washington, d.c.
LAshawn a. v. mayor bowser
Plaintiffs: 7 foster children, aged 3 through 11 years old, representing the class of over 900 Washington DC foster children.
Read the original complaint here (filed June 20, 1989).
About the washington, d.c. foster care system
In 1989, ABC’s Executive Director, Marcia Lowry, then serving as director of the Children’s Right Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, brought a lawsuit against the District of Columbia. At trial, the court found that virtually every aspect of the District’s child welfare system violated the law.
In 1995, after failing to comply with a system-wide, court-ordered reform plan, the District of Columbia became the only child welfare system in the country taken over by a federal court.
In 2001, after implementing many court-mandated reforms, the District of Columbia came out of receivership.
allegations
A 2015 Monitor’s report found the District of Columbia’s Child and Family Services Agency was endangering children because it was:
not timely in initiating or closing investigations of children reported for abuse/neglect;
not achieving acceptable quality in investigations;
not providing services to children and families;
improperly diverting children reported for abuse/neglect into a voluntary level of services, without conducting formal investigations; and
responsible for data irregularities in reporting to the Court Monitor.
As a result of CFSA’s poor performance, children in the foster care system in the District of Columbia were routinely at risk.
advocacy goals
After a period of great improvement, the District of Columbia’s child welfare system had a slump and failed to meet many benchmarks set by the court-appointed Monitor. Before the 1989 trial, an eight-year-old foster child, one of the Named Plaintiffs, put himself into a garbage can in a psychiatric hospital and asked to be thrown away. He serves as a constant reminder of the far too many children in foster care in the District of Columbia who had been thrown away every year. Since that time, the child welfare system has improved, a new commissioner has taken charge and has addressed many of the problems.
progress
After making a number of significant improvements with regard to increasing placements for children with serious problems, providing services to avoid the need for foster care placement, improving the quality of its planning for children, and speeding up adoption for children who can’t go home, the District seems to have moved into a period of far greater stability. The District has negotiated an exit plan, which the Court approved in Summer 2021, and now is in a period in which the Monitor will continue to report but that period will end next year, if Plaintiffs do not identify problems to the judge. We hope and expect that court jurisdiction will end next year, with a greatly improved system for the children of the District of Columbia.
meet our plaintiffs
(All names below are pseudonyms.)
laShawn
LaShawn was a four-year-old girl at the time of filing, who came into custody of the District of Columbia Department of Human Services on or about September 15, 1986. Her mother deposited her with the Department for “emergency care” because she was homeless. Despite the fact that emergency care custody is not to last more than 90 days, LaShawn remained in this care for two and a half years, until the Department filed a neglect petition against her mother. Throughout her time in the District’s care, LaShawn had no plan attached to her file beyond returning her to her mother’s care. The District failed, however, to create any specific terms to ensure that goal happened. In addition, the District failed to offer any resources to LaShawn’s mother or to examine the possibility of an adoption once it became clear that LaShawn’s mother was not going to care for her. Furthermore, despite a psychiatric review in 1987 that revealed deep-seated and serious problems, LaShawn languished for another year and a half before receiving complete psychological assessments. LaShawn has been deprived of her rights to a normal childhood, and her development has not been healthy.
demerick
Demerick was a three-year-old boy at the time of filing, who has been in District care since 1986, when his mother relinquished him for “emergency care” as an eleven-month-old. The emergency institutional facility repeatedly warned that Demerick was struggling emotionally and physically and needed to be placed in a foster care home. Nonetheless, in his three years in custody, a caseworker never visited him. Even after a court ruled that his mother abandoned him in 1987, Demerick has remained in the institution and was not referred for to the Department’s adoption unit until late 1988. Even then, the District took no action steps to achieve adoption for Demerick besides listing him on adoption exchanges.
kevin
Kevin was a nine-year-old boy at the time of the complaint, who entered Department custody when he was ten days old, after his teenaged mother signed him into emergency care. Since entering the system, Kevin has lived in at least 11 different placements, including an institutional setting, five foster homes, a group home, several hospitals, and a residential care facility. He has had at least 17 different caseworkers. The Department returned Kevin to his mother’s care on at least two occasions over the years, once because its custody had lapsed due to carelessness. During both placements with his mother, Kevin suffered physical and emotional abuse. Currently, there is no plan in place that would lead to Kevin’s adoption. As a result of a childhood ruled by neglect, Kevin has developed extreme oppositional behaviors, resulting in him being institutionalized. The Department has allowed him to be on powerful psychotropic medications since at least the age of six, instead of providing him with the appropriate treatment and attention. It is likely that he will suffer from mental problems for the remainder of his life. At age eight, Kevin put himself into a garbage can in a psychiatric hospital and asked to be thrown away.