Wrongful Adoption And Failure To Supervise Foster Care Services
Agencies - both public and private - offer children for adoption. They may also supervise them in foster care. These agencies must follow two basic rules. First, under state and federal law, agencies handling adoptions must tell adoptive parents the truth about a child's medical and psychiatric status. Second, agencies handling foster care must keep foster children reasonably safe while in their custody.
An agency can be either public or private. Some agencies only handle adoptions. Others take on adoptions and foster care supervision. Foster care supervision means that an agency is responsible for placing a foster child into a home or other setting, and then monitoring the child and his environment to ensure that child's continued safety. This may include training, selecting, and monitoring foster parents, and visiting the foster home.
The law allows legal claims against agencies that break the above rules.
Wrongful adoption claims generally turn on whether an agency deliberately misrepresented and/or withheld information about a child, thereby defrauding the adoptive parents. The adoptive parents may collect money damages from an agency that conceals or misrepresents information about an adopted child. The adoptive parents may claim that they would not have adopted the child if the agency had told them the truth about the child. They may also bring a claim for the increased expenses of raising a child with the conditions that the agency concealed from the adoptive parents.
In the area of foster care, the law also allows a foster child - usually through a legal guardian - to sue an agency for not keeping him reasonably safe while in its custody. Foster children can be hurt or abused by improperly screened foster parents, children of the foster parents, adult friends allowed in the house, or by other foster children in the home with a history of violence or sexual abuse. Agencies may also be legally responsible if foster children do not receive adequate food, clothing, schooling, or medical and psychiatric care. Sometimes, agencies return foster children to biological parents that hurt or neglect the child. Agencies must also tell the foster parents about the foster child's condition to ensure proper medical and psychiatric care. The agencies must arrange such care if the foster parents do not.
Sometimes, wrongful adoption and inadequate foster care supervision claims occur in a single case.
