the next three years.

DYFS' computer system is so antiquated that it utterly fails to track such basic information as foster home vacancies, caseworker visits with children, what medical services are required and what services are received.

"It's an outrage that this system has been so bad for so long with so little done to fix it," said Susan Lambiase, associate director of Children's Rights. "Provost Schwartz uses the state's own data to document a system in a perpetual state of crisis but analyzes it to show how reform could happen. The state could have done that itself years ago, if they had not perpetually put foster children at the bottom of the list."

Background

Charlie and Nadine H. v. McGreevey is a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in 1999 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey by Children's Rights and the New Jersey law firm of Lowenstein, Sandler, charging that the state's child welfare system is poorly managed, overburdened, underfunded and is harming the health and safety of New Jersey's children. Documents obtained through the lawsuit, and ordered released to the media by Magistrate Judge John J. Hughes, show in individual cases how DYFS failed to respond appropriately to protect plaintiff children who were abused, and sometimes died, in foster care. The evaluation released today is the second in a series that reports on various aspects of the child welfare system to provide evidence of system-wide failures in practice and management. As the case proceeds toward an expected trial this fall, the parties are also discussing the possibility of settlement under the guidance of a mediator.

Lowenstein Sandler consistently ranks at the top among New Jersey's largest law firms in the New Jersey Law Journal's annual pro bono survey. The firm has played a visible role in cases involving educational equity, civil rights, and political asylum, and has a deep commitment to children's issues.

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.