How to get your child support case dismissed

How to get your child support case dismissed

November 30, 3:49 PM San Diego Courts Examiner Gregory Smart

Approximately a year ago the County of San Diego initiated a child support case against me for one of our children and one against my wife for our other child. To give you a little background, 14 months ago our children ages six months and two years were removed from our custody for emotional abuse. The details of this case are the subject of several past and future articles.

The County of San Diego receives approximately $4,000 per month per child in the form of federal Title IV social security funds for each child in the custody of Child Protective Services. From the $4,000 the County pays approximately $600 per child to the foster care provider the child is placed with. Regardless of the fact that the County receives federal social security money to cover the cost associated with foster care placement, the County interprets this payment as a loss and opens a child support action against the parents to recoup the $600 under the welfare reclamation clause. Once a child support order against the parents is granted, the County receives approximately $2.40 for every $1.00 of child support collected in the form of, yep you guessed it, federal Title IV social security funds.

Is it just me or does anyone else see a problem with this system? I think it is very clear that the county is triple dipping. As a matter of fact, I think it is so clear that I decided I was going to use my child support case to expose this corruption.

A few months ago I began submitting Freedom of Information Act requests and California Public Record Act requests to compile the information I would need to expose the corruption. I submitted multiple requests seeking multiple items. A good number of the actual requests and the responses I received can be found on www.crispe.org/forum

One of the contacts I have been working with is Senior County Counsel for the County of San Diego. Last week I sat down and met County Council at the County administration building. During our meeting I explained in detail my plan to expose the corruption in the county and explained exactly the information I was seeking. I also informed County Council that I would be utilizing the discovery process in court to obtain the information I could not obtain from him.

Now, this is where it gets interesting, today I received a phone call from a lady at the Department of Child Support Services. I was informed that an ex parte hearing was set to take place on December 2nd 2009 at 08:30 in Department 42. The purpose of the hearing is that the County suddenly wishes to have the child support action against me dismissed. I inquired as to why the county would seek dismissal and I was told “because there is good cause”

My question is this, is the term “good cause” synonymous with the term “our butt is about to be in a sling” I know many people in exactly the same situation as myself but none of their cases were dismissed. Over the past year nothing has changed in my case. I am doing nothing different now that I haven’t been doing all along. The only thing that happened was that I told the County my plan and that I know what information I need to support my allegations and that I know where to get it.

I will be going to court on Wednesday. I will let everyone know how it turns out. I am actually considering objecting to the dismissal of the case, but we will see.

If anyone else has a similar story of corruption in their local or state government please let me know. I would be very interested in helping you expose the issue.

http://www.examiner.com/x-27585-San-Diego-Courts-Examiner~y2009m11d30-How-to-get-your-child-support-case-dismissed

DA: Parents Killed Adopted Daughter With 'Religious Whips'

DA: Parents Killed Daughter With 'Religious Whips'

Feb 19, 2010 6:11 am US/Pacific DA: Parents Killed Daughter With 'Religious Whips'

Prosecutors say that Butte County parents used quarter inch plastic tubing to beat their seven-year-old adopted daughter to death. Apparently, they got the idea from a fundamentalist based Christian group, which promotes using this as a way of training children to be obedient.

Three years ago, Kevin Schatz and his wife Elizabeth did something so noble, a Chico television station featured them; the pair decided to adopt three children from Liberia. Now, they're accused of killing one of them because prosecutors say she mispronounced a word.

Butte County District Attorney, Mike Ramsey, says for several hours, the seven-year-old was held down by Elizabeth and beaten dozens of times by Kevin on the back of her body which caused massive tissue damage.

"It was torture," says Ramsey.

Another 11-year-old adopted child was critically beaten for "being a liar and a bad influence on the seven-year-old."

The District Attorney points to a book written by a Tennessee Evangelist named Michael Pearl, who the Schatz's have told police they were following.

Pearl's website, www.nogreaterjoy.org, suggests "A swift whack with the plastic tubing would sting but not bruise. Give ten licks at a time, more if the child resists."

"This is not a good ole' fashion spanking, it certainly is way beyond that," says Ramsey.

