Sullivan Family Services lawsuit to be settled for $10,000

Posted 9/30/09

The legacy of Randy Parker, the former commissioner of the Sullivan County Division of Family Services, (DFS) was felt in the halls of the Sullivan County Government Center on July 7, as legislators …

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Sullivan Family Services lawsuit to be settled for $10,000

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The legacy of Randy Parker, the former commissioner of the Sullivan County Division of Family Services, (DFS) was felt in the halls of the Sullivan County Government Center on July 7, as legislators were updated about the status of a lawsuit brought by a woman who claimed she was denied emergency housing when she and her family needed it.

The woman, Karen Pinder, said that her application for housing took place over the course of several days, during which she and her three sons were forced to sleep in her car. The account of the application, which was laid out in court documents, said she has three sons, at the time their ages were two, 17 and 31. The 17 year old has autism.

Pinder said officials at the Sullivan County Division of Family Services in May 2014 told her to remove her eldest son from the application for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP or Food Stamps) from the part of the form that asks "who eats with you" because he was an adult.

According to the account, officials also said the oldest son, who provided day-care services for Pinder, could not stay with the family in their emergency motel room for more than two hours per day because of his age, and any violations to this could result in prosecution. Further Pinder said, without the daycare services provided by her son, she could not apply for a job at Murray's Chickens as she had been instructed to do.

Ultimately she ended the application process for emergency housing because she said DFS staff threatened that if she violated any of the rules regarding her adult son to stay with her in the motel, staff from Child Protective Services would take away her younger son.

She filed the lawsuit against Parker, the DFS staff who handled her application and other county officials. Initially when the process began, Pinder represented herself in the federal civil rights lawsuit, and was not required to pay the usual fees associated with bringing a lawsuit because of her financial status.

Parker was fired in the early part of 2015, after problems arose in DFS. One of the allegations made by critics at the time was that the focus on eliminating waste fraud and abuse from DFS had become so intense that residents who genuinely needed and were qualified for services were being denied them.

After a brief executive session on July 8, legislators voted unanimously to settle the suit for $10,000 which would have been less than the cost of litigating the matter. Pinder's account is posted below.

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