Suit Seeks to End Dispute Over Funding for Foster Children

A bureaucratic dispute over who should calculate the costs of caring for hundreds of disabled foster children in Los Angeles County is jeopardizing their adoptions by families who are unsure if they can provide for their special needs, according to a class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The action, which was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, seeks a preliminary injunction against several nonprofit centers that provide care and services for disabled people as well as the state departments of Social Services and Developmental Services and the California Health and Human Services Agency. The suit demands that the agencies sort out the dispute and honor their obligations to the children and families.

For more than a decade, seven regional centers in Los Angeles County have assessed the level of institutional care required for disabled foster children. That assessment, issued in a letter, is used as a basis to calculate monetary assistance to the child and adoptive family.

In May, the regional centers said they would no longer provide those rate letters, arguing that the county Department of Children and Family Services, which oversees foster children, has the legal responsibility to determine their adoption benefits.

County officials countered that they lacked the expertise to determine rates and asked the state to direct that the regional centers continue writing the letters, setting up a stalemate.

Meanwhile, advocates said, the most vulnerable foster children are not receiving the services they need, and families are suffering financially, in some cases delaying adoptions until the dispute is resolved.

“What’s at stake is making sure that some of the most vulnerable and distressed kids in the system are getting the benefits for which they are legally entitled and that families brave enough to adopt these children have the resources needed to make these families whole,” said Dan Grunfeld, president of the public interest law firm Public Counsel, one of three groups that sued. The others are the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and the Alliance for Children’s Rights.

Grunfeld said the agencies interceded on behalf of nearly 200 children who are seeking adoption benefits and tried to broker a resolution to no avail before filing the lawsuit. Many of the children have conditions such as Down’s syndrome, cerebral palsy and autism, and require expensive acute care and equipment.

Foster parents Kong Pech and his wife are adopting 3-year-old Anna, who has developmental disabilities and whose care requires their constant attention. The family receives about $1,375 monthly in foster benefits, but once adopted, Anna is legally entitled to about $5,000 per month, the lawsuit says. Because neither the regional center nor the county has issued a rate letter, the family is in limbo.

“I love Anna and my wife loves Anna, but we need help,” he said. “I’m not working and my wife is not working. I have to pay bills, and for gas and food and her clothing, and every month I have only $100 or $200 left over.”

Officials with the departments of Social Services and Developmental Services said they had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment. Directors of the seven regional centers did not return calls for comment.

The lawsuit demands that regional centers continue to deliver rate letters or failing that, that the state agencies determine the rates so that families “can continue to receive this urgent funding.”

The Los Angeles regional centers are not alone in their contention that they are not responsible for the rate letters. The dispute has been going on for more than a year and initially involved the state’s 21 regional centers, whose association asked a judge to repeal a state regulation requiring them to write the rate letters. The judge denied the petition. Most of the regional centers continued to write the rate letters.

But in a May letter to the Department of Children and Family Services, the Los Angeles Regional Center Directors Group argued that the state had not intended to impose a “duty on regional centers or procedures for regional centers to follow.”