The alleged beating happened on a piece of property in Paradise, where the three adopted children and the Schatz's six biological children were homeschooled.

The family rarely left, and they even grew their own food there.

Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz now face life in prison.

Not surprising, but all nine children thought these alleged beatings were normal, and they can't understand why police have arrested their parents.

http://cbs13.com/local/Parents.Accused.Of.2.1504691.html

DHS worker arrested twice in 24 hours

DHS worker arrested twice in 24 hours
Russell Carter Reporting KFOR
5:18 PM CST, February 19, 2010

OKLAHOMA CITY -- An employee for the Department of Human Services is now facing serious charges after she was arrested twice in two days. According to officials with the Edmond Police Department, Kristaline Sands was pulled over near the 400 block of S. Bryant after officers say she was swerving in and out of lanes at 4 o'clock in the morning, February 3.

"During the course of a conversation he (the officer) smelled alcohol on her breath and he performed a field sobriety test at which she failed at that time," said Glynda Chu with the Edmond Police Department. "She agreed to breathalyzer and at that point she blew a .13 and .08 is the legal limit in Oklahoma."

And just hours after being released from jail, Sands would have another run-in with law enforcement while trying to fill a prescription for Lortab at a pharmacy along Northwest Expressway.

"Where the original prescription was suppose to be for 30 tablets somebody had actually scratched this out and changed the quantity to what was suppose be given to 50," said Sgt Jennifer Wardlow with the Oklahoma City Police Dept.

Officials with DHS say they are looking into the situation are trying to figure out the best course of action.

http://www.kfor.com/news/local/kfor-news-dhs-worker-arrest-story,0,2755354.story

New York's small-town kangaroo courts: hives of abusive unchecked authority

New York's small-town kangaroo courts: hives of abusive unchecked authority
(Sounds like NH courts)

By Cory Doctorow at 12:03 AM February 20, 2010

The New York Times has an excellent investigative piece on the small-town judges of New York State. These judges are elected to office, need no legal training, have no oversight (many don't even keep court records), and have the power to imprison people for up to two years (and some accused have been kept in jail for many more years, waiting for a judge to call their cases), and collect millions in (unaudited) fines and penalties. The system is a shambles, and there have been calls for reform since the 1920s, with no movement to do anything about it, despite racist remarks, blatant violations of law, pursuit of personal vendettas from the bench and other grave misconduct. Judges send abused women back to their spouses ("Every woman needs a good pounding every now and then," quipped Donald R. Roberts, a former state trooper, now a judge in Malone, NY), lock up children, deny accused counsel, find accused guilty without a trial or a plea.

Reading this piece, you get the sense that the reporters struggled to winnow down the list of horrific abuses to fit the space -- the litany of absolutely nightmarish judicial behavior goes on and on and on and on.

And several people in the small town of Dannemora were intimidated by their longtime justice, Thomas R. Buckley, a phone-company repairman who cursed at defendants and jailed them without bail or a trial, state disciplinary officials found. Feuding with a neighbor over her dog's running loose, he threatened to jail her and ordered the dog killed...
In the Catskills, Stanley Yusko routinely jailed people awaiting trial for longer than the law allows -- in one case for 64 days because he thought the defendant had information about vandalism at the justice's own home, said state officials, who removed him as Coxsackie village justice in 1995. Mr. Yusko was not even supposed to be a justice; he had actually failed the true-or-false test...

In Mount Kisco, people who asked for the court's sympathy were treated to sarcasm: Justice Joseph J. Cerbone would pull out a nine-inch violin and threaten to play. Mr. Cerbone phoned one woman and talked her out of pressing abuse charges against the son of former clients, state records show. But it took eight years, and evidence that he had taken money from an escrow account, before the State Court of Appeals removed him in 2004 after a quarter-century in office.

The commission twice disciplined the town justice, Paul F. Bender of Marion, for deriding women in abuse cases. Arraigning one man on assault charges, he asked the police investigator whether the case was "just a Saturday night brawl where he smacks her and she wants him back in the morning..."

In 11 years as justice in Dannemora, in the North Country, Thomas R. Buckley had his own special treatment for defendants without much money: Even if they were found not guilty, he ordered them to perform community service work to pay for their court-appointed lawyers, although defense lawyers and the district attorney had reminded him for years that the law guaranteed a lawyer at no cost.

