Dear Friend of Children's Rights,
We have just won a tremendously important victory for abused and neglected children -- more than 10,000 kids across the state of Oklahoma, and many thousands more across the United States.
In a landmark decision, a federal appeals court ruled Monday that our campaign to reform the state’s extremely harmful child welfare system may proceed as a class action encompassing all vulnerable children dependent on the system statewide.
That means we’ll be able to press ahead with critical fact-finding that will illustrate how badly Oklahoma’s failures are harming the more than 10,000 children in its custody -- and support the case we’re building for a federal court order mandating comprehensive reform.
Equally important, the decision significantly strengthens the body of law that enables Children’s Rights -- and other civil rights organizations like us -- to bring class actions aimed at reforming public systems that have failed.
It’s a big step forward in our campaign to bring dramatic improvements to the lives of not only those 10,000-plus abused and neglected kids in Oklahoma -- but also the nearly 500,000 children who remain in the custody of other dysfunctional child welfare systems nationwide.
Because there will always be a need for child welfare systems to intervene when children experience abuse and neglect, we must ensure that those systems actually provide the high-quality services and positive results that are every child’s right.
These battles will not be easy. But they must be won.
In Oklahoma alone, more than 1,700 children suffered abuse and neglect over one two-year period in their state-supervised foster homes. For years, kids in Oklahoma foster care have been exposed to maltreatment at one of the highest rates in the nation.
Eight of the nine children in whose names we initially brought our legal action have been abused or neglected in foster care—sometimes severely—and they’ve been been bounced around to a total of more than 110 different foster homes.
Sadly, their experiences are typical of far too many children throughout the United States. But with your support, we can and will continue to change their lives for the better.
We will keep you posted about our ongoing efforts to reform child welfare as they develop -- in Oklahoma and throughout the country.
Meantime, please visit www.childrensrights.org to learn more about our work on behalf of America’s abused and neglected children -- and
what you can do to help.
Sincerely,
Marcia Robinson Lowry
Executive Director
|
|
