Thursday, October 02, 2003

By Barbara White Stack, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The American Civil Liberties Union said it will sue Beaver County's child welfare agency today, seeking compensation for a young mother whose children it says were wrongly seized and asking for reforms to the system.

"The first goal of this civil rights lawsuit is to compensate Selena Underwood for the nightmare Beaver County has put her through," said Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU's Pittsburgh chapter. Beaver County Children and Youth Services seized Underwood's two children on separate occasions and both times violated her constitutional rights and the children's, the ACLU contends.

"This lawsuit is merely the opening salvo in what will be a larger effort by the ACLU to reform unconstitutional practices in the child welfare system," Walczak said yesterday. "Beaver County taxpayers must appreciate that running an unconstitutional child welfare system is going to cost them dearly, and it is not going to stop until the county corrects many blatantly illegal policies and procedures."

The ACLU began representing Underwood in her efforts to get her children back in March. Since then, the ACLU has intervened in another Beaver County child welfare case and last week succeeded in getting custody returned to the parent. It has investigated numerous other complaints about Beaver County CYS.

The director of Beaver County CYS, Victor Colonna, and two Beaver County lawyers to be named as defendants in the suit, Jeff Small and Joe Spratt, could not be reached yesterday.

Small was appointed to represent Underwood when CYS took her first child, William, then 8 months old, on Oct. 4, 2001. It happened when an inspector condemned a Beaver Falls home where Underwood had been visiting a relative. Though Underwood could have returned with her son to her mother's home in Allegheny County, where she had been living, or stayed with a cousin in Beaver Falls, CYS refused to let her keep the boy.

In February, when daughter Na'Dayja was born, CYS took the infant from Underwood at the hospital, contending that because Underwood hadn't completed all of the tasks CYS required for her to get William back, she couldn't keep her daughter. Beaver County appointed Spratt to represent her then.

Before agencies like CYS take youngsters, they must be able to clearly show that the children were in imminent danger and that there was no reasonable alternative to separating children and parents.

Walczak has contended from the outset that neither William nor Na'Dayja was in imminent danger. In addition, he said yesterday, preventing William's removal would have cost no more than $40 -- cab fare for Underwood to return to her mother's house. Instead, William's two years in foster care have so far cost taxpayers at least $10,000.

After the ACLU intervened in Underwood's case and got lawyer James E. Mahood to represent her, the agency agreed to return Na'Dayja to her mother.

Mahood and Walczak had previously described the representation of the court-appointed lawyers in Underwood's case as inadequate, and yesterday Walczak said Small and Spratt were named in the suit because "the lawyers who take these appointments must understand they have serious legal and ethical obligations to the client. They are not supposed to take the case, prepare in five minutes then pick up their paycheck.

"This is about a parent's fundamental right to care for a child and the child's right to be cared for by the parent."

The federal court suit -- a civil rights action against a child welfare agency -- is relatively uncommon. Only two others -- against Armstrong County CYS and Westmoreland County CYS -- have been filed here in the past six years.

Federal class-action suits filed with the intent of reforming child welfare practices are more common.

One group, Children's Rights Inc., once a project of the ACLU but now an independent organization, has filed four class-action suits in the past four years, including one that recently prompted the governor of New Jersey to promise statewide reforms.

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