I don't have a citation but several years ago the ACLU 
successfully 
sued the dept. of HS in Colorado in foster care. Robert may have more 
information about this. I remember it clearly because I was a foster parent 
at the time and suddenly I had to start keeping med sheets and health 
certificates, etc. >>

The ACLU "Children's Project" has successfully sued state CPS agencies for 
violations under 42 USC 671 -175. This code section requires that a "state 
plan" be in place and codified within each state regarding the process under 
which children receive intervention (with reasonable efforts to maintain or 
reunify the family), and are maintained under the state's foster care system 
(least restrictive environment, etc.). What I have to say next may be of 
interest to those of you with kids in the so-called protective system.

Each state has a "State Plan" in order to receive matching federal funds for 
foster care and Medicare under the Social Security act. This amounts to 
BILLIONS of dollars annually (some smaller states, in the hundreds of 
millions). The "Plan" is in effect a CONTRACT under which the state promises 
to comply with the federal mandates. NASVO/VOCAL and organizations such as 
the ACLU have discovered that most states are not in compliance with the 
contract (state plan) which is sworn to and signed by the governor of the 
state. Any violation of this contract makes the state negligent, not to the 
parents, but to the children and the federal government.

For instance, in some states, "reasonable efforts" has been diminished to a 
check box at the end of a reporting form from the agency, when in fact, 
reasonable efforts are the requirement to first seek keeping the child in 
their home, and if that is impossible, to seek and locate relative placement 
BEFORE REMOVING THE CHILD. It also requires that judges actually are to 
REVUE the state's efforts before determining that a child should be placed in 
foster care. We all know that this just in not done. The old "when in doubt, 
yank the kid out," is the general practice. 

Further, the state is required to provide a safe placement, and in light of 
the Children's Project discovery of children being abused more frequently in 
foster care than in their homes, there is grave violation here as well.

The ACLU Children's Project has taken several states to court over these 
violations. They are not civil rights violations, but violation of the 
mandates under the 42 USC 271.

I must also add that in 1997, the Adoption and Safe Families Act was passed 
into law, in spite of our attempts to alert Congress as to it's dangers and 
deficits. This Act effectively lowered the standard of "reasonable efforts" 
to apply only once during the initial investigation. After that, the state 
has free access to every child that family has without having to apply any 
further "reasonable efforts." It then expanded the state's reach beyond any 
finding of a criminal court as to the guilt of a "child abuser" to include 
"any court of jurisdiction." This means that if found as an abuser in the 
juvenile court (a civil court action where the burden of proof is on the 
accused parent, and the presumption of guilt exists rather than the 
presumption of innocence), the right to take all children (even non-abused 
siblings) without first applying the standards of "reasonable efforts" is 
allowed.

Further, the states now have even more encouragement to remove children and 
terminate parental rights than ever before. Under the original wording of 
the Mondale Act, states were allowed up to 18 months to maintain a child in 
foster care before moving to terminate parental rights. Now, under ASFA, 
parents have no less than six months to no more than one year to "get their 
act together" before facing termination of parental rights. Further, ASFA 
provides billions of dollars in grants to ease the state's process in 
termination hearings. It also provides the state $4,000 to $6,000 per child 
that is adopted out or placed in "some other planned permanent placement" 
(state run orphanages).

As you can see, since money runs the state machine that takes our nation's children, the extra incentive is

now to quickly remove, place in foster care, 
and terminate in order to adopt or place.

There is no monetary incentive to 
keep the child within their natural family setting.

This coupled with most state's providing paltry flat fees to PD's who 
represent parents in dependency court (here in Pima County, AZ the PD 
received a flat fee of $398 per case), most cases are now pleaded out or the 
parents are forced to "submit" to the CPS agency's petion. This in effect 
under ASFA, means they are considered child abusers, and every child they have 
or will have in the future are fair game to the state to take and adopt 
out... for a fee.

Oh, yes... one other thing. ASFA provides for funds to advertise these 
children in order to find adoptive families. The twenty-first century's 
answer to the old Orphan Trains of long ago... electronically. These kids 
are paraded on television and in newspapers. The "confidentiality" of the 
child that is so stringent during proceedings is suddenly gone when it comes 
to the agency making it's money off of the head count of children.

Do I hate this system? Passionately!