Decades of Reform and an Evolving Child Welfare System

New Jersey’s child welfare system has been in and out of crisis for decades, failing to protect some of its most vulnerable residents. While foster care systems claim to protect children across the state, they are instead re-abusing them, subjecting these children to horrifying rates of sexual abuse and physical abuse. New Jersey’s systemic issues that allow the foster children to be sexually and physically abused demonstrate a broader national reality: foster care is a failed human experiment on these kids, and New Jersey’s historical legal battles highlight these ongoing, active dangers. As one of the states entangled in class-action litigation for many years, New Jersey’s Charlie and Nadine H. v. Corzine lawsuits highlight these ongoing, active dangers. Children should not be removed from their natural parents who are their main source of safety, stability, and protection without a significant, compelling reason.

As child welfare advocates, Justice for Kids® continues to protect foster children in New Jersey by filing personal injury and damage claims throughout the state. Justice For Kids® Co-Business Unit Leader Stacie J. Schmerling cut her teeth in this exact environment, dedicating four years of her child welfare career to protecting at-risk youth as a caseworker in the permanency unit for the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) to facilitate safety for abused children. During her time as a case worker in New Jersey, Stacie was exposed to the lifelong trauma foster children experience, as was the case with the Jackson boys in Collingswood that suffered catastrophic physical abuse, sexual abuse, and severe emotional abuse, leaving them with permanent psychological damage and personal injury. In 2004, a state investigation found 4 Jackson boys starved by their adoptive parents, Raymond and Vanessa Jackson, while DYFS completely failed to execute basic safety checks for over a dozen years. 9-year-old Michael weighed the same 28 pounds as he did as a toddler, 10-year-old Tyrone weighed 23, and 14-year-old Keith weighed 40 pounds because their adoptive parents locked the refrigerator and left the children to eat uncooked pancake batter and paint chips from the walls. This horrific crisis only came to light when the oldest 19-year-old boy Bruce, weighing 45 pounds, was found scavenging for food in a neighbor’s trash.

Raised in New Jersey, educated at Rowan University, and a recipient of Certification in Child Advocacy from Montclair State University before she graduated from law school, Stacie has seen these institutional failures firsthand, which fuel her legal practice as she fights for systemic accountability for foster children nationwide.

Every case below is part of one continuous legal fight: holding  New Jersey’s child welfare system to the constitutional standard it has repeatedly failed to meet.

We connect families with licensed New Jersey attorneys who handle personal injury and damage claims on behalf of children abused in state custody — at no upfront cost to you.

Even with institutional improvements, the continuous, systemic risks of foster care remain a pressing issue. When systems fail to provide stable, safe placements, foster children suffer an immense amount of trauma, only adding onto the trauma they underwent by the system in removing them from their parents. They risk falling behind academically, experiencing severe mental health crises without the right resources, and aging out of the system, each of which drastically increases the likelihood of future homelessness and imprisonment.

The three younger brothers, Tyrone, Keith, and Michael, were successfully adopted into a loving home by James and Amber Parrish of Millville, New Jersey, officially changing their names to Terrell, Tre’Shawn, and Michael Parrish. Yet, their traumatic past left a permanent scar on the brothers’ relationships. Bruce, the sibling found scavenging through a neighbor’s trash, was placed in a specialized facility for the developmentally disabled in Gloucester County, highlighting exactly how being in foster care custody can still separate a family even after being rescued.

As shown in national analyses of child welfare failures, the structural placement and resource shortages that have plagued New Jersey demonstrate a nationwide crisis where child protection agencies are so poorly maintained that it frequently fails to secure timely permanency, protect children from abuse, or provide safe placements. New Jersey has struggled with the same systemic disregard for basic rights seen across the country in foster care children, and the consequences of these structural failures are permanent. When the state system fails to deliver family strengthening services, children face extreme instability and through abusive environments due to a severe lack of resource homes. National data from Casey Family Programs shows the many harms the foster care system imposes on children, including educational neglect. Foster children are disproportionately likely to fall behind on education, with only 55%-56% graduating high school compared to over 83% of their statewide peers, and just 3% to 12% ever attaining a four-year college degree. Vulnerable foster youth that are left to grow up alone in institutional isolation face incessant trauma and are thereby led into adulthood entirely unprotected.