Indiana Dept. of Child Services Fails to Adequately Care for Children in Foster Care, Class Action Alleges

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Ten children in Indiana’s foster care system allege in a proposed class action that the state’s Department of Child Services (DCS) has failed to provide them and other minors with reasonable care and safety.

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The 66-page lawsuit claims that systemic, well-documented failures in the agency’s administration of Indiana’s child welfare system have gone unaddressed for decades, exposing foster children within its care to a serious risk of harm and leaving them without stable, permanent homes.

“The data reveals a foster care system in crisis: foster children in Indiana remain in state custody for too long, move through far more placements than the national standard, re-enter the foster care system at higher rates, are returned home when their homes are unsafe, and experience maltreatment in care at rates that exceed national standards,” the complaint summarizes.

According to the case, which also names as defendants Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb and DCS Director Eric Miller, the agency routinely places children on trial home visits that it knows, or should reasonably know, are unsafe. During a trial home visit, a child who is still in DCS custody is placed for several months in the home from where they were removed, with the goal of reunification, the suit explains.

One plaintiff, an eight-year-old boy who has been in and out of DCS custody since 2017, says that shortly after a six-month trial home visit and subsequent reunification with his mother, his stepfather murdered his younger brother.

“ … [I]f Defendants had conducted regular fact-to-face visits during the trial home visit,” the case says, “[the] Defendants may have prevented years of additional trauma [the plaintiff] has suffered, and continues to suffer, while in DCS custody.”

Per the suit, DCS’s failure to recruit and retain a sufficient number of caseworkers forces employees to take on unmanageable caseloads, which prevents them from being able to timely and adequately conduct visits with children, investigate claims of abuse and neglect, implement safety plans, inspect placements and make important decisions about a child’s life.

The lawsuit further contends that children often remain in Indiana’s foster care system for amounts of time far longer than the national average due to DCS’s failure to secure permanency within a reasonable period of time. 

Under federal law, child welfare agencies are typically required to file a petition to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 out of the previous 22 months, the case explains. However, the lawsuit says, DCS has a system-wide practice of filing and immediately dismissing petitions to terminate parental rights, which often leaves children in limbo between reunification and adoption or permanent placement with relatives.

According to the case, DCS commonly retaliates against foster parents who submit recommendations or requests by removing or threatening to remove foster children, substantiating or threatening to substantiate allegations of abuse and/or neglect against them, and rescinding or threatening to rescind their foster care licenses.

Such adversarial treatment has discouraged foster parents from accepting placements and deterred prospective foster parents from seeking a license, leading to a state-wide foster care shortage that forces children to cycle through temporary placements “with disturbing frequency,” the suit contends.

“Children and youth who experience high rates of placement instability are less likely to have educational and medical continuity, maintain meaningful relationships with their families and support systems, or consistently access necessary services,” the suit says. “Changes in living arrangements, schools, service providers, and social networks add to the initial trauma children and youth experience after being removed from their homes.”

The complaint also takes issue with DCS’s alleged failure to maintain and update medical records for foster children. The defendants regularly fail to provide foster and adoptive parents with full and accurate information about foster children, who “habitually” arrive at their placements with “just an unmarked sandwich bag containing their medications,” the filing alleges.

Without an adequate recordkeeping system to keep track of necessary medical information, neither the agency nor foster parents are capable of providing children with adequate treatment, care and support, the case stresses.

Finally, the lawsuit accuses the defendants of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act, a federal law that requires state agencies to “administer services, programs, and activities in the most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of qualified individuals with disabilities.”

As the case tells it, DCS has failed to ensure that children with disabilities in the foster care system are placed in “the most integrated, least restrictive, and most family-like environment[s]” to support their needs. Instead, the agency regularly places children with disabilities in segregated institutional treatment facilities for extended periods of time, the complaint contends.

“Further, children with disabilities who are placed by DCS in child caring institutions are subjected to substandard care and treatment, including excessive physical or chemical restraints, an institutional environment, limited access to accredited educational programs, and limited community access,” the filing reads.

In 2017, former DCS Director Mary Beth Bonaventura stepped down from her position with a warning to Governor Holcomb that then-Chief of Staff Eric Miller was “bent on slashing our budget in ways that all but ensure children will die,” the case relays. The complaint says that Miller, who Bonaventura wrote in her resignation letter was “the greatest threat to this agency and child welfare,” was appointed by Governor Holcomb to serve as DCS director in May 2023.

The lawsuit looks to represent any children for whom the Indiana Department of Child Services has or will ever have legal responsibility and/or a special relationship in the context of the child protection system.

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