Pat Adams, who as a licensed counselor visited the facility weekly to counsel children under a contract with the state stopped going because she was concerned about her safety and that of the children she was counseling. “The place was a joke, an absolute joke. It was just set up to get state money,” said Adams. Like Montrose, the facility was finally shut down.[13]
Staffing continues to be a problem in these facilities. Many group home owners pay minimum wage, or slightly above, and turnover remains high, just as it does in the rest of the child welfare industry. An informal study conducted by the Northwestern Children and Family Justice Center found that most of the privately staffed residential group home institutions in Illinois had rotating staffs who were not houseparents living with children, but teams that came and went. Staff turnover was high, with the average time worked at the sites being between 1 1/2 to 2 years. Notes author Renny Golden: “Not much intimate, caring, consistent nurturance is going on in these settings.”[14]
“I will tell you I have never, ever, ever, been afraid of one of my clients. But I have been afraid to go into some of those facilities at night and deal with the night staff alone. It is frightening. It is absolutely frightening,” explained District of Columbia Bar Association Attorney Diane Weinroth to a Congressional subcommittee.
“They have got some very strange people working in these facilities. I don’t know where they come from. But I will tell you this. There are no standards for hiring.”[15]
Apparently, many social workers continue to turn a blind eye to problems in the group homes–essentially ignoring child abuse in their own facilities. Yaroslavsky said some of the shortcomings identified by the grand jury should be evident to county social workers, who typically visit foster children once a month.”With some things, you walk in the door and you know there is a problem,” he said. “We are not getting the kind of feedback from the social worker visitations that we should be, to protect the welfare of the kids.”[16] The Los Angeles County Grand Jury determined that money is “not expended in accordance with federal, state, and local laws and regulations.” Audits displayed “significant financial abuses and illegal and inappropriate uses of foster care funds in many of the homes audited.”
As for the living conditions, the jury found that: children were inappropriately being sedated with psychotropic medications; children were denied promised rewards for good behavior based on a point system; when group home owners did not want to provide transportation for after school activities, they simply refused to let the child participate; many group homes did not provide tutoring, yet punished the children when they got poor grades.
The grand jury also found that “some group home owners use inappropriate discipline measures such as dragging children across the floor, throwing shoes at them, slapping or hitting a child; others make children stand in a corner for hours at a time.” But the group home owners are not the only ones who enrich themselves at the expense of children. The grand jury found a therapist having written the same comment for each of the six children at one group home. Some therapists were not seeing the children at all, or spending only five to ten minutes with them, while billing for a full 45 minutes, the jury found.
The jury was particularly disturbed by the response of one therapist, who told them during an inspection: “You obviously don’t understand anything about children and therapy. Children do not ever want to talk to a therapist, so I asked the group home owners how the children are doing.”
But the buck has to stop somewhere, and in the final analysis the blame rests not so much with those opportunistic group home owners and therapists who soak the system for all its worth, as it does with department head Peter Digre and his control over the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services. A budget of nearly one quarter of a billion dollars is expended annually on group home and foster care services in Los Angeles County, and group homes have become a veritable growth industry under his command, jumping more than 250 percent between 1990 and 1995–five times the rate of the rest of California.[17]
Digre points the finger of blame at cutbacks in AFDC benefits as responsible for increasing foster placements, having explained to reporters: “Families get caught in a downward spiral: first their utilities are cut off so they can’t keep the baby bottles cold. Then they get behind in rent and move in with friend or relatives who may have a criminal history.”[18]
Under questioning by a Congressional subcommittee, Digre admitted to legislators that about half of the removals of children from their homes are due to poverty, and not abuse.
“It gets down to those very specific issues about a place to live, food on the table, medical care, and thing like that,” he explained, adding that “about half of the families are not physical abusers, not sexual abusers, not people with propensities to violence but simply people who are struggling to keep ends pulled together and are eminently salvagable.”