"The only unconstitutional part," he told the commission before it removed him in 2000, "is for these freeloaders to expect a free ride."

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/20/new-yorks-small-town.html

DCF worker released on bond in sex case

DCF worker released on bond in sex case
By John Pirro, Staff Writer
Published: 08:08 p.m., Wednesday, February 17, 2010

DANBURY -- Police claim that a social worker who recently separated from his wife used a pretext to lure a client to his house last week, where he allegedly gave her wine and drugs and attempted to have sex with her.

State police said the 19-year-old alleged victim sent several text messages to a friend, who came to the house and picked her up.

Subsequently, they said, Mark Swan barraged the woman with phone calls and text messages, telling her they "had to get the story straight," or he would get in trouble with his employer, the state Department of Children and Families.

The allegations against Swan, 48, a New Fairfield resident and a DCF employee since 2003, are outlined in a case file in state Superior Court, where Swan was arraigned Tuesday after being held by state police since his arrest Saturday evening.

Swan was released from custody after a judge reduced his bond to $250,000. He's due back in court on March 2.

According to police, Swan had been the woman's case worker since she was 16.

Police said that on Feb. 10, Swan called the woman, said she needed to sign some documents, and because the DCF office in Danbury wasn't open, arranged to meet her at a Route 37 cafe. The meeting occurred on a day when many state offices were closed because of an anticipated snowstorm.

When the woman arrived, Swan said the documents were at his home, and insisted on driving the woman there, according to state police.

At the house, Swan poured some wine and ground-up tablets of an anti-anxiety medication that he was taking, police said.

According to police, the woman said she drank a sip of wine, while Swan had about four glasses, and she snorted some of the drug, while Swan consumed most of it.

Police said Swan then held her down on a couch, tried to kiss and grope her while admitting that what he was doing "was inappropriate."

The woman managed to send several text messages to a friend, who came to the house and picked her up, police said. But over the next 12 hours, police said, Swan attempted to contact the woman more than 50 times by text and telephone.

On Saturday, she went to police, and investigators listened in to at least two phone calls, in which her version of the incident was confirmed, an investigator said.

Police arrested Swan late Saturday after they stopped him on Route 39 in New Fairfield for drunken driving.

State DCF spokesman Gary Kleeblatt said Wednesday that Swan has been placed on administrative leave by the agency.

Neither Swan nor the attorney who represented him in court Tuesday, Ray Lubus, could be reached for comment Wednesday.

Contact John Pirro

at jpirro@newstimes.com
http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/DCF-worker-released-on-bond-in-sex-case-369205.php

Reasonable Efforts

Lifting the Veil: Reasonable Efforts


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE PAPER TIGER

"I knew I would be here, I knew in my worst, worst moments, I knew that I would be here again," said George Miller, Chairman of the Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families.

Ten years earlier, he had set out to help craft the legislation that was to change the child welfare and foster care systems.

"We were alarmed 10 years ago by the studies done at Stanford that indicated that in California you get 6 minutes on the average for a court review to review 6 months of your life. Which may in some instances be half of your life, if you are an infant," said Chairman Miller.

"We were alarmed; and now we hear there is 30 seconds spent on the periodic review. It is a clear violation of the law. Periodic review without advocates -- clear violation of the law."[1]

The law that George Miller and the distinguished members of the Select Committee would enact would come to be know as Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act, or Public Law 96-272. The Act included a provision that "reasonable efforts" be made to prevent placement in foster care.

Ten years after he and the Committee drafted the legislation, here he was again, reminding the members of the Committee that the stories they heard that day were no different from those they had heard a decade earlier--that little, if anything, had changed.

Several months later, Chairman Miller would once again call the Select Committee to order by explaining to its newer members how Public Law 96-272 came to be enacted:

A dozen years ago, I initiated an intensive investigation of our nation's foster care program. That query began when an official of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare admitted to me that the government had no idea where many of the 500,000 foster children were living, what services they were receiving, or whether any serious attempt was being made to reunite them with their families.
The role of the government was limited; we paid the bill, often for warehousing children in institutions and inappropriate settings, without services, without accountability, without any significant efforts to address whatever catastrophe had driven them into this Dickensian disaster of a system.

