Neutral overseer chosen for Oregon foster care class action settlement

Oregon’s foster care class action lawsuit against the state’s Department of Human Services was settled in May after five years. But the improvements to the foster care system agreed upon in the settlement couldn’t move forward until a “neutral expert” was chosen to oversee the system. This week, the court picked outside expert Kevin Ryan to oversee the changes. He previously played a similar role in child welfare cases in Texas, Michigan, and Oklahoma, and he also served as New Jersey’s first state child advocate.

We talk with Fariborz Pakseresht, director of the Oregon Department of Human Services and Aprille Flint-Gerner, director of Child Welfare. They discuss the settlement and what they think this will mean for foster children and youth in Oregon.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. The foster care class action lawsuit against Oregon’s Department of Human Services was settled last month after five years of legal wrangling. Under the terms of the settlement, the state and the Department of Human Services (DHS) have promised many improvements in the foster care system over the next decade. That includes reducing the rate of mistreatment of children in care and increasing the quality of foster care placements.

The first part of the agreement was for a so-called neutral expert to be chosen. That’s the person who will oversee the implementation of these reforms. This week, the judge in the case picked Kevin Ryan to be the neutral.

We talked in the past on this show with the lawyer who brought the case. Today, we are joined by two state leaders who oversee Oregon’s foster care system. Fariborz Pakseresht is the director of Oregon’s Department of Human Services. Aprille Flint-Gerner is the director of Child Welfare at DHS. Welcome to you both.

Fariborz Pakseresht: Thank you, honored to be with you. Thank you for having us.

Aprille Flint-Gerner:. Thanks for having us.

Miller: Fariborz, first – how are you feeling about this week’s news, the selection of Kevin Ryan as the neutral expert?

Pakseresht: We are feeling great. We are excited about Kevin coming to Oregon and partnering with us to continue our reform efforts.

Miller: Aprille, the state had put forward somebody who, on paper, has very similar experience. Over 30 years, Julie Farber was a deputy commissioner for Children’s Services in New York City. She coordinated court-ordered child welfare reforms in Washington DC. Why did you think that she would be a better neutral?

Flint-Gerner: We absolutely got down to the wire with Kevin and Julie, and either one of them would have been fantastic. We are excited about having Kevin. He also oversaw the child welfare system in New Jersey, and he’s worked as an expert in similar child welfare cases in other states. And he’s a deep subject matter expert on national best practices. So in the end, we didn’t feel like we were losing out either way with the selection that we had in front of us. We’re really excited to be able to have a chance to work with Mr. Ryan.

Miller: Let’s say, Aprille, two years from now he decides that you’re not making adequate progress towards your agreed upon goals. How much power would he have to compel you to change course?

Flint-Gerner: As I understand the role of a neutral ‒ which is a little bit different than in some other states and jurisdictions where it’s like a federal monitor ‒ my understanding is that he has the power to come alongside us, collaborate with us, listen to local communities in Oregon about what each and every single recommendation is going to have an impact on. What might be right for Portland might not be right for Klamath Falls.

So my understanding is that the role of the neutral is really to provide technical assistance to make those recommendations about what we can do in the context of what we’re working on and what we’re building towards. And then we will have a responsibility to respond in kind and make sure that we are working to really put those things into place.

Miller: So Fariborz, then it would be up to a judge, say, to do the compelling if in the future there is some disagreement about progress towards the goals that we’re going to get to in detail in the coming minutes?

Pakseresht: Thank you, Dave. That’s a great question. Really, again, as Aprille said, the role of the neutral is different. The power that the neutral has in this case is, why aren’t we moving toward the targets and the outcomes that we have? Are there some barriers that are causing that? And how can we work together to remove those barriers? In fact, when you read the details of the neutral’s role in the settlement agreement, he’s basically evaluating the situation throughout this  settlement and determining were some of those recommendations that were made to get us closer to the targets that we want right on point or should they be changed? Should some of the targets be changed? Should some of the measures be a bit modified? But again, it’s really working together. And if we are intentionally not doing things, yes, absolutely the court can hold us accountable.

