by Ben Botkin, Oregon Capital Chronicle
June 11, 2024
The Oregon Department of Human Services and child advocacy groups who sued the state agency over its poor management of foster care are unable to agree on who should oversee a historic settlement that requires the state to overhaul its child welfare system.
Both sides proposed a neutral expert, and federal Judge Ann Aiken will pick the person who will guide the work of the settlement in a class-action lawsuit for years to come. The settlement, which could last for up to 12 years, requires the state to improve its foster care system, with the neutral expert playing a key role in setting benchmarks and determining whether the agency is making adequate progress.
The two sides agreed the state needs to make improvements in areas that include that rate at which children exit and re-enter foster care, ideal living situations for children and appropriate medical, dental and mental health care.
The settlement, announced in May, ended a class-action lawsuit filed in 2019 in U.S. District Court in Eugene based on the experiences of 10 current or former foster children. Disability Rights Oregon and the national nonprofit A Better Childhood filed the lawsuit in an effort to bring systemic improvements in the foster care system, which cares for more than 4,600 children.
The lawsuit, which gained class action status in 2022, sought to better the foster care system, which has drawn scrutiny for shuffling children from home to home, using inappropriate out-of-state placements and bunking children in hotels amid a shortage of adequate housing.
Oregon DHS and Disability Rights Oregon settle long-running class-action foster care lawsuit
Under the terms of the settlement, the two sides are to submit names to the court if they cannot agree on an expert. That has quickly happened since the signing of the settlement, records show.
In court papers filed Monday, Disability Rights Oregon and A Better Childhood nominated Kevin Ryan, who has served as a neutral expert in similar cases in Florida, Michigan, Oklahoma and Texas.
Ryan’s career in child welfare started in 2002 in New Jersey, where he was that state’s first child advocate, a watchdog role in child welfare issues. Ryan was New Jersey’s human services commissioner and worked to reorganize that state’s system into “what has now become one of the best child welfare systems in the country,” the filing said.
In 2008, he left state service and now works solely as a neutral expert to monitor child welfare cases and settlement work.
Attorneys for the Oregon Department of Human Services nominated Julie Farber, who has 30 years of child welfare experience. From 2015 until 2022, Farber was a deputy commissioner for the New York City Administration for Children’s Services, the agency’s court filing said. That role included reducing the number of children in foster care.
“Ms. Farber has dedicated her career to advocating for systemic change to improve outcomes for children and families,” the agency’s filing said.
Farber also has experience coordinating child welfare reforms in the Washington, D.C. child welfare system under a court agreement and served for five years as the policy director at Children’s Rights, Inc., an organization that has filed child welfare class-action lawsuits nationwide.
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