Foster care exists for one reason: to keep children safe when their own homes cannot. Yet in states across the country, the very systems charged with protecting vulnerable children have too often become the source of their harm. Florida and Oregon offer two revealing case studies. Both states have faced high-profile litigation, federal scrutiny, and painful public reckonings over the treatment of children in state custody. Both also offer a growing network of legal protections and resources for foster children — including a small but dedicated field of specialist attorneys who represent kids who have been injured or abused while in care.

The Legal Landscape for Foster Children in Florida

Florida’s child welfare system is governed primarily by Chapter 39 of the Florida Statutes, which sets out the dependency process from the moment a child is removed from a home. When the Department of Children and Families (DCF) removes a child, the case moves quickly into court: a shelter hearing must be held within 24 hours so a judge can determine whether the removal was justified and where the child should stay while the case proceeds. From that point forward, a dependency judge — not the agency alone — makes the key decisions about placement, reunification, termination of parental rights, and adoption.

Florida’s signature resource for children in this system is the Statewide Guardian ad Litem Office. Under Florida law, a guardian ad litem must be appointed at the earliest possible stage of any judicial proceeding involving child abuse, abandonment, or neglect. Florida uses a multidisciplinary team model: each child appointed to the program receives a Guardian ad Litem Attorney along with a child welfare professional and, ideally, a trained community volunteer. The office employs a large staff of attorneys — well over 180 statewide — supplemented by hundreds of pro bono lawyers, and it has served tens of thousands of children in a single year. The team advocates for the child’s best interests in dependency court and helps with practical needs like education, medical care, mental health services, and family visitation.

Florida law also recognizes that certain children need direct legal counsel of their own. An attorney ad litem must be appointed for children in particularly vulnerable situations — for example, children with developmental disabilities, children placed or being considered for placement in skilled nursing facilities or residential treatment centers, children who decline to assent to psychotropic medication, and child victims of human trafficking. Older youth also benefit from Florida’s extended foster care program, which allows young adults to remain in care past age 18 with continued services and court oversight.

Yet Florida’s protections have not prevented serious failures. Lawsuits filed by former foster children have alleged decades of unchecked abuse in licensed foster homes — including a widely reported case in which twenty former foster boys sued a Clearwater foster home, DCF, the Guardian ad Litem program, and private case management agencies, alleging a long-running pattern of abuse that went unaddressed despite complaints. Cases like these underscore an uncomfortable truth: dependency court oversight and best-interest advocacy, while essential, do not always stop abuse from happening. When prevention fails, the civil justice system becomes the last line of accountability.

The Legal Landscape for Foster Children in Oregon

If Florida’s story is one of an established system with recurring failures, Oregon’s is one of a system in acknowledged crisis. Oregon’s foster care system, run by the Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS), has spent roughly a decade under intense legal scrutiny following a series of class-action lawsuits brought on behalf of foster children.

The centerpiece was Wyatt B. v. Brown, filed in 2016 on behalf of foster children who had been shuffled repeatedly between placements, housed in dangerous homes, sent to out-of-state institutions with histories of abuse, or left to sleep in hotels and ODHS offices because the agency had nowhere else to put them. The litigation exposed chronic caseworker turnover, unmanageable caseloads, and a near-total lack of services for children with disabilities and mental health needs. In 2022, Oregon agreed to a sweeping settlement requiring reforms in placement stability, staffing, and services.

Two related lawsuits deepened the picture. A.B. v. Brown targeted Oregon’s practice of shipping foster children to unregulated, unmonitored out-of-state residential facilities, where children endured physical and sexual abuse, improper restraints, seclusion, and overmedication; the case pushed Oregon to bring children back in state. D.B. v. Brown attacked “hoteling” — the practice of housing foster children overnight in hotels, offices, and government buildings without appropriate supervision, a practice that put teenagers, LGBTQ+ youth, and children with complex needs at heightened risk of exploitation, running away, and self-harm.

Adoption disclosure negligence law firm in Oregon
Portland Oregon child neglect law firm

Critically, the settlements did not end the crisis. Audits, oversight reports, and investigative journalism in the years since have documented persistent hoteling, severe placement shortages (especially for children with disabilities and trauma histories), high staff turnover, children placed hours from their schools and siblings, and inadequate supervision leading to injuries and abuse. Oregon’s comparatively small pool of foster homes forces crisis-driven placement decisions, and children — particularly teenagers and children with disabilities — continue to pay the price.

Oregon foster children do have legal rights and remedies. They are entitled to court oversight of their dependency cases and to representation in juvenile court. And like foster children everywhere, they hold civil rights protected by both state law and the federal Constitution. Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a child harmed by constitutional violations while in state custody — abuse the state failed to prevent, unnecessary institutionalization, dangerous hoteling, excessive restraints, or discrimination — may pursue damages against those responsible. Children with disabilities have additional protections under federal special education and disability rights laws, including the right to an appropriately implemented IEP or 504 Plan.