Miller: I just want to take a step back a bit. The state ended up spending $18 million, at least, of taxpayer money over five years defending the child welfare system. From the time that this case was brought, it turned into a class action. Was that money well spent, Fariborz?

Pakseresht: I would say absolutely. And I will explain why. And actually, I have been involved. My name is on that lawsuit from day one and I’m still on there. We had two main goals in mind before we could actually sign onto a settlement. One was to make sure that we could continue making improvements ‒ which started even before the lawsuit was filed ‒ and improve outcomes for children and families in collaboration with other system partners.

And second, really be fiscally responsible around the money that we were spending defending this lawsuit. I’ll give you why I think that was fiscally responsible. From 2019 to 2024, over the same five years that we were negotiating to get the right settlement, the state of Texas spent $58 million paying a monitor as a result of their engagement in a similar case. That’s about $12 million a year. Based on our settlement agreement, we are paying $250,000 a year.

And at the same time, the lawsuit today, when you look at the initial filing and what was included in that, is completely different than what we actually ended up with. Because during the past five years, the court made a number of different rulings that significantly narrowed the scope of that agreement. So if you look at a state like Texas, that’s a never ending … they’re continuing to pay that monitoring fee and that does not include attorney fees. And here in Oregon, we feel like with the agreement that we’ve made, yes, we did spend that money, but we have avoided paying large sums of money in the next 10 years.

Miller: I want to go to the first point you made, that you wanted to make sure that whatever agreement you came to didn’t prevent you from continuing the improvements that are already underway. What do you mean by that? What were you trying to avoid and what kind of settlement that the plaintiffs would have wanted would have prevented you from improving the lives of Oregon foster care kids?

Pakseresht: Again, great question. From the very beginning of this lawsuit, we have been in contact with our partners, with our colleagues, in other states. We’ve been following all of the other settlements that had been underway, or the ones that had been completed. And what we realized is … I’ll give you an example. In Washington DC, the settlement took more than 30 years and the court actually …

Miller: Meaning, not to get the settlement, but once that settlement was made, there was monitoring of some kind for three decades.

Pakseresht: For three-plus decades. And the court admitted that those three-plus decades did not actually improve the child welfare system in Washington D.C. And it did not improve the outcomes for children and families. Compliance is a different concept than transformation. And again, Aprille can explain to you what’s underway. Our focus is trying to reduce the number of kids coming into foster care, keep children and families together, go upstream. And she’ll explain to you why we actually are being nationally noticed on the work that we’re doing here, and we did not want that to stop.

Miller: Aprille, well, let’s turn to that first and then we can get into the details of this new agreement. But what do you see as the highlights of the reform efforts that are already underway?

Flint-Gerner: Absolutely. I really appreciate the question. In the last five years, we’ve been working with our community, our system partners and the legislature to make important investments in children and families, including the launch of a statewide family preservation program, our statewide continuous quality improvement program, amongst many others.

Just a couple of data facts to throw out there. If our goal is to really safely reduce the number of children in foster care ‒ which it is, we absolutely want to see communities keep their children safe, but they don’t necessarily have to do that while their children are separated from them. Well, Oregon has seen a steady decline in the number of children in foster care, down from almost 8,000 in 2018 to just over 4,500 in 2023. A couple of other highlights, we have seen …

Miller: If I could just … that’s a huge decrease and it’s worth dwelling on it for a second. So how do you explain that nearly 50% decrease? Where are kids? Is it all of those are basically staying with their families or what else is happening?

Flint-Gerner: Absolutely. Great question. There’s lots of different pathways. One, we’ve got prevention efforts that are going on across the state that are, to Fariborz’s point, we’re being nationally recognized for them. We are talking about prevention. We’re talking about what are the things that can help a family prevent something bad from happening in the first place, where we didn’t have that focus and maybe supports kind of galvanized around prevention work. Prior to that, we’re starting to see that maybe we aren’t able to meet families needs without them coming into foster care.

