Increased number of foster care placements 'troubling,' child welfare expert says

SALT LAKE CITY — The lead attorney in a class-action lawsuit that challenged Utah's child welfare practices rejects the suggestion in a recent state audit that the lawsuit has made caseworkers and court staff "risk averse," and therefore more likely to place abused and neglected children in foster care.

"We couldn't disagree with that more," said Leecia Welch, a senior attorney with the National Center for Youth Law of Oakland, Calif., who is lead counsel on David C. v. Huntsman, originally filed in 1993 as David C. v. Leavitt.

"Our goal with David C. was, and best practice is, if kids can remain safely at home with supports, that's where they should be," she said. "That's the best place for them."

The performance audit of the Division of Child and Family Services by the Utah Legislative Auditor General shows that foster care placements in Utah have increased by 38 percent in the past decade. Meanwhile, the number of families that received in-home supports that allowed their children to remain in their homes decreased by 40 percent.

Welch said those trends are "troubling" but require further study because they are not consistent across the five regions served by the division.

"I definitely think there's a need to analyze the numbers as to what is accounting for the increase, especially when you have the largest metropolitan region tracking downward," Welch said.

She added, "If it had something to do with the lawsuit, you'd expect that to be the case in all of the regions."

DCFS has one of the most sophisticated data management systems in the nation that should enable division directors to "drill down and figure out what's going on" at the caseworker level, she said.

According to the agency response to the audit, DCFS director Brent Platt wrote that the division plans to launch a centralized intake system in July, which should provide for "consistency, fiscal efficiency and best practice while offering a service available 24 hours a day."

The audit provides an important snapshot of the state's child welfare system but it is but one indicator of how it is performing, Welch said. For instance, the division's annual reviews required under the David C. v. Huntsman settlement agreement showed improvement from fiscal year 2001 to fiscal year 2007, peaking in 2007.