By Rachel Bussett
It was announced this week that Governor Kevin Stitt has replaced Ed Lake as the director of DHS with a businessman who runs nursing homes.
Governor Stitt, like President Trump, was elected on a platform that he was “not a politician” and he was going to continue to drain the swamp of politics as usual. It was reported on Channel 9 that Governor Stitt said “this was one of the most important hires he needed to make.”
Right now I am reserving judgment on the governor’s choice but I applaud the governor for having the strength and courage to make this change.
As many of you know I have been fighting DHS for the last several years on behalf of parents and workers who have come forward about the failings within the department – the lack of oversight in homes, the arbitrary removal of children, the overworking of employees and the placement of children in situations far more dangerous than what they were experiencing in their own home.
Just last week we filed a tort claim on behalf of a child who died while her family was under investigation for abuse and neglect. The allegations are that DHS failed to properly investigate the reports of abuse and as a result of their failure to investigate this child died after enduring horrific abuse for months.
In the last month of her life at least two priority 1 allegations were called in but DHS never responded appropriately.
This is in addition to the multiple other cases I have ongoing for DHS’s failure to protect children in foster care leading to the death and permanent disfigurement of multiple children. Last year at this time Jami Ledoux, the director of child welfare, resigned just weeks after a scathing opinion from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals was issued due to DHS’s multiple failures to protect the Matthews children.
Now one year later, the head of the agency has been removed and I consider this great progress.
Back in April of this year, I along with members of the NAACP met with the governor’s staff attorney to discuss what was happening at DHS. We believed that the governor was going to be present at this meeting but for unknown reasons he did not appear.
At that time, we discussed with the governor’s office our intent to file another class action lawsuit against DHS for their failure to protect children and for their targeting of workers who speak out. The legal staff asked us to hold our lawsuit until the end of the legislative session and meet with them at the first of June.
I advised the legal staff that I would not allow any of my client’s statutes of limitation to pass but that I would agree to continue to work with them as long as they were willing to work with us.
Earlier in the week before our meeting with DHS, I also gave an interview to the local NPR station about the plans to proceed against DHS. Then, the evening of our meeting the interview aired on the OU NPR station. Thereafter, the governor’s legal aide withdrew his willingness to meet and work with me and potentially the NAACP if they continued to work with me because of my interview.
This response does not build a great confidence that the governor’s office is as dedicated to the protection of children and families as he led us to believe in the news announcement today.
Our need for strong government leadership has been evident for a while. A 2015 study confirmed that Oklahoma had the highest rate of foster care abuse and neglect than any other state. Oklahoma consistently ranks among the worst states for child abuse and neglect overall.
I hope that this change is a step in the right direction toward protecting children and families. However, this announcement came on the first business day of June, just a short week after the end of the legislative session. The timing of this announcement makes me suspicious that the governor’s staff already had this planned and hoped that by putting us off on further action, we could be presented with this proposal as an alternative to further lawsuits.
Regardless, we have not seen the cooperation out of the governor’s office that we expected when we scheduled our meeting in April but I nevertheless remain hopeful that Mr. Brown left corporate America with a servant’s heart for service and intends to use his appointment to help save Oklahoma kids.
Rachel Bussett is an Oklahoma City attorney and can be reached at 405-605-8073.