Oregon, actually, we are some of the best in the nation at making sure that kids stay with their families. So we saw 74% increase in placement with what we call ‘kith and kin’ ‒ grandma, aunties, uncles. So when we’re talking about building safety within communities rather than only focusing on separation to get to child safety, when we put more of our effort there, well, obviously we’re still gonna have a foster care system. But we would much rather serve kids in communities where they’re known, where they’re loved, and where we can build sustainable safety rather than having to traumatize children coming into foster care.

Miller: What do you see, Aprille, as the most urgent problem facing Oregon’s foster care system? You’ve just outlined some of the ways that you say you’ve become a national model in improvements. But what do you see as the most urgent part of the current system that does need to be addressed?

Flint-Gerner: Thank you so much for the question. I think we talk about where we’re nationally recognized for our prevention and preservation work, and how we’re trying to shrink the front door of the child welfare system. But what happens is, if there are families that have basic needs for mental health or substance abuse treatment, or they need housing, and those things can be attended to to keep their children safe, and our door gets shorter and smaller and we have less and less families coming through, the families that are coming through, their needs are really complex. And we’re talking about the intersection of poverty and chronic neglect and a lack of resources in communities that is much harder to navigate.

And to answer your question, I think really getting to quality practice with those families requires intention. It requires focus. We need to make sure that we’re serving the right families at the right time and doing it really, really well. So for me, I really want to continue to see transformation in our safety practice. Our core practice around building safety for children in foster care is really important.

I think the second one is really making sure ...

Miller: Could I stick with that one for a second? Because this is one of the commitments in the agreement. I understand ‒ and I don’t think we have the time to get into the details of this ‒ that at the state, you have an issue with the way plaintiffs have calculated the rate of maltreatment of young people in foster care. But if I’m not mistaken, you have agreed ‒ and in a sense you were just saying ‒ that whatever the exact rate is, you want to lower it. How do you plan to do that? Kids who are specifically under the care of the state, how do you plan to keep them safer?

Flint-Gerner: We launched a continuous quality improvement program a couple of years ago, and we are already seeing improvements around child safety. And really, my goal is to continue to grow that continuous quality improvement effort. So one example – we have a branch in the Portland metro area that focused on accurate and sufficient ongoing safety plans in 2023 as a part of our continuous quality improve effort. We saw within nine months, the percentage of accurate and sufficient ongoing safety plans doubled. We are seeing those kinds of returns across the state with this newly implemented continuous quality improvement program thanks to the investment of the legislature.

So some of that local, focused effort to look at where there may be barriers to getting to that child safety, and really wrapping community around it, and figuring out how you break those barriers down, and then getting to it, we really have been seeing some progress made. So my answer would be leveraging our continuous quality improvement efforts. I do believe that the settlement agreement will also give us some opportunity to listen and learn alongside Mr. Ryan as we dig into what the data means, and how we can continue to make improvements.

Miller: Continuous quality improvement – it seems like a classic government agency phrase that can be turned into an acronym that I, to be honest, don’t really know what it means in practice.

Flint-Gerner: Yeah, what it really looks like right now, you’ve got folks all over the state that don’t have a DHS badge that are really active in our CQI program. Why ours in Oregon is actually being nationally recognized is because we’ve got tribal partners, we’ve got community partners, parents, resource parents and staff that are coming together to pick a thing to work on. And so it’s not just the system doing the same old business as usual. It really is the system sharing power with community to say, what are the things that are most important to you? How are you experiencing these things? And then how can we work together to build something? There’s ownership collectively when you’ve got community at the table, partnering with you on improvement.

