Suing the state will mean even less money to help children in need

Lifeway For Youth Sues Ohio Dept Of Job And Family Services
Seeks more than $1 million in damages, preliminary and permanent injuctions
Terrell, Candice. WCPO, Cincinnati,April 10, 2007.

COLUMBUS – The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services made up its mind to put Lifeway for Youth out of business before it began investigating the death of a child placed in one of Lifeway’s foster homes, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

Lifeway, which sued ODJFS in the Ohio Court of Claims, charges that the state agency engaged in a deliberate and malicious campaign of misinformation that has irreparably damaged its reputation and ability to do business. Lifeway is seeking more than a million dollars in damages. It is also seeking immediate and permanent injunctions prohibiting ODJFS from making any further false statements to the media or any further statements to foster families and referring agencies that would interfere with Lifeway’s business relationships.

"While this is a highly unusual action to take, we believe we will win based on the egregious nature of the state’s actions to discredit us and to disrupt the lives of hundreds of stable foster families," said Michael Berner, Lifeway’s founder and executive director. "ODJFS has been more concerned about shifting blame than about the welfare of Ohio’s foster kids."

Lifeway, based in New Carlisle, is a private foster care agency that recruits, trains, assesses and recommends potential candidates to be certified as foster families by ODJFS. Since 1994, Lifeway has successfully served nearly 4,000 abused and neglected Ohio children who could not remain safely in their own homes.

Before August 2006, Lifeway’s network of foster families reached across northeastern, southern and central Ohio, achieving one of the highest retention rates among its foster families. The suit alleges that all this changed after the death of a Butler County foster child in August 2006.

Despite Lifeway’s exemplary record, "ODJFS has determined, for purely political and public relations reasons, to destroy the foster care network that Lifeway worked so hard to build and upon which so many foster care children, foster families and children services agencies depend," according to the lawsuit.In early August, Lifeway had about 600 children living in its foster homes; today, only 360 remain in Lifeway Network homes, a decrease the lawsuit alleges is a direct result of a campaign to convict Lifeway in the media before the facts of the case were confirmed.

The suit notes Lifeway has incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to date and will likely lose at least $1 million over time. It has also lost numerous foster families, referrals from public and private child placing agencies, and staff."

In essence, ODJFS convicted Lifeway before it conducted any investigation of Lifeway, engaged in an aggressive and unprecedented media campaign to try Lifeway in the press, and then manipulated its own investigation to conform to its pre-textual decision to blame and destroy Lifeway for its own political gain," the suit alleges. - HOW IS ODJFS TO BLAME FOR WHAT THE MEDIA CHOOSES TO FOCUS ATTENTION ON???

The lawsuit contends that ODJFS’ campaign to shut down Lifeway amounts to tortiuous interference with business relationships, abuse of process, violation of due process, and defamation. ODJFS’ efforts to discredit Lifeway included deliberately misleading and false statements to the media, county child services agencies and foster parents in the Lifeway Network, the suit alleges. For example, ODJFS:

-Issued a media statement announcing that it had sent letters to county children services boards advising them to check on children placed in Lifeway foster homes before beginning its investigation of Lifeway.

-Repeatedly and publicly stated that it would revoke Lifeway’s certification beginning a full three months before it directly communicated this decision to Lifeway in a Notice Letter, as is required by law. The effect of ODJFS’ statement has been to dry up referrals to Lifeway’s foster care program even before Lifeway has the chance to respond to ODJFS’ allegations in a Hearing.

-Violated its own rules governing the license recertification process by failing to provide sufficient notice of the files it wanted to review when it visited Lifeway sites.

-Continually altered reports that field investigators filed as part of the recertification process, resulting in internal papers and final reports that differed significantly from field reports.

-Made false and misleading statements to the media, including a statement that Lifeway was not contesting the state’s action to revoke its license and that foster families’ foster home certificates would be subject to expiration as a result.

-Widely reported to the media that it had found 147 violations in its investigation of Lifeway yet never reported to the media that its Notice Letter to revoke Lifeway’s certification referenced only 55 alleged violations.

The suit reasons that if ODJFS had believed children to be at risk in Lifeway network homes, it could have prevented children from being placed into Lifeway’s care and sought to remove children from Lifeway homes by petitioning a common pleas court in any county in which Lifeway had a foster home. ODJFS instead chose to "regularly engage the press with a series of unfounded allegations cynically calculated to characterize Lifeway as an agency with wide-ranging problems."

The lawsuit was filed one day after hearing dates were set in the State’s attempts to revoke Lifeway’s license. Lifeway has vowed to do everything in its power to prove there is no valid basis on which to revoke its license and to show that shutting Lifeway down would have an overwhelmingly negative impact on Ohio’s foster children.

"We will fight for our survival on every front," Berner said.