Orphaned

News that some abused and neglected children have ended up sleeping in offices at Child Protective Services highlights the need for a kind of care that most consider a relic of Dickens’ time: residential care facilities, or orphanages, if you will.

Since January 1, when CPS adopted new regulations for foster caregivers, many foster homes have been taken off the approved list of homes, causing a shortage. As a result, many of the most difficult children are being dumped back on CPS, and what was intended to make such kids safer has instead put them in limbo.

In May about 160 kids in the North Texas area ended up spending the night in CPS offices, with caseworkers drafted to serve as caregivers, says Marissa Gonzales, spokeswoman for CPS. In June, that number dipped to about 115 children.

“Most are teenagers,” says Gonzales. “Some have been recently released from psychiatric facilities or they have other types of behavioral problems, and the placement has broken down.”

Gonzales says these have always been the hardest children to place. “They need specialized attention,” Gonzales says. “Some private agencies we have contracts with won’t take those children. They say it might be too high a risk. It leaves us having to have someone care for them until we can find another solution.”

State District Judge Bill Mazur says he was surprised to learn after taking the bench in January that Dallas-Fort Worth—the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the nation—has no residential care facilities for these difficult-to-place children.

“Some years ago foster care began to sound like the answer instead of institutions, and so they fell out of favor,” says Mazur, who hears juvenile and CPS-related cases. “But foster care has its issues as well. Plus we just don’t have the number of homes that we need. We make it pretty tough on those kids, and most of the time it’s not anything they’ve done. They are not delinquents; they are just abused and neglected. We just don’t have enough beds.”

Mazur says that meetings to build permanent residential treatment centers have started among the various agencies. He estimates that Dallas needs enough such centers to offer a total of 250 to 300 beds. One might provide care for teen mothers; another might focus on emotionally disturbed kids.

Gonzales says that when you compare the numbers of children sleeping in offices with the 25,000 to 30,000 in the Texas foster care system, it’s not statistically significant, but it poses problems not only for the children but staff.

“It does put a strain on caseworkers when they have to go out and do their jobs and then take care of the kids,” Gonzales says.

About a month ago, CPS worked out an arrangement with Dallas County to house the children who are in limbo at the Letot Juvenile Detention Center. Letot provides beds for an average of three or four CPS kids per day, with average stays from three to six days, says Michael Griffiths, director for the county juvenile system.

“We are in a funny situation,” Griffiths says. “We have some youths who are under contract from CPS, but we aren’t receiving funding for these youths [who have been] staying in offices. We are proposing they expand the contracts so we get the youths sitting in their offices properly placed.”

Letot has a license to house only 32 youths; many are runaways.

“We can take no more than six or seven of these kids,” Griffiths says. “We’ve converted a large training area into a makeshift dorm. Boys and girls are separated, but it is just one room. They have CPS staff there 24 hours a day.”

Griffiths says only a few residential treatment facilities in Texas work with “very, very challenged” youths. The problem just keeps getting bigger. Griffiths believes the numbers of children with emotional, mental or substance abuse problems are increasing.

Irene Clements, vice president of family services for Lutheran Social Services of the South, says that some of the rules to protect children from bad foster parents have affected troubled children the most.

She points out that the youths who end up in CPS offices typically have been in the system for a while. “They bring with them things that are considered risks: sexual acting out, aggressiveness, severe bouts of anger,” Clements says. “They have attacked social workers. They do that to foster parents too.”

Clements has fostered 127 children over 27 years. One teenage girl she fostered came at her with a butcher knife.

“Wherever these children are placed needs to be appropriate for their needs,” Clements says. One possible help: variances given to foster homes so they can temporarily take in more kids. But Clements says that’s no long-term solution.

“It doesn’t make any sense to put them in a foster home for two or three days and then they end up back at the office,” Clements says. “It sets the child up—they’ll have to move. We keep forgetting we’re not just looking for a bed. These are children with very high needs that are not usually complementary to a family home environment. These kids wear families out. They may need a group environment where there are shifts of caregivers.

“A lot of these kids are runners,” Clements says. “These are family homes, not locked down facilities. In fact, that’s against the law, against fire code. So the kid runs. You report that to the youth hotline and the CPS worker. It gets reported to law enforcement. The foster family gets investigated. They get cited for problems and lack of supervision when everyone knew going in that the child had run away in the last nine placements.”

She calls it a vicious cycle that can punish even good foster parents.

“There needs to be some kind of understanding about children with these kinds of histories,” Clements says. “Sometimes these kids are acting out against other kids. Or you have a teenager that falls in love with the boy next door. These kids are no different. They are like everybody else with some added baggage. Kids are going to do things. It’s part of growing up. It’s like a 10-year-old climbing a tree and falling. If it was my child doing it, it was an accident. If it’s a foster child, you are investigated. The system has gotten so punitive it’s guilty until proven innocent.”

Clements says that on June 29 the Texas Legislature approved higher reimbursements for foster parents willing to accept children who have had three or four psychiatric episodes in the last 12 months. The “step-down” program begins September 1; after 60 days the placement is evaluated, with a potential for another 60-day extension. Then reimbursements drop to the usual.

“We’ll see how effective it can be,” says Clements. “These kids have long-term issues, and it takes more than 60 days to fix them. Foster parents will have to determine if they have a place to do this. Do they have walls that won’t be destroyed? Furniture that won’t be destroyed? It takes a very special environment to manage the aggressiveness of these kinds of youths.”

Clements believes the entire system needs to be restructured. “When they are moved around and get rejected, even if it’s tied to their behavior, it’s another adult letting them down,” says Clements. “It’s no wonder some of these kids are the way they are.”