A Court of Claims judge expressed concerns Monday about issuing an injunction against the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services over its decision to cut funding for the organization that previously oversaw foster care cases in Kent County.
But judge Christopher Yates also said there was a “straightforward” way for the West Michigan Partnership for Children to win its case against the health department anyway.
The West Michigan Partnership for Children sued MDHHS in October, claiming the health department violated the law when it refused to renew a contract, and funding, for the organization. It asked for the judge to issue a declarative judgement against MDHHS, stating that it is legally required to fund the foster care group. The organization also asked Yates to issue an injunction, or an order, directing MDHHS to ensure it continued that funding.
“Declaratory relief is the sort of thing the court can grant to guide the parties on their future conduct,” Yates said during Monday’s hearing. “As far as an injunction goes, that’s going to be a real stretch.”
Yates argued an injunction would be a more “drastic” action on his part, but that didn’t mean he was ready to rule entirely in the health department’s favor.
The dispute between the two organizations broke out after the state’s convoluted and dragged-out budget negotiations, which went into the new fiscal year in October. When the dust settled on the budget, legislators had stripped out the language that specifically called for funding the West Michigan Partnership for Children to implement a unique foster care system in the state.
Without that specific language in the appropriations bill, MDHHS decided not to renew its contract for foster care oversight in Kent County. But an attorney for WMPC argued Monday that other state laws still require the state health department to implement a “performance based” foster care system for the county, something he said only WMPC had the expertise to oversee.
Failing to explicitly mention the foster care organization in this year’s appropriations bill didn’t mean the Legislature intended to kill the organization, attorney Steve van Stempvoort argued.
“This would be a different case if the Legislature had said, ‘You know what, we don’t want this to happen so we’re going to affirmatively write something into the appropriations bill that says we’re not doing this in Kent County anymore,’” van Stempvoort told the court. “That would be a different case.”
“Right,” Judge Yates agreed.
Kent County’s foster care system operates differently than that of any other county in the state because of state laws that went into effect to reform foster care following a 2006 lawsuit. The state was forced to change how it operated its foster care system and provide reports to a federal court to show that children were not being harmed in the system. Progress was bumpy.
But one of the reform measures mandated creating a “performance based” system of foster care in Kent County. Instead of the state assigning kids in foster care to local service agencies and reimbursing them for each case, Kent County created a new agency, the West Michigan Partnership for Children, which sat in between MDHHS and the service agencies. WMPC received funding upfront, and paid agencies upfront, and tracked results to try to improve outcomes for kids.
It was meant to be a pilot program that could be expanded to other counties. It never was, but the state didn’t kill it either. WMPC argues the result is a foster care system in Kent County which improves outcomes by placing more foster care children with family members instead of strangers, and where kids spend less time in foster care overall.
But funding the oversight by WMPC costs the state more than $2 million each year in additional appropriations.
In its lawsuit, WMPC said the decision not to extend its contract came suddenly, and without transition planning. It said it was overseeing care for 426 children at the time funding was cut.
Judge Yates tried to determine on Monday what happened to those 426 kids.
Lindsey Lavine, an attorney who represents the state Health and Human Services Department, said when WMPC was cut off, the health department simply took oversight of their placements.
“There has been no change to any of the services that they have received,” Lavine said of the children in foster care. “And now the only difference is that MDHHS is performing that administration management services.”
If MDHHS prevails in the case, it will continue to provide those services. But Yates could reiterate that, because of the performance-based system requirement, MDHHS may still be required to implement a different funding model in Kent County, paying agencies upfront. But WMPC argued it is the only organization that knows how to run such a system. It’s been doing so in Kent County for the past eight years.
Yates acknowledged that if he rules for MDHHS, WMPC will likely cease to exist as an organization, leaving the state no backup if things go badly.
“In the event that they take this over and they try to implement this system and it proves to be much more difficult than they imagined, and they want to bring WMPC back, that’s no longer an option,” the judge said.
Yates said it would be “pretty straightforward” for MDHHS to fund WMPC for one year with its current appropriation, but said he would not ask the department to fund the organization for three years, which it had asked for.
But there was no resolution in the case on Monday. Yates said he wasn’t prepared yet to decide whether it was necessary to step in.