We heard stories of children taken from their homes, shipped hundreds of miles away to other states where they were kept for months, or even years, in unlicensed and unsuitable places. And we responded.[2]

The legislation would enjoy wide bipartisan support, as a Boston Globe columnist explains: "Religious conservatives were denouncing the breakup of families. Libertarians were attacking 'child-snatching' agencies that invaded homes. Liberals were accusing agencies of taking away poor minority children instead of giving their families needed services."[3]
The reasonable effort requirement of P.L. 96-272 was implemented, in part, because the Congress determined that a large number of children were being unnecessarily removed from their homes.

As a California-based Grand Jury explained: "Public Law 96-272 mandates prevention of unnecessary separation of children from their families by providing social services to these families."[4]

Then, as now, there were no services being provided to prevent the traumatic and often needless removal of children into state care, the Child Welfare League of America recently explained to a Senate Subcommittee:

"Reasonable efforts" became part of P.L. 96-272 because at that time, foster care was virtually the only option available and there was recognition that alternatives were needed. Placing children in an overwhelmed, under-serviced foster care system was not then and is not now conducive to positive outcomes for children. In fact, there were many instances then, as now, of children being removed unnecessarily from families. It is important to recognize that children almost always are traumatized by removal from their own family.[5]
As Chairman Miller pointed out, the federal government often had no idea where many of the children were. The government paid the bill, often for warehousing children in institutions and inappropriate settings, without services, and without accountability.
Hence, Public Law 96-272 also included a provision that a reasonable system be developed to identify the hundreds of thousands of children in state care.

"The goals of the Act are modest," Children's Rights Project attorney Marcia Robinson Lowry explained to the Congress.

"As a condition of federal funding, states must have a reasonable information system to identify the children in federally-funded state custody. Under this law children come into state custody only after 'reasonable efforts' have first been made to keep them at home with their families.

"Once children are in state custody," Lowry explained, "a permanent plan is to be made for each child with the goal of returning them to their families, through the provision of services, or if that is not possible, that adoptive homes be sought for them. The Act also requires that children be kept in the most family like settings possible while in foster care, and that the children's status be reviewed periodically."[6]

The problem of "foster care drift," in which children are shuffled through multiple placements for years of time was also a factor.

"These amendments were precipitated by studies which showed that the public child welfare system had become a holding system for children living away from parents, rather than a system assisting parents in carrying out their roles and responsibilities and providing for alternative permanent placement for children who cannot return to their own homes," explains the Departmental Appeals Board of the Department of Health and Human Services. "Thus, one of the goals of Public Law 96-272 was to ensure that children do not remain adrift in the foster care system."[7]


SOME MEASURE OF SUCCESS

The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act did enjoy some measure of success during the first few years following its passage.

The number of children in foster care during the mid-1970s was reduced from its high of half a million to a low of nearly half that number, or 262,000 in 1982.[8]


The reasonable efforts requirement succeeded in reducing the foster care population to nearly half of its previous level.

Lack of federal enforcement resulted in the subsequent doubling of the foster care population, which exceeds previous levels today.


Source: Compiled by author
The reasonable efforts requirement suffered from a near-complete lack of enforcement on the federal level.

The only method of enforcement the Congress devised was that of providing incentive funds to states who complied with the requirements of the federal law. States would "self-certify" compliance, but would be subjected to periodic audits by the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure their compliance. In the event of failure, the state would return those incentive funds over and above the federal contribution.[9]

These periodic audits of state compliance would come to be known as "section 427 reviews."

Over time, the states would learn that these reviews were all but meaningless, as Michael Petit, Deputy Director of the Child Welfare League of America recently explained to the Congress:

Having served as a State administrator myself and having interviewed hundreds over the years, 427 is a meaningless process for most of the States. It represents no kind of sanctions to the States whatsoever. It is viewed as a paper tiger.[10]
The reasonable efforts requirement also suffered from the lack of a clear definition.
A 1993 study determined that "the reasonable efforts requirement has not been formally defined in federal legislation or regulation, nor has it been addressed conclusively by the courts."

