Rate of abuse of Oregon foster kids is at a record high

Children in the foster care system are among the most vulnerable in Oregon. Their mistreatment was one of the key reasons a class action lawsuit was brought against the state. The 2024 settlement included a number of required actions to decrease the rate of abuse and improve the lives of children in the state’s custody. The state recently submitted its first settlement-mandated report of its progress, including increasing the number of kids placed with a member of their family. But the increase in abuse cases is noteworthy, says OPB reporter Lauren Dake, given the policy priorities of the child welfare system after the class action settlement. Dake joins us to share more about the latest numbers and what state officials say they’re going to do about it.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The state of Oregon spent five years and over $30 million fighting a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of children in the foster care system. The state finally signed a settlement agreement in 2024. It committed to decreasing the rate of abuse and improving the lives of children in the state’s custody. It has to submit reports showing its progress towards those goals twice a year. Its first report, which was just released, does show progress. The state says it’s moving more quickly to assess a child’s mental health needs, and it’s keeping more children in foster care with family members. But the latest numbers show a record high rate of maltreatment of kids in the child welfare system. OPB reporter Lauren Dake has been covering this system since 2018, and she joins us now. It’s great to have you back on the show.

Lauren Dake: Thanks for having me, Dave.

Miller: Can you remind us of the purpose of this 2024 settlement that the state agreed to after years of defending itself against a class action suit?

Dake: Yes, and I think I will just back up one step before I do that, just to remind people that it was a national advocacy group called A Better Childhood, and a local nonprofit, Disability Rights Oregon, who teamed up to bring this civil lawsuit. And like you said, they did not want money. Their request was really simple. They were suing because they wanted kids to have better placements and to reduce the rate of abuse of kids in care.

This came on the heels of the state having already been sued for placing kids in hotel rooms, something that they said they would stop doing, they have not stopped doing. It came on the heels of the state putting kids in facilities out of state. That proved to be highly problematic.They did stop doing that.

So they go through this litigation, like you said, spend upwards of $30 million taxpayer dollars defending themselves in the court, and they finally do agree to both lowering the rates of abuse and having this neutral expert, this third party, oversee the system, with the goal of trying to improve the outcome for these kids. So they released their first report, and to be clear, this is their self-assessment, their first initial report of themselves.

Miller: I want to hear about what they see as some of the positives in a few minutes, but I want to start with this record high level of maltreatment. How big an increase has there been in recent years?

Dake: It showed about a 21% increase in the rate of mistreatment, and they measure that by the number of incidents recorded per 100,000 days, and just for broader context, there’s about 4,600 kids currently placed in foster care. And then this data is really only from 2022 to present, that’s the only window in which the data the state has collected is the same year over year. So it’s truly comparing apples to apples. And I felt like it was important to point out because it does come on the heels of this class action lawsuit. It comes after, like this is clearly a focal point for them because they have very publicly promised that they are going to reduce the rate of mistreatment.

Miller: What kinds of incidents are included in what seems to be maybe a broad category of maltreatment?

Dake: Yeah, I think you’re right. It’s broad and the definition is wide ranging. It could mean chronic neglect – you fail to supply a kid with their basic needs like food or shelter or medical care. It could mean physical abuse, sexual abuse, mental or verbal abuse – terrorizing a kid with threats or isolating them. It could mean financial exploitation, which there have been examples where people take what is usually very little savings these kids might have, or if they have a deceased parent, they get the deceased parents’ Social Security benefits. So it’s a broad category.

Miller: You mentioned that this is an apples-to-apples comparison. I just want to understand this because you did show in your reporting that Oregon counts maltreatment differently than it used to, but also differently than other states. So does that in any way explain this increase?

Dake: No. And that’s the reason I highlighted this number, and it gets a little wonky when I try to explain but I’m just going to simplify it. Basically, the state spent a lot of the time of this first initial report that they just released explaining why Oregon’s numbers are so much higher than the national average. And in their defense, their explanation makes sense. Their data set is different. All states’ data sets are pretty different, and Oregon is more inclusive than some other states, so when you compare Oregon’s rate to the national average it does make Oregon look worse.

