FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Justice for Kids® Opens Portland Office to Confront Oregon’s Foster Care Crisis and Defend Children Harmed by ODHS
Division of Kelley Kronenberg Brings Decades of Class-Action and Civil-Rights Experience to a State Under Federal Scrutiny
PORTLAND, Ore. — Justice for Kids®, a national legal practice devoted exclusively to representing children injured, abused, and neglected inside government systems, has officially opened its Oregon office at 6500 S. Macadam Avenue, Suite 380 in Portland. The launch responds to what advocates, auditors, and federal monitors have repeatedly described as a child welfare system in crisis — one where foster children continue to sleep in hotels and state offices, are shipped to out-of-state facilities with documented histories of abuse, and are returned again and again to placements that should never have been approved.
As a division of the statewide and national firm Kelley Kronenberg, Justice for Kids® brings resources rarely available to Oregon families seeking civil accountability for harm done to their children. Standing as an experienced Oregon child abuse injury law firm, the Portland office will focus its practice exclusively on children — not adults, not general personal injury, not unrelated civil matters — reflecting the firm’s long-held position that protecting young victims requires undivided attention and specialization.
Responding to a System Under Federal Scrutiny
Oregon’s child welfare system has spent nearly a decade under intense legal and federal oversight, including a series of landmark class-action lawsuits that exposed widespread dangers inside the Oregon Department of Human Services. The Wyatt B. v. Brown litigation revealed foster children sleeping in ODHS offices and hotels, being sent thousands of miles away to Utah, Montana, and Michigan residential programs facing abuse allegations, and enduring placement disruptions so frequent that trauma was all but guaranteed. The A.B. v. Brown case forced Oregon to reconsider its reliance on unregulated out-of-state facilities where children faced physical and sexual abuse, improper restraints, seclusion, and overmedication. The D.B. v. Brown litigation documented the hoteling of children — including teenagers, LGBTQ+ youth, and children with complex mental-health needs — in conference rooms and government buildings without child-appropriate care.
The 2022 Wyatt B. settlement laid out a roadmap for reform, but subsequent audits, investigative reporting, and legislative reviews have confirmed that signing the agreement did not solve the underlying problems. Children continue to suffer inside the system. Functioning as a dedicated foster care child abuse lawyer in Oregon practice, the Portland office is positioned to take on the individual civil cases that class-action litigation cannot address — cases where a specific child was hurt, a specific placement was dangerous, and a specific failure must be met with specific accountability.
Why This Work Requires a Specialized Practice
Oregon has a relatively small pool of licensed foster homes, which means ODHS often places children with caregivers who lack training for trauma or disability, in homes carrying prior complaints or red flags, in group programs designed only for short-term crisis stays, or far from siblings, schools, and support networks. When no placement is available at all, children are placed in hotels and offices — a practice tied to running away, sexual exploitation, assault, self-harm, and preventable injury.
Families looking for an attorney for abused child in foster care in Oregon often discover that general personal injury firms are not equipped to litigate against state agencies, navigate ODHS record requests, preserve critical evidence, or meet strict statutory deadlines for claims against government entities. The Portland team is structured specifically for these challenges. Attorneys investigate whether ODHS ignored prior abuse reports, returned a child to a known-unsafe home, licensed an unqualified foster parent, violated a safety plan, or failed to provide services to a child with disabilities or trauma history. Where the evidence supports it, the firm pursues claims under state law and under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violations of the child’s federal constitutional rights.
Case Areas Served Across the State
The Portland office handles matters involving foster care abuse and neglect, institutional and residential facility harm, civil-rights violations tied to unnecessary institutionalization and hoteling, disability discrimination and denial of accommodations, and negligent adoption or misrepresentation — including cases where adoption agencies failed to disclose severe mental-health diagnoses, reactive attachment disorder, sexualized behaviors, or aggression toward other children, leaving adoptive families without the information or resources needed to keep everyone safe.
As a respected child sex abuse law firm in Portland Oregon, the office also represents children who have been sexually abused or exploited inside foster homes, group homes, residential treatment centers, psychiatric facilities, and by traffickers who target youth in unstable placements. Sexual abuse cases frequently intersect with foster care failures — when a child runs from an unsafe placement or is placed in hoteling without supervision, the risk of victimization rises dramatically, and the responsibility for that harm often extends well beyond the individual perpetrator.
Children with disabilities are represented with equal focus. Functioning as a committed disabled child abuse law firm in Oregon, the Portland team takes on cases involving autism, intellectual disabilities, complex medical needs, and severe mental-health conditions — children whose IEPs and 504 Plans were ignored, who were excluded or restrained discriminatorily, who lost access to therapy and medication oversight, or who were placed in settings that compounded rather than treated their conditions. These cases require coordination between ODHS investigations, school district records, medical evaluations, and disability-rights law, and the firm has built that coordination into its standard approach.
Attorneys Licensed to Practice in Oregon
Oregon cases are handled by Oregon-licensed counsel, including Justin Grosz, Co-Business Unit Leader and Partner within the Justice for Kids® Division. Mr. Grosz has tried more than 230 jury trials to verdict and represents foster children who have suffered catastrophic harm inside state systems, residential treatment programs, and school settings. His litigation record, combined with the firm’s national network of forensic investigators, pediatric experts, life-care planners, and disability specialists, gives Oregon families the same caliber of representation available to clients in much larger legal markets.
What to Expect When Contacting the Portland Office
Initial conversations are private and carry no cost or obligation. Families share their concerns, the child’s placement history, and any prior ODHS involvement. The team then conducts a preliminary review of available records — ODHS files, medical documentation, school records, court filings — and explains the legal options in clear language. Throughout the process, the firm follows a trauma-informed approach: unnecessary interviews with the child are avoided, privacy is closely guarded, and the legal process is structured to support healing rather than compound harm.
The office welcomes inquiries from parents, relatives, foster parents, kinship caregivers, guardians ad litem, attorneys, teachers, therapists, pediatricians, former foster youth now of legal age, and anyone else concerned about a child’s safety inside Oregon’s systems. Cases are handled on a contingency basis, with no attorney’s fees unless compensation is recovered for the child.
Serving All of Oregon
Although located in Portland, the office serves children and families throughout the state, including Salem, Eugene, Gresham, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Bend, Medford, Springfield, and Corvallis. The child welfare crisis is not confined to one metropolitan area — ODHS’s duty to protect extends to every community, urban and rural alike, and so does the firm’s representation.
Contact the Portland Office
Justice for Kids® — Portland, Oregon 6500 S. Macadam Avenue, Suite 380 Portland, OR 97239 Phone: 503-783-8481 Toll-Free: 844-4KIDLAW (454-3529) Website: https://justiceforkids.com/where-we-protect-kids/oregon/
About Justice for Kids®
Justice for Kids®, a division of Kelley Kronenberg, is one of the few law practices in the country that limits its work to representing children harmed inside child welfare and disability systems — including foster care, child protection agencies, residential treatment facilities, group homes, schools, and other institutions charged with keeping young people safe. The firm’s dual mission is to secure meaningful compensation for injured children and to drive reform that prevents future harm. With the opening of the Portland office, Justice for Kids® extends that mission directly into Oregon, where it is needed most.