The report stressed that the lack of definition in the reasonable efforts requirement "leads to confusion, burdens the courts, and allows states and agencies to disregard it."

The report also asserted that those states, jurisdictions, and agencies which did adhere to the requirement did so without federal guidance.[11]

Indeed, the failure of the federal government to provide effective oversight has long been an issue. In 1986, six years after the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act became law, Mark Soler, director of the National Youth Law Center explained:

In foster care, the Department of Health and Human Services has failed to promulgate meaningful regulations to implement the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act. It has applied even the minimal Federal regulations that were developed in an inconsistent and arbitrary manner, resulting in confusion among State officials and only token implementation of the laws protecting children.
There is no clear Federal voice as to what is required under Public Law 96-272.[12]

"I never thought we would be here this long," said a frustrated George Miller two years later. By this time, eight years had elapsed since he and the members of the Select Committee had gone through the tortuous process of crafting the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act.
"I think what has been demonstrated here is that you may have a system that, for lack of a better phrase, is simply in contempt," said Miller. "This system has been sued and sued and orders have been issued and people have just continued on their merry way. And HHS has just continued to look the other way. You have a system that is not only somewhat out of control; it is also illegal at this point."

There was no expression of interest on the part of the administration in getting the child welfare system back on track, said Miller, and as a result "what we see is that it is chewing up an increasing number of children in the process."[13]

"The reviews that are done of the States are irresponsible," said Marcia Robinson Lowry. "States are passing HHS audits with systems in which no reasonable person could consider children are being well treated. It is virtually impossible to fail an HHS audit."[14]

Nevertheless, several states have managed to accomplish just that.

Louisiana was among those states to accomplish the impossible, having failed its compliance audit. When asked what her state had done about it, Sydney Olson, then Assistant Secretary in charge of child welfare has no idea what, if anything, her agency had done, prompting the exasperated Chairman George Miller to ask: "What do you do in this department?"

Perhaps the best indication of the states contempt for federal oversight came when Congressman Thomas Downey, who was co-chairing the hearings, read aloud from the prepared testimony of Olson's predecessor as provided at the hearings held one year earlier, comparing it to the testimony Olson had just delivered. Word for word, the excerpts were identical.

"This reminds me of the book reports I used to do in high school," said Downey, adding that he had recycled them in the tenth and twelfth grades. "My reports didn't change. Remarkably, apparently neither does your testimony from year to year."

Added the frustrated Chairman Miller: "What you are really engaged in is state-sponsored child abuse."[15]


COMPLIANCE ISSUES

In 1984, the Office of the Inspector General of HHS identified 28 states "that were having difficulties in satisfying the program requirements."

A full decade after the implementation of the Act, between the period of March 1990 through October 1992, several states and the District of Columbia managed to accomplish the impossible and fail their compliance audits.[16]

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, for example, was found ineligible to receive $5,634,432 in federal incentive funds for fiscal year 1991. Federal reviewers determined "that Illinois was well below the 90% compliance level required for that year."

Reviewers found "overwhelming evidence" of the state's lack of compliance. During its review, they found the first 8 out of 12 sampled cases out of compliance. Continuing the review, they concluded that 52 of 107 sampled cases were out of compliance.[17]

In a similar action, Illinois raised a number of legal arguements, among them contending that if disallowances based on the review methodologies "are not outright unlawful, they are clearly against stated Congressional policy and must on that basis be deemed arbitrary and capricious."

The Appeals Board was unpersuaded by this argument, however, as Illinois had already raised it in the previous action.[18]

In 1995, the HHS Departmental Appeals Board determined that of 100 sampled payments for which the state of Pennsylvania had filed for federal reimbursement, 25 were found to be ineligible, primarily for lack of proper judicial determinations with respect to reasonable efforts having been rendered to prevent removal, or determinations that remaining in the home would be contrary to the best interests of the child.[19]

The state of New York is among those to share the dubious distinction of failing an HHS compliance audit. This case merits review at some length, as it details the extent to which the states will go to maximize federal foster care revenue.

The disallowance was based on an audit of State claims for foster care maintenance payments made by the New York City Department of Social Services.

