Mass. Foster Care System On Trial In Class Action Law-Suit

by JG Vibes

The foster care system and really the whole Child Protection Services (CPS) establishment is a truly horrible institution.

Far too many times, children are taken from families where there are no problems, and placed in the hands of foster families who have a much higher frequency of abuse.

Of course, this is not to say that all foster families are abusive or that abuse is never stopped by CPS, but generally speaking foster parents are more likely to be abusive than a child’s family of origin.

According to Public Integrity:

“The state of Massachusetts is going to trial this week, fighting accusations that it is systematically failing to protect children in foster care from allegedly unfit foster homes,  physical abuse, medical and educational neglect, questionable psychotropic drug doses and other harm.

Children’s Rights, a New York-based children’s national advocacy group, filed suit against Massachusetts Gov. Deval  Patrick and two health and human services officials in April 2010. The trial that opened in federal court in Boston Tuesday could last for weeks.

Massachusetts has a good reputation as a state concerned with child welfare, Children’s Rights’ executive director Marcia Robinson Lowry said. But after two years of research, her group was surprised to conclude that the state’s child-welfare system is “one of the most dangerous in the country on a number of significant measures.”

The Children’s Rights’ suit is a class-action lawsuit with six young plaintiffs whose alleged neglect is specifically described, along with findings based on data measuring various aspects of children’s care. Massachusetts tried, unsuccessfully to get a court to block Children’s Rights’ pursuit of a class-action lawsuit representing all the state’s foster children, who currently number about 7,500.

Massachusetts is the first state to decide to go to full trial – instead of settling— in response to a legal challenge by Children’s Rights alleging that foster children’s constitutional rights are being violated. Children’s Rights has sued 15 other states’ foster-care and welfare systems for alleged neglect of children.

“The accusation of deliberate indifference just does not fit,” said Angelo McLair, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families, who is also named as a defendant in the suit. He told the Center for Public Integrity that the trial— expected to last weeks— is an opportunity for the state to air its side of the story, including a description of changes it has undertaken to improve the foster-care system.

Court documents show that McLair and the defendants, including Gov. Patrick, have argued that Children’s Rights can’t establish a link between the alleged harm done to the six individual plaintiffs and the need for “systemic” changes that the class-action lawsuit seeks —including federal court-ordered reforms and oversight.”

Unfortunately, while i do agree with the sentiment of the class action lawsuit, i disagree with its conclusions.  We need to prevent the government from having the ability to reach into peoples lives with these bureaucracies, totally abolishing the CPS, and restructuring the foster care system to where parents pay for the children they are getting, instead of receiving a check from the state.

This would encourage people who are actually serious about parenting to get involved, instead of creating an incentive for people to make a business out of raising children who have been displaced by the government.

This is a problem that was created on a federal level and exists everywhere in the country, so adding federal oversight to this one state will effect nothing, aside from give the bureaucrats more papers to push around.