North Carolina puts thousands of children in harm’s way by failing to fix the state’s broken child welfare system, says a federal class action complaint filed on behalf of nine foster children.
For more than a decade, the state Department of Health and Human Services ignored warnings that its failure to lead and supervise county departments of social services ”places foster children across the state at substantial risk of harm,” says the lawsuit, which was filed Aug. 27.
Gov. Roy Cooper, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kody Kinsley and others, including Mecklenburg County, are listed as defendants. The Cooper administration has already been sued for foster-care failures. A separate lawsuit accuses the state of unnecessarily warehousing foster children in locked psychiatric facilities…