Federal auditors determined that the City had made errors in determining eligibility, or had failed to document eligibility, in 186 of 257 sample cases, projecting a disallowance of $64,123,732.

Auditors also initially disallowed an additional $27,991,567 which was claimed for "administrative costs."

The 186 disallowed cases included:


76 children who were not removed from the home of a specified relative as a result of a judicial determination, or were no longer under the jurisdiction of the court, or did not have a timely judicial determination

65 children who had judicial determinations which did not contain evidence that the court had reached a decision to the effect that continuation in the home would be contrary to the welfare of the child, or that reasonable efforts were made to prevent removal or made it possible for the child to return home

58 children who were not eligible for AFDC either initially or during their placement in foster care

22 children who had neither a Social Security number nor an application for a number prior to April 1, 1985

15 children who were not removed from the home of a specified relative, or were not physically removed from the home, although foster care payments had been claimed for them

16 children who were no longer in foster care yet payments continued
In addition to all of this, 5 case folders were not found, 6 case folders were inadequately documented, 15 children were ineligible because responsibility for their care and placement was either not imposed on New York City or was transferred to private agencies, another 4 children were voluntarily placed into care without a signed voluntary agreement in violation of regulations, while another 3 children were ineligible because they were not United States citizens or legal aliens.

On appeal, it was found that "the auditors were in a sense being conservative in using the percentage of payments found in error, rather than the percentage of children for whom those payments had been made." Auditors found that 76.6% of the children in the sample, as compared to 52.6% of the payments, were in error.[20]

True to form, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has continued in its efforts to undermine the few meager protections offered to children by the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act.

In August of 1994, the Department issued a report citing some of the same disallowances detailed here, including that of New York, presenting them as examples of the "proliferation of rules" which when tied with penalties for noncompliance have "hampered the States in their administration of the Federal Foster Care program."

Incredibly, the report argues that: "The children in need of foster care services may be deprived of Federal support because the State's difficulty in meeting the precise statutory requirements prescribed for the use of Federal funds."

"There is no allowance for or definition of 'substantial compliance'," says the report.

Apparently, the Department of Health and Human Services is of the opinion that 76.6% of all children in a sample group in New York; 52 of 107 sampled cases in Illinois; and 25 of 100 cases in Pennsylvania being out of compliance would constitute "substantial compliance."

The continued efforts of the Department of Health and Human Services to derail the Act have served well to undermine confidence in its key provisions.

As the report notes: "In recent months some of these eligibility requirements have been viewed as 'technical' in nature by Members of Congress and State officials."

The law was destined for failure, as the Department of Health and Human Services was hostile to the law from its inception, wrote George Miller in 1990. "Frankly, we don't know whether or not the law works because the Department of Health and Human Services, throughout the 1980s, failed to enforce compliance.

"One of the first acts of the Reagan administration in 1981 was to try to repeal the law. When the Congress wouldn't let that happen, the Department effectively repealed the law through its lax enforcement."

Adds Miller: "I'm asking the same questions I asked more than a dozen years ago when we developed this landmark legislation. And still there are no answers."[21]

But the hostility toward the legislation on the part of the Federal leadership was not the only factor leading to the failure of the Act. The real battle would be fought by a variety of special interest groups with vested interests in maintaining the levels of children in foster care, and by a bureaucratic structure intent on ensuring its own survival.

http://www.liftingtheveil.org/reason01.htm

A Critical Look At the Child Welfare System The Sectarian Agencies

A Critical Look At the Child Welfare System
The Sectarian Agencies

We have created a foster-care monster. A big business with
long tentacles and thousands of patronage jobs.

Judge Judy Sheindlin --
Supervising judge of family court in Manhattan


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


THE SECTARIAN AGENCIES

According to Richard Wexler, the City of New York contracts for preventive services with some of the same agencies that derive their income from foster care. Hence, there is little incentive to provide preventive services that would lead to family reunification.