Miller: Fariborz, another piece of the agreement is that you’re gonna increase the quality of available foster care homes, placements, and services. People who have been following our reporter Lauren Dake’s reporting for years now, or listening to this show, they will probably remember a lot of struggles with this over the last decade or so ‒ stories of kids being put in hotels or in unlicensed short-term rentals or in out of state facilities where they faced abuse. If there were an easy way to increase the quality of foster care placements, I think the state would have already done it. So, what’s your plan?

Pakseresht: Well, again, that is something that we will … Naturally, Aprille, as the director of Child Welfare, is already working on that. But especially after COVID, we are seeing perhaps fewer people that are stepping out there. I think we need to do a better job within the organization to reach out and we also need to better support foster parents, resource parents. Perhaps we need to look at what we’re paying them. Is the payment sufficient to take care of the children in care. And also there’s always areas for improvement. Can we better connect with them? Can we better support them? Can the communication increase?

We also need to look across the country, because this is not just limited to Oregon. Again, as we talk with our colleagues in other states, they’re facing the very same thing. It’s difficult to recruit and retain qualified resource parents. But I would say that we can always do better and it’s really not even directly related to the settlement. That is something that we have been working on and will continue to work on.

Miller: Aprille, as you mentioned, one of the knock on effects of reducing the overall number of kids in foster care is, if I understood this correctly, the ones who are remaining in care are often more challenging cases. Does that have an impact on your ability to find good homes for them?

Flint-Gerner: It’s such a great question because there are so many Oregonians out there who are fantastic foster parents and they have loving homes. They are great partners in caring for children. But the more complex the needs of a child, then the more support those people are going to need to care for them. And so I often talk about … people ask me about placement capacity, and it’s not about the number of beds. That’s really about, do I feel confident that I can care for the child that’s sitting in front of me? And we’ve made quite a few investments in our resource families of late. We have this amazing support group that foster parents can participate in, and we’ve increased their access to training. And as Fariborz mentioned, we’ve increased their rates.

But if there aren’t enough services and supports in the community to wrap around these families so that they can feel confident that they can really take good care of the child sitting in front of them that’s in their home, then we’re kind of setting them up. I think some of what we have to do is really honor and value the resource parents that we have and continue to find creative ways to invest in them to boost their confidence, because some children have really, really complex trauma needs. There are lots of folks who want to say yes, but they may not have the confidence that they’re going to get the support that they need.

Miller: Aprille, we have just about two minutes left, but I want to turn to one last provision in the agreement. It’s focused on exiting foster care ‒ family reunification ‒ ensuring that youth are given everything they need to stay healthy and safe when they return to their families. What are the challenges there?

Flint-Gerner: One of the challenges that I don’t know that people often realize is that I don’t actually return children to their families. Courts do. My staff’s job is to really make sure that they are putting before the court all of the things that they think have contributed to children being able to get home safely. So partnerships with our courts is really important because they ultimately make the decisions about when kids go home.

I do think that it’s also important that we understand the things that families need to keep them stabilized and preserved together. And so it’s not just about a child going home, but it’s also making sure that the community around a family knows what child safety looks like for each and every child. Because if grandma and the next door neighbor and the cousins all know what it’s going to take for that child to stay home, then that family is also going to be more confident that that family reunification is going to stick

Miller: Aprille, there’s been a lot of churn at your position over the years. How long will you commit to staying?

Flint-Gerner: I’m a lifer in child welfare. I’ve been in child welfare for 25 years. I am committed to serving in child welfare probably until I can’t work anymore, wherever I am. I’m an Oregonian now and I am gonna continue to try to serve this system. I’ve got a long track record of being really stubborn about staying in child welfare. So although I don’t know how long I’ll be in this seat, I am committed to continue to support child welfare and transformation in this state.

Miller: Aprille and Fariborz, thanks very much.

All: Thank you.

Miller: Aprille Flint-Gerner is the child welfare director at the Oregon Department of Human Services. Fariborz Pakseresht is director of the Oregon Department of Human Services.

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