Alameda County, foster care provider to pay $3.5 million for toddler’s fatal methamphetamine overdose

Alameda County and a nonprofit foster care provider are expected to pay a $3.5 million settlement over the 2015 death of 3-year-old Mariah Mustafa, who fatally overdosed on methamphetamine after social workers overrode warnings that the child was in danger in her foster home, according to court filings.

The settlement comes after attorneys for the girl’s brother said they discovered systemic failings in how county social workers investigated claims of abuse and neglect across the county’s foster care system.

Reporting by the Bay Area News Group, which identified the girl as Mariah Mustafa, revealed a series of failures by the people tasked with keeping the girl safe, most notably in their decision to return Mariah to her foster home after a first overdose. The new court filings also suggest a possible cover-up by a manager for the foster care provider, aimed at keeping the girl’s exposure to methamphetamine secret, and hiding details of her foster home’s troubled past.

Alameda County’s Board of Supervisors announced this week that it has agreed to pay $2.25 million to settle the lawsuit. Triad Family Services, a nonprofit foster care provider that partners with Alameda County and oversaw Mariah’s case, is expected to pay $1.25 million.

The settlement adds to mounting concerns about Alameda County’s ability to protect children from abuse or neglect. A recent civil grand jury found that Alameda County’s Department of Children and Family Services is mired in a “downward spiral,” with an exodus of staff members causing delays in many child welfare investigations.

The county also faces a lawsuit over its handling of the 2022 death of Sophia Mason, an 8-year-old girl whose body was found dead in a Merced bathroom despite repeated warnings to Alameda’s DCFS that she was being beaten and sexually abused. Multiple Bay Area News Group investigations found that county social workers failed to adequately respond to seven reports of abuse or neglect in the final 15 months of Sophia’s life.

In late June, the city of Hayward also sued Alameda County alleging that it acted with “deliberate indifference” in allowing one of its foster centers to allegedly spiral out of control into a hotbed of child prostitution and drug use.

But the findings surrounding Mariah’s death suggest the system has been far more troubled than previously imagined, according to motions filed in court last week, which include depositions from social workers who worked on her case.

“The common theme here is that the ball was dropped,” said Darren Kessler, an attorney representing Mariah’s brother.

Just days after the county and Triad Family Services placed the siblings in a new foster home in Stockton in fall 2015, the girl started shaking, sweating and complaining she was seeing “monkeys and bunnies running around when none were there,” according to the original lawsuit. Her heart was racing, the suit claimed, and “she was acting hyper, much different from her natural and previous shy demeanor.”

She was taken to a hospital, where doctors diagnosed her with “altered level of consciousness” and “amphetamine abuse.” Hospital staff then notified Alameda County social workers and Triad of the urine test results, which showed the girl had been exposed to drugs.

Yet despite those warnings, Mariah remained in the foster home. Less than two weeks later, she ingested methamphetamine a second time and fatally overdosed.

The new settlement also sheds fresh light on how Alameda County social workers failed to heed warnings about the safety of kids across the foster care system. According to court filings, numerous depositions revealed that DCFS social workers routinely failed to refer complaints of abuse or neglect to child welfare investigators when the claims involved foster children. Rather, the county relied on other organizations, including Triad Family Services workers, to respond to those complaints — though Triad workers also denied they were responsible for investigating those claims.

The county “would systematically bypass required protocol that mandated investigation and protection” of foster children, the settlement said.

Kessler said he suspects the flawed practice remained in place until it was discovered by him and his partner attorney, Liza de Vries, in 2022.

“It was a conscious, absolute, formalized custom practice that was designed to completely bypass the path that every single report of abuse or neglect has to go through,” Kessler said.

Triad’s actions were “equally outrageous” and constituted a “blatant” cover-up, according to settlement papers.

A Triad director, the suit claims, overrode the recommendations of three other Triad workers who had called for Mariah to be removed from her foster home immediately after the first overdose, according to depositions by employees summarized in the settlement agreement.

The director then told his team to hide their recommendations from the county, along with the fact Mariah’s urine test came back positive for drugs, the settlement said, and also told his team to hide any history of Mariah’s foster mother allegedly exposing other children in her home to drugs.

The cover-up appeared to be motivated by money, settlement papers claimed. The foster home that Mariah had been staying in housed four foster children — making it worth $72,000 a year in revenue to Triad, settlement papers said.

“It was all about the money,” Kessler said. “Because (foster children) were a cash cow to the agency, to that organization. And the more that they could keep the kids from being removed from the home, the more money they got.”

A statement from Alameda County’s Social Services Agency said the settlement “is very limited in its resolution to bring a level of financial justice.”

“We recognize that this settlement will in no way alleviate the indescribable and immeasurable pain that the family experiences with every day that passes without Mariah,” the county’s statement said. A county spokesperson did not respond to follow-up questions about the specific allegations in the court filings.

Calls to Triad Family Services also were not immediately returned. A county spokesperson did confirm that Alameda County “continues to access foster homes licensed by Triad Family Services.”

In securing the settlement, Kessler and de Vries convinced a federal district court judge that Triad Family Services could be tried as a “state actor” if the case went to trial — a possibly novel ruling in a foster care case, de Vries said, that allowed the attorneys to claim Triad Family Services violated the constitutional rights of Mariah’s brother.

It means that counties can’t try to “wash their hands of responsibility by saying, ‘Oh, it wasn’t us, it was this agency that did this,’” Kessler added.  “So what it does is basically prevents the counties from sanitizing their own liability.”