Teen Sues L.A. After Decade in Foster Care

AP via ABC News ^ | 2006-07-17 | Staff

[Hildy]

I hope she wins.

[Ma3lst0rm]

I hope the girl wins. It is too bad the real incompetents responsible won't end up paying the tab.

[CindyDawg]

So where is the money that Dad has been paying the state the last 13 years?

[stopsign]

A teenage girl reunited with her father last year after a decade in foster care is suing Los Angeles County for taking so long to bring them together.

Go ahead blame it on the father, for what ever reasons... Herd it before, till ya have lived it, it don't mean a thing... : ) <<< me

[Harrius Magnus]

I hope she wins.

---

I don't. I hope the incompetent boob who fumbled the ball, and their immediate supervisor, gets fired and publicly reprimanded. I am in favor of accountability, not punishing taxpayers.

[CrawDaddyCA]

It claims the agency never notified Smith, who had continued making child support payments...

Seems to me that the kid was used as a revenue generator for the state of Kalifornia.

[CindyDawg]

It does seem that as she approached 18 and was a placement issue they got busy looking for Dad.

[weegee]

Clinton-Reno would've reunited her with her dad if he had moved to Castro's Cuba.

[CrawDaddyCA]

I thought the exact same thing. The girl's about to turn 18, and the state can't bleed Dad for anymore money, better find a place to dump her fast!

Hey, how about her family? They'll take her.

[bboop]

I don't know -- the dad had NO connection with her for 13 years. Whose problem is that? The county's? It's HIS KID, for crimony sake. He's so far out of her life that he doesn't even know she's in foster care, and suddenly it's the County's fault? I think that's bogus.

[Valpal1]

Let's see, mom disappears with kid without leaving a forwarding address.

Even if the dad had asked Child Support Services where she was, they wouldn't have told him short of a court order.

He's paying his support and assumes the child wants no contact or she would have contacted him. How is he supposed to know she has been in foster care since before she could read and has no idea who or where he is.

Why was HE not contacted within days of his child being placed into state custody. The state knew his name and whereabouts. In fact they were the only player with all the information and access to it.

Frankly, he should be suing them for a refund of support monies obtained fraudulently by retaining custody of his child without his knowledge or consent.

Some caseworker and supervisor should be fired for cause over this.

[Lokibob]

"But the lawsuit alleges that the Department of Children and Family Services failed to use "due diligence" to locate Thomas Smith. It claims the agency never notified Smith, who had continued making child support payments, that his daughter was in foster care and never gave him a chance to claim her."

 

You have to read between the lines, but it looks like Mom got custody, then the county took the kid away from her, but didn't notify Dad.

 

Then the County/State continued to collect support (which he paid, it doesn't appear to be a child support problem) from him and kept the kid in foster care.

 

I'd be really mad if that happened to me, too.  At the very least, Dad should get back ALL of the support payments.  Foster care is not child support.  It is brought on by the State.

[CrawDaddyCA]

From the article:

Smith's whereabouts were listed as unknown in court documents on the case, although records show that Melinda's caseworker knew Smith was paying child support and his address was on file with the agency that collected the payments.

The state knew exactly where the father was, but chose to keep the child in order to bleed money from him.

There's simply no other reasonable explination.

[Lokibob]

You know, just thinking about it, what was the State doing with the child support payments?  Just keeping it?  Sending it on to the Mother?  Using it in the general fund?

 

Not only does the county foster care people need to be punished, but somebody in the State child support payments section needs to go too.  and a full audit of ALL support payments be made.  You know that if it happened to one person, there has to be a lot of others in the same condition.

[bboop]

Yup, I bet they did know exactly where he was. And all that child support. I'd be hopping mad too. Too bad he wasn't around to protect her, all the same. It's quite fragmented before the county ever got involved.

[Pikachu_Dad]

I hope the girl wins. It is too bad the real incompetents responsible won't end up paying the tab.

Why are you assuming the misandrists are incompetent? They probably knew exactly what they were doing.

[Graybeard58]

If she spent a decade in foster care, the child support received from the father probably didn't cover payments made to the foster parents.

There's some incompetence involved to be sure, maybe even some malice on the part of those responsible but I doubt that the state profited from it.

[art_rocks]

The foster care system was getting paid twice. The father pays and I bet the payment went to the foster care system. I am sure the state and federal government sent money to the foster care system to pay for this child.

Its always about the money. If we get all the kids out of foster care, people would lose jobs.

[Graybeard58]

The father paid the state, the state paid foster parents.

Did his support payments equal the states payments to the foster parents? The article doesn't state how much he paid.