Oregon Foster Care: New Report Details Many Failings

Substantiated cases of abuse of children and youth under the care of Oregon Department of Human Services have been escalating, according to a new report commissioned by the governor in the wake of many reports last year detailing problems with the system.

The report, which is a draft with the final report expected to be presented in November, details many failures from a short of foster homes, to lack of data being collected, to gaps in training.

In addition to the increase in substantiated cases of abuse of children and youth under DHS care - to 85 last year from 63 the year before - the consultant's report details several areas of concern, including:

Oregon’s foster children and youth experience higher than national rates of maltreatment
in care. The national median is 0.35 and Oregon’s median is 0.64.;

Data obtained from DHS shows that a child is six times more likely to be abused in a DHS certified Foster home than a foster home contracted through a CCA (child caring agency);

Space availability drives placement decisions, rather than the needs of foster children and youth.;

Oregon’s placement capacity for high-needs children and youth is shrinking.;

There were 23 lawsuits filed against DHS in the last five years that ended in an award or settlement of $50,000 or more. Nineteen of those involved DHS-certified foster homes.

Foster care providers are not adequately trained or supported to safely care for children and
youth with high needs placed with them;

The rate of substantiations to the population of youth in care broken out by race, shows American
Indian children are at the highest risk of maltreatment in care, almost twice as high as Caucasian, and African American children and youth are slightly more at risk than Caucasians;

DHS does not collect data on sexual orientation or identity, although focus group participants highlighted these as important considerations for safety in care'

DHS staff through the Internal Resource Committee, did report work being done in the areas of addressing implicit bias across the system;

Clyde Saiki, director of the Department of Human Services, said one of the most troubling findings was that staff at the agency failed to address problems they had known about for years, such as the shortage of quality foster homes. Saiki said of the findings from previous reviews which were listed by the consultants. "It was kind of difficult to hear that in some cases, we'd started work that was never completed and in other cases we never even started."