These agencies prefer placing children in foster care -- and keeping them there -- because they are paid for foster care on a per diem basis. As soon as they do what they're supposed to do -- reunite families -- their money stops.[1]
New York City has an unusual combination of private contractors providing child welfare services. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit describes this arrangement with the city agency, formerly known as the Child Welfare Administration:


CWA has traditionally entered into contracts with private, nonprofit "voluntary" agencies that perform the foster care tasks of placing children into foster boarding homes or congregate care facilities, monitoring placements, and providing essential services specific to each child's needs. Many of these agencies are operated under sectarian auspices. In addition to contracting with voluntary agencies, CWA itself operates foster boarding homes and congregate care programs.[2]
The referenced case finds its roots in a 1973 action against the City of New York and the various private agencies with which it contracts. The case found its way to settlement after years of litigation in 1984, resulting in the signing of the "Wilder Decree," an agreement to end deeply institutionalized discrimination among the private sectarian agencies.

Nearly 22 years after the original suit, the case was once again under litigation as the City of New York and its private agencies argued that foster children in "kinship care" arrangements were not bound by the terms of the Wilder Decree.

Another New York City suit reveals the extent to which some private agencies will go to maintain profits. In a sworn affidavit, a social worker testified that she was told by a representative of a private agency that the agency had imposed a three-month moratorium on sending children home "because it was not receiving sufficient referrals to fill its beds."[3]

But there is a greater difficulty facing those children who desperately yearn to be reunited with their parents today. As part of a recent push to reduce its tremendous foster care caseloads, in New York, the private foster-care agencies have their caseloads reduced if they fail to meet the city's adoption goals.[4]

This development is not unique to New York. Several states have recently turned toward legislative measures to increase adoptions, and measures that would make it easier to terminate parental rights as means of reducing burgeoning foster care caseloads.

One of New York's most prominent and outspoken jurists, Judge Judy Sheindlin, supervising judge of Family Court in Manhattan, comments on the foster care system as it exists today:


In the long run, we have to ask ourselves the following question: When it comes to family, are we better off today than we were 100 years ago? How did government get the idea it could intrude into the lives of families who have typically taken care of themselves?
We have created a foster-care monster. A big business with long tentacles and thousands of patronage jobs.[5]


OTHER SECTARIAN AGENCIES

New York is not the only state where we find social services agencies operating under sectarian auspices. Lutheran Social Services of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, Inc., has outservice offices and residential care programs at 199 sites in 90 communities of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, servicing more than 100,000 people annually. Among the services provided: Adoption and foster care, behavior health care, birth parent services, family and individual counseling, and family preservation services.[6]

Lutheran Social Services also offers: "129 residential centers with capacity to serve more than 1,042 children and adults. Services for neglected children, disturbed and delinquent teens, alcohol and drug abusers, criminal offenders, adolescent sexual offenders, adolescent victims of sexual abuse, people who are developmentally disabled, chronically mentally ill, elderly."

The agency, which has a staff of over 2,000 employees, is owned "by 500,000 Wisconsin and Upper Michigan Lutherans in 830 congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America." Among the sources of its funding are church contributions, United Way allocations, government contracts, client fees, gifts and grants. Its current fundraising goal? $14,000,000.

Lutheran Children and Family Service of Eastern Pennsylvania currently has over 300 children placed through its foster care program.[7]

Lutheran Social Services of the South, Inc., is licensed to provide adoption services in the state of Texas and contracts with other agencies in Louisiana for the service. Both the Texas and Louisiana affiliates provide foster care services.[8]

Lutheran Social Services of New England, Inc., offers a wide array of services in the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Featured among them are services such as: "Home study and licensing," "Birth parent counseling," "Assistance in locating and coordinating out of state adoptions," and, to be sure, "Preparation of legal documents for the termination of parental rights and for legal documents necessary to finalize an adoption."[9]

In Iowa, the Dubuque County Department of Human Services contracts with private agencies for the licensing of foster homes. Four agencies license the county's foster homes, including Lutheran Social Services and Families of Northeast Iowa. Catholic Charities, which licenses homes for adoptive replacement and Alternative Services in Cedar Rapids, is also starting to license Dubuque County homes.[10]



QUALITY OF CARE

How does the quality of care delivered by sectarian organizations compare to services provided by the state?

