The state of Oregon is under a court order to lower the rate of mistreatment of children placed in its care.
Child welfare officials tried to argue that children who are legally in their custody, but who have temporarily been placed back with their biological parents and are abused, shouldn’t be included in the overall rates of abuse.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.
The court’s decision this week comes nearly a year after the Oregon Department of Human Services settled a sweeping class-action lawsuit. As part of the settlement, the state promised to reduce the rate of mistreatment and increase the quality of foster care placements. That will now include all children who are in the state’s custody – both physically and legally – even if the state temporarily places them back in their parents’ care.
“DHS was trying to exclude certain kids… so they wouldn’t have abuse or neglect statistics count against them,” said Tom Stenson, an attorney with Disability Rights Oregon, the nonprofit that represented plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit. “We think the state should focus on ending child abuse and protecting the children in their legal care and not try to change the definitions so that child abuse that is actually happening doesn’t count for some reason.”
As part of the class-action lawsuit, a neutral expert, Kevin Ryan, was appointed to oversee the roughly 4,490 children in the state’s child welfare system. Ryan recently released his first report at the end of July, offering a roadmap on how the state should cut down the number of kids abused in its care. The report also sets goals on how quickly kids should receive medical and mental health care once they enter the state’s care.
Stenson said the court’s decision is important because it ensures that Ryan’s overall analysis of the state system will include all children legally placed in the state’s custody. He estimated it includes up to 600 additional children placed in care.
“There would have been a big gap in his analysis,” Stenson said.
Plus, now Oregon’s definition matches what the federal definition is for kids placed in care. That means Ryan will be able to compare Oregon’s rates of mistreatment to other states for context.
State officials said despite their differences of opinion over the definition of “child in care,” they were working in “good faith.”
“Our focus remains working together — alongside the plaintiffs and the court-appointed neutral — to meet the commitments in the settlement and achieve the best possible outcomes for children in Oregon,” Jake Sunderland, a spokesman for the department, wrote in an email.
The state has relied on the Portland law firm Markowitz Herbold PC to defend it in court, costing taxpayers millions of dollars.
Stenson, the attorney with disability rights Oregon, said he’s hoping this means the state can now pivot away from lawyering and toward fixing the system-wide issues that exist in Oregon’s child welfare system.
“I’m hoping now we can focus on the kids, not the lawyers,” Stenson said. “We don’t need more filings. We need to get focused on who is getting served.”
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.