Metro

A Hollidaysburg mother is suing Blair County Children, Youth and Families, contending that caseworkers of the agency violated her civil rights to due process by forcing her to sign a blank safety plan and then threatened that if she didn’t sign, her daughter would be placed in foster care.

The lynchpin of her lawsuit, however, is Blair County’s alleged “deliberate indifference” to the constitutional rights of parents who come in contact with the county’s child welfare agency.

“Blair County has failed to train its caseworkers regarding procedural due process protections required by the Fourth Amendment when implementing safety plans that alter parental custody rights,” the mother charged in a lawsuit that was filed in the United States District Court in Johnstown late last week.

Her lawsuit was filed pro se, meaning she is not represented by an attorney, but has filed the civil rights complaint on her own.

According to the safety plan, the mother’s child was removed from her home on May 30, 2024, and transferred to the custody of the maternal grandmother.

The mother charged in her lawsuit that Blair County has an “unconstitutional custom of implementing coercive threats of foster care placement without procedural safeguards.”

For instance, the agency does not:

— Provide parents with written notices of their constitutional rights before requesting a safety plan;

— Provide notice to parents with written notice of their constitutional rights before requesting a signature on its proposed safety plans;

— Provide parents with written notice of their right to challenge safety plans and access to a hearing before a neutral decision-maker;

— Have written policies and procedures to ensure compliance with due process requirements;

— Train its caseworkers concerning procedural due process requirements.

The mother’s lawsuit seeks a declaratory judgment that the blank safety plan she signed in 2024 is “void, unenforceable and of no legal effect.”

She also is seeking compensatory and punitive damages “for emotional distress, anxiety and financial losses.”

The mother stated in a communication that filing the lawsuit was not something she decided to do overnight.

She said for the past 20 months, she has been working with attorneys and the county, doing everything that has been recommended in addition to working a full-time job as a registered nurse.

“I’m a registered nurse, and I am a single mom, and I’ve gotten nowhere … to get custody of my daughter back, and I think I’m just fed up with it,” she wrote.

Her lawsuit names as defendants a former director of Blair CYS, Tiffany Treese, along with three caseworkers and Blair County.

One of the caseworkers, she charged, coerced her into signing a blank safety plan and threatened her, relating that her daughter would be placed into foster care if she refused to sign.

She was not given notice of her constitutional rights, no opportunity for a hearing and no information about the legal standards governing child protective services intervention.

The caseworker filled in the safety plan after the mother had placed her signature on the document, she stated in her civil rights complaint.

In her petition, she seeks injunctive relief barring the implementation of coercive safety plans.

She also seeks to void her safety plan.

“The safety plan is void and unenforceable,” she stated, “because it was obtained through governmental coercion in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.”

The mother admitted she is a recovering addict but she said, “I’m not the person I used to be and I feel like a lot of my life has been speculated based on my past.

“My daughter’s safety and my recovery are the most important pieces of my life, and I would never jeopardize that,” she stated.

“The child welfare system needs to be changed. It is very, very, very broken,” she wrote in an email.

Shannon Tucker, the present director of Blair CYS, stated she could not comment on pending litigation, but she also noted she did not know about the lawsuit and that agency has yet to be served with notification of its filing.