Report Shows Connecticut Foster Children at Risk as Caseworkers Fail to Visit Foster Homes for Month

PRESS RELEASE

Over 50% of children do not see a caseworker for 5-8 weeks; over 10% do not see a caseworker for 3-10 months; State's visitation rate is well below legal standards to ensure safety.

The court-appointed monitor in the class action lawsuit, Juan F. v. Rowland has issued a new report on how often caseworkers visit children in the custody of Connecticut's Department of Children and Families (DCF). The key findings show that DCF is failing to provide legally required services to ensure the safety and protection of children in foster care, with over half the children not being seen for 5-8 weeks at a time. DCF is required to visit foster children once a week during the first 30 days after a child is placed out of his/her home and at least twice each month thereafter - a face-to-face visit with the child every other week, alternating with a telephone call to the child.

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"How can you know if a child is safe and cared for in a foster home if the caseworkers fail to see a child for months at a time?" stated Ira Lustbader, senior attorney in the case for Children's Rights, the national children's advocacy group which is co-counsel for the plaintiff children in Juan F. v. Rowland. "Good social work practice dictates regular and consistent visits to foster homes by trained, experienced caseworkers," said Michael Rohde, "next friend" for Florence J., one of the plaintiff children in the lawsuit, and executive director of The Cove. "DCF's failure to provide essential visitation services compromises the safety of these vulnerable children. Immediate action must be taken by DCF to increase the number and quality of caseworker visits."

Reviewing a random sample of 178 foster care cases, the Monitor's review uncovered dangerous violations of the legally required number of contacts and visits by caseworkers with children. Key findings of the report are:

*Over an 11-month period last year, 53% of children in foster homes did not see a caseworker face-to-face for least 5 to 8 consecutive weeks.
*18% of the children did not see a caseworker for at least one period of 9 to 12 weeks.
*8% of the children were not seen for at least one period of 14 to 20 consecutive weeks.
*5% of the children were not seen for at least one period of 24 to 42 weeks.
*Over a 30-day review period last year, 86% of the children did not even receive a telephone call from a caseworker.

The Monitor's report also shows that children with a greater number of moves among foster homes and children who are on waiting lists for services were less likely to be visited.

A recent report conducted by DCF under its own administrative case review system confirms the Monitor's recent findings, with over 50% of the cases evaluated failing to meet the required visitation and contact standards.

"It's truly alarming when both the Monitor's study and DCF's own evaluations show a basic failure to protect children," said attorney Martha Stone, Executive Director of the Center for Children's Advocacy, and co-counsel for the plaintiff children. "This basic right guaranteed in the Juan F. Consent Decree and DCF's policies must be improved immediately."

A hearing begun last month to determine DCF's failure to comply with its visitation obligations is scheduled to continue this week on July 11. The hearing may also address the Department's request to modify the visitation requirements in the Consent Decree. "Even under the Department's own unilaterally imposed standard of one visit per month, which is half the amount of visits required by the Consent Decree, the Department continuously fails to comply a majority of the time," said Martha Stone. "Once again we must seek to enforce basic rights for these children under the Consent Decree - Connecticut's foster children deserve nothing less."

This Monitor's report on visitation is one of three reports conducted as part of a large scale review of individual children's cases to determine the quality of care given to abused and neglected children and DCF's compliance with its obligations under the Juan F. Consent Decree. The information in the reports are connected, so for example, a recent report concerning DCF's efforts to move children toward permanent homes, usually through adoption, when their parents cannot take care of them, found widespread failures at DCF and the most frequent gap in being seen by a social worker for children waiting to be adopted, according the Monitor's Office report, was an average of seven weeks.

Center for Children's Advocacy is a Connecticut based non-profit organization which provides holistic legal representation to poor children in their communities and seeks to improve the quality of lawyering for poor children.

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.