A Specialized Bar: Attorneys Who Represent Injured and Abused Foster Children

Dependency lawyers, guardians ad litem, and court-appointed advocates all play vital roles while a child’s case is open. But when a child has already been physically or sexually abused, seriously injured, or neglected in foster care, a different kind of lawyer is needed: a civil litigator who can investigate what went wrong, identify who was responsible, and pursue compensation and accountability through personal injury and civil rights litigation.

Foster Care Neglect Attorney in Oregon

This is a genuinely specialized field. These cases sit at the intersection of tort law, constitutional law, sovereign immunity, child welfare regulation, and trauma-informed practice. Attorneys who handle them must know how to obtain and analyze confidential child welfare records, reconstruct placement histories, evaluate whether an agency ignored prior abuse reports or licensed an unsafe home, work with medical and psychological experts, and litigate against state agencies and private providers — all while protecting a traumatized child from being further harmed by the legal process itself. Only a small number of law practices nationally focus their work on children harmed inside foster care, residential treatment, and other institutional systems.

Justice for Kids®: A Florida-Based Practice Now Serving Oregon

One of the most prominent of these specialist practices is Justice for Kids®, a division of the law firm Kelley Kronenberg. Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Justice for Kids has built its practice around a single mission: representing children who have been abused, neglected, or injured in government systems — foster care, child protection agencies, residential treatment facilities, group homes, schools, and disability systems. The firm was founded by Howard M. Talenfeld, a nationally recognized child welfare advocate with decades of experience in class actions, civil rights litigation, and complex injury cases involving children harmed in state systems, who also serves on the board of the Youth Law Center, a national child advocacy organization.

While Justice for Kids is based in Florida, its work is not limited to Florida. The firm has opened an Oregon office in Portland, extending its child-welfare-focused practice to a state whose foster care failures have drawn national attention. In Oregon, the practice centers on holding ODHS and private foster care providers accountable when children in their custody are injured through physical or sexual abuse, neglect, or systemic failure.

The firm’s Oregon cases are handled by Oregon-licensed counsel. Justin Grosz, a partner and Co-Business Unit Leader in the Justice for Kids division who is licensed to practice in Oregon, brings extensive trial experience — more than 230 jury trials to verdict — to cases involving foster children who have suffered catastrophic harm through failures in child welfare, foster care, residential treatment, and school systems.

The types of cases the practice reviews in both states will sound familiar to anyone who has followed the litigation described above: physical and sexual abuse in foster homes; exploitation and assault in group homes, residential treatment centers, and psychiatric facilities; failures to act on prior abuse reports; unsafe placements and repeated placement disruptions; children harmed while sleeping in hotels or offices; civil rights violations involving restraints and unnecessary institutionalization; disability discrimination and denial of required services; and negligent adoption cases where agencies failed to disclose a child’s known trauma history or diagnoses to adoptive families.

Justice For Kids Oregon

6500 S. Macadam Avenue
Suite 380,
Portland, OR 97239
Phone: 503-783-8481
Toll-Free: 844-4KIDLAW (454-3529)

Why This Kind of Advocacy Matters

Foster children occupy a uniquely powerless position in the legal system. They did not choose to enter state custody. They cannot hire their own lawyers, vote for the officials who fund their care, or, in most cases, even speak publicly about what happened to them. When the state takes custody of a child, it assumes a profound legal and moral duty — and when it breaches that duty, the consequences can shape the rest of a child’s life: lost schooling, untreated trauma, disrupted attachments, and in the worst cases, lasting physical and psychological injury.

Foster Child Injury Law Firm in Oregon

The resources described here — dependency courts, guardian ad litem programs, attorneys ad litem, extended foster care, federal civil rights law, and specialist injury attorneys — form an imperfect but essential safety net beneath the safety net. Class actions like Wyatt B. can force systemic reform. Individual injury and civil rights cases can secure the financial resources an abused child needs for therapy, education, and a stable future, while creating real consequences for agencies and providers who fail children.

Oregon Law Firm for Foster Care Children

For families, caregivers, foster parents, guardians ad litem, educators, and former foster youth in Florida or Oregon who believe a child has been harmed in state custody, the most important message is this: options exist. Concerns can be raised confidentially, records can be obtained, and experienced counsel can evaluate whether the system’s failure gives rise to a legal claim. When public systems fail the children they were built to protect, legal advocacy is often the last — and sometimes the only — line of defense.

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This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Anyone concerned about a specific child’s situation should consult a licensed attorney in the relevant state.