But then I started to ask questions, because I really did want to understand what we were doing that was so different. And I realized, OK, just take out, strip away everything. Look at just Oregon. Just compare Oregon in the last couple of years.

And the state said, well, data COVID messed with our data, and we collected it differently in these years and these years. But from 2022 to 2025, they used the same mechanism. They collected the same data, and it showed an upwards trend.

Miller: Did state officials say that they found patterns in this maltreatment, in terms of where it’s occurring or who is perpetrating it?

Dake: They said they were actively trying to determine that. They said an initial review led them to believe that the abuse was happening when kids went home on trial visits. So the state is trying to keep more families together, which most people agree is the right goal. They said when kids do these trial reunifications or they go on these unsupervised visits with their biological family, they’re seeing a spike in mistreatment.

I’m not clear on how “initial” this initial analysis is. In other words, is this their gut instinct? What have they done to verify it? This all basically came out last week. So I think it’s preliminary, but they have promised to be transparent.

Miller: What were the positive developments in the state’s first mandated report that came out earlier this month?

Dake: I think you mentioned this, they are moving quickly to assess a child’s mental health needs. So, basically getting a mental health evaluation done when a kid enters the system faster, identifying their mental health needs faster and connecting them with someone to help. That’s great.

Another thing that they are really trying to do, and have been succeeding at, is increasing the number of kids who, when they are taken from the child welfare system, they are kept with a relative. So a grandma, a cousin, an aunt, because the evidence has shown when kids are not ripped away from their community or from everyone that they know, they do better. I mean, there’s always going to be trauma, but this does help reduce a little bit of the trauma.

Miller: You mentioned that the state, in its initial inquiry and analysis of its data, said that some fair number of these incidents of maltreatment happened during trial reunification meetings. So I have to ask, is there a connection now between the state’s increasing emphasis on reuniting kids with their families of origin and this increase in maltreatment?

Dake: I think there is a good chance that the state will come back and say that that’s the case. But here is the thing, when the state takes kids from their parents and puts them in the foster care system, they’re often bounced around to a dizzying number of placements – 20 placements, 30 placements, 40, just an insane number. And sometimes they are not treated very well in those foster care homes, either.

So if they do come back, the state ODHS, child welfare, comes back and says, “This spike is happening on the parents’ watch, what can we do here?” The solution is probably not going to be to go back toward this trend of just removing them completely. That all leads me to say, child welfare is complicated. It is hard. These are vulnerable kids and it is, in their defense, sometimes easier to point to the problems than find the solution.

Miller: What has DHS said about how it’s going to respond to this record high level of maltreatment?

Dake: Well, if they identify the problem and they’re certain that that’s where a lot of this mistreatment is happening, then they can train their staff better to help identify, when the kids go home, what to look for. Maybe they need to be checking in with the kids more often. Maybe they need to be offering more support to the parents once they’re back home. I mean, identifying the problem is going to help them a lot.

And then they rightly point out that being a caseworker is a really hard job. It’s a high burnout job. It’s a low pay job, and some of this is tied to workforce issues. You know, they do have a new leader, Liesel Wendt. She was recently confirmed by the state Senate. I recently met with her. We had a long conversation. She has said she’s really trying to shift the agency’s culture to one of transparency and accountability, and maybe that’s a start.

Miller: As part of this agreement, there is now a court-required neutral party, an expert who is supposed to monitor the state’s progress towards improving outcomes for kids, keeping kids in the state’s care safe. Has he said anything about this first progress report?

Dake: No, not yet. This neutral, his name’s Kevin Ryan. He’s done this work for other states. He’s not talking to the media. Maybe he’s not allowed to talk to the media. It feels very “Wizard of Oz-y,” to me, to be honest. The state has said he will reply to the state’s self-assessment at some point; and hopefully he does so in a very digestible, clear narrative so that we can all understand his thinking and his metrics.

Miller: Lauren, thanks very much.

Dake: Thank you, Dave.

Miller: That’s Lauren Dake, a political reporter for OPB. She joined us to talk about the record high rate of maltreatment of kids in Oregon’s child welfare system.

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