When those in the legal community look back at 2019, they may turn their heads and look forward instead. While the year had bright spots, several sordid sagas dominated the headlines.
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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.
Read MoreA mother whose parental rights were terminated after she signed a form voluntarily relinquishing them may not have been properly advised, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday, reversing the termination and remanding the case to the trial court.
Indiana trial courts and the Department of Child Services continue to deprive parents of their due process rights after years of warnings, the Indiana Court of Appeals said Wednesday, reversing the termination of a mother’s parental rights when the termination hearing went on without her or her lawyer present. In doing so, appellate judges strongly restated that courts and DCS have a duty to ensure parents’ rights aren’t violated.
A lawsuit alleging harm and constitutional violations by the Department of Child Services has survived a motion for summary judgment after a federal judge found the children plaintiffs have sufficiently claimed the state failed to protect them.
A lawsuit filed by 10 Hoosier children who argued Indiana should be required to provide legal counsel to youngsters involved in children in need of services proceedings was dismissed Tuesday in federal court. Attorneys who filed the case, however, indicated the matter is far from over.
A father will have his parental rights restored after an Indiana Court of Appeals ruling that reiterated the Department of Child Services does not have the authority to set policy inconsistent with the law.
A father fighting child welfare investigations that resulted in his son’s removal from his custody has lost his appeals of multiple motions granted by the trial court that damaged his case.
The Indiana Court of Appeals on Thursday reversed the termination of a father’s parent-child relationship after concluding his due process rights had been violated. The Department of Child Services, the appellate court found, did not make reasonable efforts to reunify the father and child.
Lawyers for Indiana’s Department of Child Services are pushing to seal records in a federal class action lawsuit accusing the child welfare agency of inadequately protecting thousands of children in its care.
The Indiana Department of Child Services says child neglect and abuse deaths increased during fiscal year 2017. A report released Friday details 65 deaths that resulted directly from abuse or neglect.
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.
An 81-page lawsuit filed Tuesday against the Indiana Department of Child Services claims the agency is failing to protect children and further inflicting trauma by placing foster children in inappropriate, unstable or overly restrictive facilities and not providing the necessary medical and mental health care.
A mother’s efforts to get her life back on track and reunite with her daughter were recognized by the Indiana Court of Appeals on Friday, which reversed an order terminating the mother’s parent-child relationship for insufficient evidence.
A father will still get time behind bars for failing to pay at least a decade’s worth of child support, but questions as to how much he owes led to the reversal of his more than $66,000 restitution order on Friday.
An Indianapolis man has been acquitted in the 2017 starvation death of his 2-month-old daughter. A jury returned the verdict late Wednesday in the case against William Moss following two days of testimony in Marion County Criminal Court.
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.
Indianapolis Public Schools paid almost $600,000 to settle three lawsuits in a case involving a former school counselor who was accused of having sex with students.
A man convicted of harassing his Department of Child Services case manager to the point that she quit her job and moved to another county lost an appeal of his conviction Thursday, failing to convince the appellate court that the offense didn’t occur in Indiana.
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.