Woman Sues to Regain License : AIDS Death Disrupts Home for Foster Care

Cynthia Chinchilla says she not only lost her mother to AIDS but her foster children as well.

On Thursday, Chinchilla filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court against the Orange County Social Services Agency, seeking reinstatement of her foster-care license and $10 million in damages. She alleged that the county removed two foster daughters from her home after learning her mother had died of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

“I want my kids back and my life back together,” Chinchilla said at a press conference Thursday in Los Angeles.

Her mother, Ruth, died last February after getting AIDS from a blood transfusion six years ago, according to the lawsuit.

Girls Sent Elsewhere

The two girls, 2 and 4 years old, who lived in Chinchilla’s Garden Grove home, were sent to other foster homes in February after the mother died. The county sent letters in April and May saying they would not be returned, the lawsuit said.

Before those letters were sent, the lawsuit said, the county demanded that Chinchilla take a test to determine whether she had been exposed to AIDS. That March test, and a second one in June, showed negative results, the lawsuit said. Chinchilla’s attorney said the county wanted her to have another test in a few months.

“This appears to be a case of social workers frozen by hysteria, unable to see beyond the word ‘AIDS,’ ” Santa Ana attorney Marjorie Rushforth said at the press conference.

Later she called the county’s decision a “case of a perceived handicap--because her mother died from AIDS, she is not fit to have foster children.” Rushforth is working with the American Civil Liberties Foundation of Southern California on the case.

Chinchilla has received state disability benefits, stemming from “emotional problems,” since she was 18 years old, Rushforth said. But she added that the county was aware of that when her foster-care license was issued in April, 1986.

Moreover, Rushforth said, Chinchilla received excellent foster care evaluations from the county before telling caseworkers that her mother had AIDS; her emotional history was never raised in those evaluations.

Lawrence Leaman, director of the Social Services Agency, said the lawsuit “unfolded suddenly--it blind-sided us.”

Leaman said he had not seen a copy of the lawsuit and could not comment on specific allegations. By law, he said, he is not permitted to discuss individual children or parents involved in the county’s foster-care program.

“We have been developing policies for dealing with foster children with AIDS, but we have not been dealing particularly with AIDS as it shows up among foster parents,” Leaman said.

The agency has the authority to order certain medical tests to determine whether the health of a foster child is at risk, Leaman said. He said he could not confirm that Chinchilla’s foster-care license has been suspended, as her lawsuit contends.

Pile of Toys in Corner

But even if a person has a valid foster-care license, he said, the county may still decide not to place any children in the home for various reasons.

Thursday afternoon, at Chinchilla’s blue and white mobile home on Clinton Street in Garden Grove, a pile of children’s toys sat in a corner. In addition to the two girls who had lived with her, Chinchilla had provided day care for three boys through the Social Services Agency.

The county removed the three boys, who are brothers, from her care last month. In all, she had been receiving $1,700 a month from the county for caring for the five children.

“It’s very, very quiet now,” said Chinchilla, 40, fighting back tears. “I was usually up with the kids at 5:30 a.m. Now I sleep until 9:30 a.m.”

She said she began baby-sitting for the three young boys about two years ago. Because she has no children of her own and wanted to adopt a child someday, she decided to apply for county day-care and foster-care licenses last year.

She hasn’t had a foster child since Feb. 9, according to her lawsuit.

In November, 1986, Chinchilla’s mother became seriously ill. She moved into Chinchilla’s home for about a month before returning to her own home in December, she said. It was also in December that Chinchilla’s husband left her.

“The only thing we knew about it (AIDS) was that she wasn’t contagious and we had nothing to fear, but he didn’t understand that,” Chinchilla said.

When her husband moved out, he stopped paying the bills, forcing her to file for bankruptcy in February, she said.

“What hurts really is they take these kids out of their homes because of some sort of abuse and then they take them away and abuse me,” Chinchilla said.