Three-year-old Steven Allen Hoffa died in a Dubuque County foster home May 18 of 1996. A grand jury indicted the foster mother on one count of child endangerment with multiple acts, and two other counts of child endangerment against Hoffa and his 5-year-old brother, Gary. The injuries included a fracture in his skull, and mysterious injuries on his penis and buttocks. His brother had suffered a similar fracture, and burns on his chest.

The Iowa Department of Human Services, Lutheran Social Services of Iowa, and the Visiting Nurses Association of Dubuque together monitored his care.[11]

The quality of the recruitment process, it seems, is at least partly to blame.

In North Carolina, where at least 42 former prison inmates with crimes ranging from shoplifting, forgery and bribery to cocaine trafficking, armed robbery, assault and murder were licensed as foster parents in 1994, we find foster parent Barver Dean Hunt, who shot and killed two men during a drunken argument in 1974.

"They wanted to borrow my car, and neither one of them didn't have a license," said Hunt. "I asked them to leave. They didn't. They had a knife and came at me. I reached in the rack and got a gun and drawed it on them. They said I didn't have enough nerve to use it on them, and that's when I started shooting."

When Lutheran Family Services in Robeson County recruited Hunt and his wife as foster parents in 1992, they somehow failed to discover the murder convictions.[12]

In San Francisco, Selena Hill was removed from her parents shortly after birth. There were no allegations of abuse or neglect. Selena was removed because of concerns that the couple may be "unfit" as parents.

Some weeks later, seven-week-old Selena Hill was admitted to Children's Hospital in Oakland with multiple skull fractures that nearly killed her, and which may result in permanent brain damage.

Social workers had placed the infant in a foster home with a long history of domestic violence. Police had been summoned to the home at least three times during the previous year. The home was licensed by Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.[13]



INDUSTRIALIZED ANGUISH

A 1993 report prepared by New York State Senator Franz S. Leichter, New York State Abandons Victims of Institutional Child Abuse, illustrates in graphic detail the extent of physical and sexual abuse to be found in institutionalized foster care facilities. The report describes the apparent unwillingness on the part of the Department of Social Services to validate the abuse that often occurs in these settings.[14]


One such case involved a seven-year-old girl who was repeatedly raped by other children at the St. Joseph's Children's Services Agency:


One of the cases this office claimed to be unable to substantiate involved a seven-year-old girl who was apparently repeatedly raped last year by other children at St. Joseph's Children's Services Agency in Brooklyn. When deposed in a lawsuit brought by the little girl's mother, the DSS investigator testified that boys at the facility had told her about their sexual contact with the girl, staff members had admitted witnessing the abuse, and one staff member had admitted engaging in sexually provocative behavior with the girl. In addition, medical evidence which the investigator failed to request confirmed that the little girl had been raped since she arrived since she arrived at St. Joseph's. Nevertheless, the DSS investigator's official finding in the case was that there was "no credible evidence" of child abuse or staff neglect.
The report continues:
In the Form 2223, the investigator, in her own handwriting, directly contradicts facts she had sworn to in the deposition only days before. She states that she found
"...no evidence of a lack of supervision."
"...no evidence of sexual abuse on behalf of staff."
"...no knowledge of resident' sexual acts" on the part of staff.


She concludes, "We find no credible evidence to substantiate allegations of sexual abuse."


THE BEST DEFENSE?
Marcia Robinson Lowry, of the ACLU Children's Rights Project, filed the original 1973 suit that resulted in the ending of deeply institutionalized racial discrimination among the New York City non-profit sectarian agencies. These agencies, operated primarily by influential Jewish and Catholic organizations, including the Archdiocese of New York, argued for years that they had the right to place children into their facilities based on religious and ethnic background.

The Archdiocese of New York, the largest non-profit provider of such services to the City, spent millions of dollars arguing in support of foster care placements based on religious and ethnic criteria. Undeterred by years of litigation, the Archdiocese announced that it would continue to provide foster care services to the City.[15]


Critical of the reform efforts is William Donohue, a sociologist and president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights in New York City. Incredibly, he accused attorney Marcia Robinson Lowry of attempting to destroy the Catholic child welfare agencies when she filed the 1973 Wilder v. Bernstein suit, calling Lowry "anti-Catholic."[16]

http://www.liftingtheveil.org/foster08.htm