Tennessee Foster Care’s Court-Ordered Scrutiny Could Soon End

Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services — which oversees foster care — is closer than ever to ending a federal lawsuit that’s been ongoing for 15 years. DCS was required to treat foster children better and has made “substantial progress,” as reported in court Monday.

The department has been trying to meet 136 court requirements for protecting children, finding them adoptive homes, and training foster parents. Now there are just 12 more goals to meet before strict oversight can end.

“I’ve been doing this a long time and … the horizon is visible,” said recently named Commissioner Bonnie Hommrich.

She’s been a high-ranking leader in the department since 2004. Over all that time, she’s had national experts scrutinizing how the state cares for its foster children.

And the state was praised in court for coming a long way — for reuniting more families, improving a malfunctioning computer system, and making sure that child abuse investigators have manageable caseloads and better training.

DCS has made reforms in the past only to backslide later. But attorney Ira Lustbader, whose
New York-based watchdog group Children’s Rights filed the lawsuit on behalf of Tennessee foster children, said the past year has shown rapid improvements.

“I think we lost some ground with some setbacks in leadership … but I think we’ve more than regained the progress and the trajectory we were on back then,” he said.

DCS still needs to limit the over-medicating of foster children and the use of physical restraints in state facilities.

But officials said they could meet all requirements by the end of the year and move to end the intense monitoring. The department would need to maintain its performance for a full year before concluding the court process.

Hommrich said she feels DCS is performing well on the unfinished requirements, but needs to prove it through documentation.

“You know, when a worker is facing, ‘Do I make an extra visit? Do I spend extra time with a foster parent?’, they often choose that over the record. And so our job is partly to gently remind them that they must. They need to do that documentation so there is evidence of all their hard work,” she said. 

U.S. District Court Judge Todd J. Campbell questioned attorneys for about an hour before concluding that the 
“
trend is good
“ 
for DCS
.