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Pennsylvania — Foster Care Abuse Claims

Decades of Reform and an Ongoing Systemic Crisis

Pennsylvania’s child welfare system has been in and out of crisis for decades. While foster care systems are charged with protecting children, they are instead re-abusing them, sexually and physically abusing them within a system that was meant to keep them safe. Pennsylvania’s systemic issues that allow foster children to be sexually and physically abused demonstrate a broader national reality: foster care is a failed human experiment on these kids. As a state involved in severe child welfare litigation for many years, Pennsylvania’s S.R. v. Pennsylvania DHS lawsuit highlights 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.

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Children reported missing from New Jersey DFCS custody, 2018–2022

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Identified as likely sex trafficking victims

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Of reviewed cases with unaddressed safety concerns

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Medicaid-enrolled children affected, per the Isaac A. complaint

Foster care should protect children. In Pennsylvania, the record shows it too often fails them.

As Pearl S. Buck once said, “The test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.”

As sensitive advocates, Justice for Kids® continues to protect foster children by working with licensed lawyers in Pennsylvania to file personal injury and damage claims throughout the state. We refuse to be silent.

The Litigation Record

Thirty-eight years of federal oversight

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

S.R. v. Pennsylvania DHS: The Fight for Accountability

In December 2017, a federal class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of dependent foster youth under age 21 with intellectual and emotional disabilities, challenging Pennsylvania's failure to provide appropriate community-based mental health services and prevent unnecessary institutionalization.

Class Action Lawsuit

The Human Cost

Numbers a docket can't fully carry

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Missing child reports involving 1,790 individual Pennsylvania foster children

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Foster youth high school graduation rate, vs. over 83% of statewide peers

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Ever attain a four-year college degree

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Some high-needs children housed in offices and budget motels

Justice for Kids® Refuses to Be Silent

Start a Free, Confidential Case Review

If your child was harmed in Pennsylvania’s foster care system, you have the right to answers.

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

Behind the Statistics

The Human Cost Behind the Statistics

Even with the October 2025 settlement, Pennsylvania’s child welfare failures are enormous. When the system fails to provide stable, community-based care and pushes kids with disabilities into institutions, they suffer deep trauma, missing out on normal childhood experiences, falling behind in school, and facing severe mental health crises without the right support.

In March 2025, legal accountability in Pennsylvania was demanded once again when a comprehensive settlement was reached in another major class action lawsuit, Disability Rights Pennsylvania v. Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, et al (No. 1:19-CV-00737). Disability Rights Pennsylvania originally brought this federal lawsuit in April of 2019 over claims of abusive conditions and disability discrimination at the state’s Youth Development Centers operated by the state to treat delinquent children committed to its care by county juvenile courts. The lawsuit exposed a system in crisis that regularly violated the civil rights of its residents, alleging that youth were subjected to painful and unnecessary physical restraints, deprived of essential mental health care, and forced to endure serious physical and emotional harm. Approximately 70% of the youth incarcerated in these state centers have disabilities, including autism, intellectual disabilities, and mental health needs, making them particularly vulnerable to institutional abuse, neglect, and victimization. The March 24, 2025 settlement forced major changes within these state-run facilities and focused on protecting children from physical trauma and institutional isolation by enforcing strict new rules that limit the use of physical restraints, increase restrictions on isolations and seclusions, and ensure confined children are provided fresh air, exercise, and schooling. It also required the state to improve mental health and behavioral treatment, strengthen internal investigations and video record-keeping of restraints, and increase staff accountability for the abuse of youth. To enforce these reforms, the settlement mandated an outside monitor to oversee the state’s compliance and guarantee that the required changes can be seen. This recent settlement shows that despite the S.R. litigation, the systemic issues plaguing Pennsylvania’s institutional placements are not issues of the past, but ongoing crises that put vulnerable children in danger.

Litigation in Pennsylvania revealed a system that is so overburdened and poorly maintained that it frequently fails to secure timely permanency, protect children from abuse, or provide safe placements. This systemic disregard for foster children’s basic rights in Pennsylvania reflects the country’s national crisis, where foster care placements put our youth in danger rather than safety. Approximately 20,000 youth who age out of the foster care system annually across the country, representing about 10% of the older foster care population. 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 instead of strong family bonds and are thereby led into adulthood entirely unprotected.

In the News

Independent reporting on Pennsylvania's foster care crisis