Federal government steps into lawsuit dealing with NC foster children’s mental health | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the Carolina Journal. The author of this post is CJ Staff.

    "To the extent any parent or guardian consented to a foster child's placement in a PRTF, that prior consent has no bearing on whether the parent or guardian opposes community-based treatment under the integration mandate," the U.S. attorney argued. "Whether a person consents to institutional treatment is an entirely different inquiry from whether the person would accept community-based services if those services were available."

    "A decision by DHHS or its agents to place a foster child in a PRTF also does not defeat an integration mandate claim," according to the statement. "A state cannot abdicate its obligation to provide services in integrated settings to children in its custody simply by asserting that it chose institutional placement for those children. ... [C]ourts routinely hold that it would be 'illogical to make plaintiffs suing a state rely on an opinion from that state's professionals,' and the same reasoning applies here. Allowing a public entity to defeat an integration mandate claim by arguing that it selected institutionalization for children in its custody would render the integration mandate meaningless for those children."

    The statement suggested that the plaintiffs challenging DHHS rules have met the legal standard for the case to proceed.

    "These allegations are enough to establish a causal connection between DHHS's actions and Named Plaintiffs' resulting segregation or risk of segregation," the U.S. attorney's office argued. "Plaintiffs have likewise cleared the low bar for pleading redressability, because an injunction requiring DHHS to modify its service system - so that community-based services are actually available to children who need them - would more than likely address Named Plaintiffs' injuries."

    Kinsley, the named defendant in the suit, took over DHHS' top job in January 2022.

    "Within a month of his appointment, Secretary Kinsley reorganized the Department to create a new Division of Child and Family Well-Being, bringing together programs and staff operating across multiple department divisions to support the physical, behavioral and social needs of children," according to a memorandum filed in March in U.S. District Court. "In March 2022, the Child Welfare and Family Well-Being Transformation Team released a 'Coordinated Action Plan for Better Outcomes' focused on what it recognized as an 'urgent crisis of the growing number of children with complex behavioral health needs who come into the care of child welfare services.'"

    Kinsley cited "improving services for children with behavioral health needs in the foster care system" as one of his top priorities during a confirmation hearing in June 2022.

    "It is a long-term, herculean effort, in which DHHS plays an important, but not solitary, role," according to Kinsley's lawyers.

    "Before any of these efforts could bear fruit - indeed, before Secretary Kinsley had been in his position for even a year - Plaintiffs brought suit," the memo continued. "Plaintiffs claim that DHHS has a 'policy or practice' of discriminating against foster children with mental health impairments; of 'prioritizing or permitting' placement of foster youth with severe behavioral and mental health needs in psychiatric residential treatment facilities; of 'permitting shortages' of community-based placements and services; and of failing to make 'reasonable modifications' to those policies and practices that would enable more foster children with behavioral health needs to be served in the community."

    "In other words, the Complaint alleges that the DHHS is failing to address the issues on which Secretary Kinsley, DHHS, and other stakeholders across the State have been working tirelessly over the last 14 months," the secretary's lawyers wrote.

    Kinsley argued that the plaintiffs' allegations under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Rehabilitation Act fail "to state a claim upon which relief can be granted." He also argued that state courts already have ruled on whether it was necessary to place the named plaintiffs in the psychiatric treatment facilities.


    "Finally, the only relief sought in the Complaint is systemic change: an increase in placement options and treatment services that will likely take years to fully fund and develop," according to the memorandum. "The individual Named Plaintiffs have not asked for individual relief, and cannot demonstrate that the injury they have purportedly suffered would likely be redressed were the Court to grant that systemic relief. Accordingly, under fundamental precepts of federal court jurisdiction, they do not have standing."

    Kinsley's lawyers also question the legal standing of two groups acting as plaintiffs: Disability Rights North Carolina and the N.C. State Conference of NAACP.

    There is no deadline for the U.S. District Court to rule on Kinsley's motion.

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