Although the state of Missouri paid $3.4 million to settle litigation concerning the mental health of foster youths, federal supervision is far from over.
“We're in the process of implementing a settlement agreement whereby the state of Missouri is agreeing to pull together, in a timely and comprehensive fashion, all the medical and mental health records for the children to prepare to promulgate and hold the state accountable in an informed consent system,” Samantha Bartosz, deputy litigation director with Children's Rights.
The U.S. District Court of the Western District of Missouri retains jurisdiction over the settlement as it's being implemented in the children's division of the Missouri Department of Social Services.
“If we see data that suggests the state is not getting the job done, we're in a position to raise the matter with the federal court and seek court support to move the matter along as monitoring reports are delivered,” Bartosz told the St. Louis Record.
The settlement stems from a 2017 lawsuit against the Missouri Department of Social Services by Children’s Rights and other groups alleging that foster children had been overmedicated with psychotropic pharmaceuticals, which may have caused them to experience psychosis, seizures, irreversible movement disorders, suicidal thoughts, aggression, weight gain, organ damage, and other life-threatening conditions, according to media reports.
“We engaged in an intensive investigation in the state of Missouri reviewing on paper, all policies, practices, and data,” Bartosz said. “From the Kansas City side of the state across to the St Louis side of the state, we interviewed any number of caseworkers be they physicians, former caseworkers, foster parents, adoptive parents, guardians ad litem for children and we determined from what they were experiencing in relation to psychotropic medications that it was clear there were real gaps.”
Money collected from the state of Missouri will cover fees associated with investigating, litigating, and settling the lawsuit, which sought to reform the way psychotropic medications are prescribed in foster care, according to Bartosz.
“This was not a case that sought any money damages for any child who may have suffered a compensable harm,” she said. “This was strictly a federal court constitutional class action that sought injunctive relief in the form of an order that requires the state to build the infrastructure and the capacity to oversee psychotropic medications in a safe way.”
In addition to paying Children’s Rights attorneys, the settlement money will be used to pay attorneys from the private law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius, the St. Louis University School of Law, and the National Center for Youth Law.
“We had a plaintiff's team of lawyers,” Bartosz added. “Those hours were aggregated and scrubbed for billing judgment and then presented to the trial court as an amount that plaintiffs under Section 1988 of federal law are entitled to reimbursement on.”