Oregon Settles Child Welfare Civil Lawsuit

On May 17, 2024, the state of Oregon and its Department of Human Services (ODHS) entered an agreement with child welfare advocates to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in 2019, Wyatt B. et al. v. Kotek et al., that sought to improve Oregon’s foster care system. The state has agreed to hire a Neutral Expert to review the state’s foster care system in terms of maltreatment rates, quality of placements, re-entry rates, timeliness of case planning and age-appropriate mental, physical and dental health care assessments and referrals, and notification and delivery of required reports of . . .