CAI’s Ed Howard, Senior Policy Advocate, Quoted by The Center for Public Integrity on Foster Family Agencies’ Insurance Battle

SAN DIEGO (September 24, 2024) – University of San Diego (USD) School of Law Children’s Advocacy Institute’s (CAI) Ed Howard, Senior Policy Advocate, was quoted in an article titled, “Inside the scramble to stop the displacement of thousands of California foster children.”

According to the article, the Nonprofits Insurance Alliance of California has been the primary insurer for California’s foster family agencies, which house some of the most vulnerable children for the past nine years.  In August, NIAC announced it would no longer insure these agencies. If maintained, it could displace thousands of children some as soon as next week.

In explaining NIAC’s decision, Pamela Davis, NIAC’s founder, president, and CEO, has pointed to a December 2023 jury decision that awarded $24.8 million in damages to a trio of siblings who said they had been sexually assaulted in a foster home in Northern California.

Ed Howard, senior counsel at CAI, noted that the facts of the case include negligence on behalf of the foster family agency that NIAC insured. However, “We have zero evidence beyond this one case that there is a trend,” Howard said. “And that one case utterly refutes their contention that the FFA did nothing wrong.”

Howard also noted a recent email that NIAC sent to the foster family agencies it insures. In it, the insurer said any agency that took in a ported child from another agency that was losing its insurance would have its policy canceled. “You can’t cancel people without investigating the circumstances of each and every individual insured,” Howard said. “Every FFA that’s canceled under those circumstances potentially has a lawsuit against NIAC.”

To read the full article, visit The Center for Public Integrity.

About the Children’s Advocacy Institute

The Children's Advocacy Institute (CAI), founded at the nonprofit University of San Diego School of Law in 1989, is one of the nation's premiere academic, research, and advocacy organizations working to improve the lives of children and youth, with special emphasis on improving the child protection and foster care systems and enhancing resources that are available to youth aging out of foster care.

In its academic component, CAI trains law students and attorneys to be effective child advocates throughout their legal careers. Its Child Advocacy Clinic gives USD Law students three distinct clinical opportunities to advocate on behalf of children and youth, and its Dependency Counsel Training Program provides comprehensive training to licensed attorneys engaged in or contemplating Dependency Court practice.

CAI's research and advocacy component, conducted through its offices in San Diego, Sacramento, and Washington, D.C., seeks to leverage change for children and youth through impact litigation, regulatory and legislative advocacy, and public education. Active primarily at the federal and state levels, CAI's efforts are multi-faceted—comprehensively and successfully embracing all tools of public interest advocacy to improve the lives of children and youth. To support CAI’s work, please visit law.sandiego.edu/caigift.

About the University of San Diego School of Law

Each year, USD educates approximately 800 Juris Doctor and graduate law students from throughout the United States and around the world. The law school is best known for its offerings in the areas of business and corporate law, constitutional law, intellectual property, international and comparative law, public interest law and taxation.

USD School of Law is one of the 84 law schools elected to the Order of the Coif, a national honor society for law school graduates. The law school’s faculty is a strong group of outstanding scholars and teachers with national and international reputations and currently ranks 30th nationally among U.S. law faculties in scholarly impact and 41st nationally in past-year faculty downloads on the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN). The school is accredited by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools. Founded in 1954, the law school is part of the University of San Diego, a private, independent, Roman Catholic university chartered in 1949.