Monitor'a Progress Report on Foster Care Reform Shows Tennessee is Still Failing Children

PRESS RELEASE

Monitor's report shows widespread failure to put court-ordered reforms in place and meet basics needs of children in foster care.

(Nashville, November 4, 2003) The Court-Appointed Monitor of Tennessee's child welfare system issued a compliance report today that finds the state is failing to improve the care and protection of children who are in the custody of the Department of Children's Services (DCS). Sheila Agniel, appointed as Monitor by the federal court in 2001 as a result of the settlement of the Children's Rights reform lawsuit, Brian A. v. Sundquist, evaluated DCS's efforts over the past 27 months to implement the many reforms called for by the settlement. The Monitor found the state in full compliance with only 24 of the 136 different provisions for which she was able to issue a finding. The Monitor issued findings of outright "non-compliance" on 84 separate requirements.

The report is the first scheduled report to review DCS's efforts to implement the systemic changes mandated by an agreement reached in May 2001 between the state and Children's Rights, a national non-profit advocacy organization that partnered with a team of Tennessee lawyers to represent Tennessee's abused and neglected children in the lawsuit. The federal court approved the settlement in July 2001. The Monitor's review was based in large part on a record review of the case files of over a thousand individual children in state custody, covering a wide range of issues involving the children's safety and well-being.

"The children in Tennessee's child welfare system continue to suffer and it is very disappointing to see how little progress the state has made over two years," said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children's Rights. "These children cannot wait any longer for the reforms promised by this settlement."

Areas in which the Monitor reported non-compliance include:

DCS completed timely investigations of only 37% of the reports of abuse or neglect of foster children made to it between July 2002 and May 2003.

DCS case workers made the required "face-to-face" visits with children in DCS foster homes in less than 40% of the cases reviewed by the Monitor.

DCS provided the services to foster children needed to promote the safe reunification of foster children with their families in only half of the cases reviewed; the families themselves were provided needed services less than a third of the time.

DCS placed a third of the foster children identified by the Monitor as being at high risk for perpetrating violence or sexual assault with other foster children not identified as being at high risk, a direct violation of the agreement.
The Monitor identified a number of problems related to DCS's failure to establish and maintain an effective data system: "Data necessary to monitor class children are absent (tracking of adoption time frames, foster parent training) or inaccurate (placement history, permanency goals, investigation of allegations of abuse/neglect)."

"Hard won benefits for children in Tennessee are not being realized," said Doug Gray, a staff attorney at Children's Rights. "We are concerned not only with the breadth of the Department's non-compliance - the sheer number of different areas that the Department has failed to make reforms intended to benefit Tennessee's foster children - but also the fact that the Department doesn't appear to have a coherent plan to get into compliance."

"This Department has a long way to go toward meeting their legal obligations to these children," said David Raybin of Nashville's Hollins Wagster & Yarbrough P.C., co-counsel with Children's Rights in the Brian A. lawsuit. "It's disturbing that helping vulnerable kids by getting into compliance with this settlement has not been the state's priority."

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.