DCF Wants Federal Oversight to End, Advocates Say Not So Fast

In April, the State Department of Children and Families filed a motion asking a federal court to end its oversight of the agency. DCF contends that numerous reforms have taken place over two decades so the oversight is no longer needed. But the plaintiff who triggered the oversight says the state's child welfare agency has more work to do. WNPR's Lucy Nalpathanchil reports

Children's Rights, a national advocacy group wants the court to deny DCF's request. It was the same group that sued Connecticut in 1989 for systemic problems within DCF that included children languishing in state custody for years.

Ira Lustbader is the Associate Director of Children's Rights. He says DCF's motion lacks credibility because the agency continues to fail in meeting the needs of children like providing necessary medical and dental services, its overuse of institutional placements, and a failure to provide independent living services to older foster youth.

Lustbader says quarterly reports from a neutral court monitor confirms this.

"How can fifty or even sixty percent of the time meeting kids' basic service needs be acceptable as grounds to walk away from a federal lawsuit? I can understand the political motivation here at the end of this administration's term to try and get out from under this lawsuit. But factually and legally, there's no basis for the motion they've made."

But DCF cites a two-thirds reduction in social worker caseloads and a thirty-one percent decrease in the number of children in state care as some of the reasons to end the litigation. In an April statement, DCF Commissioner Susan Hamilton said it’s also time to stop spending millions of taxpayer dollars on lawyers in a case that is no longer necessary.

Lustbader says DCF has until August to file its response and then it will be up to a federal judge to decide whether to approve the motion to end oversight.

for wnpr I'm Lucy Nalpathanchil