The Indiana Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases last week including a class action against a Mishawaka car dealership. The court rejected about four dozen other appeal petitions, including a child in need of services case that sparked outspoken division between the justices.
In a published dissent to a denial of transfer, two Indiana Supreme Court judges had sharp words for the Department of Child Services and the lower courts that, according to the dissent, did not take advantage of an opportunity to “make things right” for a father and his two children.
Children going into the state’s child welfare system end up more broken, attorneys suing the Department of Child Services say, because they are not being provided with therapy and treatment to help them heal. Rather, the lawyers contend, DCS is just finding beds to stick the kids in and forgetting about their other needs.
Claiming outside advocates were relying on “an inflammatory and outdated account,” Indiana Department of Child Services director Terry Stigdon released a video statement Monday in response to the lawsuit filed last week charging the state agency with inflicting further harm on children entering the foster care system.
In response to the question of whether the Department of Child Services can file successive CHINS petitions based on evidence available at the time of the original petition — a practice that has drawn ire from the Indiana Court of Appeals — the Indiana Supreme Court has ruled that such a practice is barred. However, the specifics of the case the court addressed Thursday did not require reversal.
Although the $34 billion budget dominated the session, legislators introduced and considered more than 600 bills each in both the Senate and the House. The ones they passed covered a variety of matters, including hate crimes, hemp, gambling, foster parents, electricity generation and, of course, electric scooters.
The Indiana Court of Appeals has dismissed as moot a CHINS appeal while also calling out a trial court magistrate and judge for disregarding the appellate court’s decisions regarding the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children.
The Indiana Court of Appeals has affirmed a child in need of services adjudication after concluding the dismissal sanction for failure to timely conduct a CHINS factfinding hearing is not a mechanism to collaterally attack a CHINS adjudication.
Hoosier families celebrating adoption later this year will have the chance to commemorate the experience with cameras in the courtroom.
Holding her infant foster daughter, attorney Kiamesha Colom explained in simple terms a 13-page bill that revamps parts of Indiana’s foster care system. Come July 1, she and her husband, like other long-term foster parents around the state, will be able to have more of a say in the care and protection of their baby.
Saying it was “troubled” by how the Department of Child Services chose to litigate two nearly back-to-back child welfare cases, the Indiana Court of Appeals has ordered a trial court to re-evaluate a 2018 CHINS petition without relying on facts that were available for litigation during a 2017 CHINS proceeding.
A father who was ordered removed from the home he shared with his wife and four children despite a clean record and no prior reports of domestic violence won a ruling in his favor Wednesday. The Indiana Court of Appeals reversed a CHINS finding and concluded, “when coercion is not necessary, the State may not intrude into a family’s life.”
The Indiana Supreme Court justices granted transfer to two cases last week while denying 39 others. Of the pair it selected for review, the justices will hear arguments in a reversed termination of parental rights case and in a case alleging juror bias.
In response to a lawsuit seeking to require the state appoint attorneys to represent children in termination of parental rights or children in need of services proceedings, Indiana is arguing that adding more lawyers would only flatter the legal professionals and not mollify tragic circumstances.
A child in need of services case has been dismissed after an appellate panel concluded that a mother’s motion to dismiss because the fact-finding hearing was not completed within the statutory timeframe was incorrectly denied by the trial court.
An imprisoned father who murdered the mother of his children and burned down her home lost his appeal of the termination of his parental rights after an appellate court concluded that the children were better off out of his care.
As Senate Enrolled Act 1 was heading for its third and final reading in the Indiana House of Representatives, Rep. Vanessa Summers reminded her colleagues that their work in helping reform the Department of Child Services is not finished.
The Indiana Court of Appeals admitted it made an erroneous statement in reversing a termination of parental rights order and granted the Department of Child Services’ request for a rehearing. But the appellate panel Wednesday affirmed its initial opinion, concluding the error had no bearing its original ruling that a mother’s due process rights were violated.
A mother whose kids were found to be children in need of services despite her successful efforts to stay sober and get the help she needed found favor with an appellate panel Monday, who reversed the CHINS adjudication on the basis of insufficient evidence.
While the effort to give foster parents standing in cases involving abused and neglected children has stalled in the Statehouse, numerous child welfare and Department of Child Services reforms appear poised to pass the Indiana General Assembly.