All of this was too much for a frustrated Congressman Herger, who replied: “Evidently, it is your department’s practice to remove children from families in about 50 percent of the cases because they don’t have enough money.”[19] While Digre has always been quick to blame cutbacks in funding, while playing something of a shell game with statistics, the Los Angeles Grand Jury notes that “the foster care caseload has been steadily increasing since 1990, two years before the first maximum aid payment reduction.” How does his department “assist” those people who are caught in this economic downward spiral? By removing 26,947 children from their homes in one recent year–a figure representing only the first time entrants into foster care. And, as the Grand Jury report makes clear, the plight of children is often none the better in state care, as they are often denied basic necessities–the lack of which ostensibly led to their placement to begin with. About half of the group homes the grand jury visited had no reference books, educational toys or games. About half the homes had furniture with missing drawers, stains on the carpets, walls with holes and bathrooms without toilet paper. One site didn’t even provide toothpaste to the children. But rather than assist a family with a rent voucher or utility deposit, the cost of which may be as little as a few hundred dollars, the Department will spend between $8,000 to $10,000 per month to shelter one child at MacLaren Children’s Center. Rather than assist with housing or daycare, it will spend a quarter of a billion dollars to house poor children in dangerous foster homes, and in the city’s 700 group homes.[20] With the incredibly high number of children removed from their homes, court oversight is nearly impossible. A recent investigation by the California State Auditor reveals that the Los Angeles juvenile court follows the recommendations of DCFS is 98 percent of the cases it hears–effectively acting a rubberstamp for the Department. Even if the rare judge were inclined to provide some closer scrutiny to the Department’s claims, it would be nearly impossible, as the cumulative caseload of the Los Angeles juvenile court consisted of 153,700 hearings in 1995, and 96,100 hearings during the first seven weeks of 1996.[21]
Throughout the nation, children continue to enter the system through different doors–each bearing a different label–finding themselves dumped in placement one with another an a bed-available basis.
THE IMPACT ON THE CHILDREN
The impact of life in residential group homes is psychologically devasting, suggests a new study. Adolescents living with foster parents or in group homes have more than four times the rate of serious psychiatric disorders than those living with their own families.
“One of the most significant findings was that a number of adolescents were suffering from severe, potentially treatable, psychiatric disorders which had gone undetected,” wrote researchers in the December, 1996, issue of the British Medical Journal.
According to the study, not only did the teens in outside care suffer from serious psychiatric disorders — notably major depression — they were also more likely to have conduct disorders, anxiety problems, attention-deficit disorder, and unspecified psychoses.
Of 88 teens studied, aged 13 to 17 years, living in foster or group residential settings, the rate of psychiatric disorders was 67%, compared with 15% in those living at home. The differences between “conventional” foster homes and residential care are equally marked. Such disturbances were identified in 57% of those in foster care, and in 96% of those in residential care.[22]
Reference:
1. Testimony of Douglas L. Wilder, Close to home: “Community-based Mental Health Services for Children,”, hearing, Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families, U.S. House of Representatives, April 29, 1991. p. 15.
2. Testimony of Mark Soler, Children in State Care: Ensuring Their Protection and Support, hearing, Committee on Children, Youth and Families, U.S. House of Representatives, September 25, 1986.
3. South Carolina Legislative Audit Council, Report to the General Assembly: Selected Issues in Foster Care, Audit, Reference: LAC/94-2, Chapter 2. January, 1995 Index.
4. Testimony of Kenneth Wooden.
5. Uri Berliner, “Mining Riches from Troubled Kids,” San Diego Union-Tribune, (June 5, 1994).
6. John Hubner and Jill Wolfson, Somebody Else’s Children: The Courts, the Kids, And the Struggle to Save America’s Troubled Families, (New York: Crown, 1996). p. 213
7. Uri Berliner, “Care Group is Overpaid, State Finds – California Crest Homes’ Excess Put at $2 Million,” San Diego Union-Tribune, (March 30, 1995); Uri Berliner, “Mining Riches from Troubled Kids,” San Diego Union-Tribune, (June 5, 1994); Uri Berliner, “Board Set to Ask for Investigation of Group Homes,” San Diego Union-Tribune, (June 15, 1994).
8. Testimony of Dennis Lepak, Foster Care, Child Welfare, and Adoption Reforms, Joint Hearings before the Subcommittee on Public Assistance and Unemployment Compensation of the Committee on Ways and Means and the Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families, U.S. House of Representatives, April 13 and 28, May 12, 1988.
9. Paul Carpenter, “They Prefer the Girl to be On the Lam,” The Morning Call, (February 27, 1996).
10. David Van Biema, “The Storm Over Orphanages,” TIME Magazine, 144 (December 12, 1994).
11. Associated Press, “Boys Town Supervisor Charged With Sexual Battery of Girl,” as reported in Naples Daily News, (October 12, 1997).
12. Testimony of Pat Hanges, Children in State Care: Ensuring Their Protection and Support, hearing, Committee on Children, Youth and Families, U.S. House of Representatives, September 25, 1986.
13. Martha Shirk, “Idyllic Setting Masks Child Abuse, Neglect,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, (October 3, 1993
14. Renny Golden, Disposable Children: America’s Child Welfare System, (Belmont, Ca.: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1997) p. 135.
15. Testimony of Diane Weinroth, Foster Care: Problems and Issues, hearing, Subcommittee on Select Education of the Committee on Education and Labor, U.S. House of Representatives, September 8, 1976.
16. James Rainey, “Reforms Called for in Group Homes,” Los Angeles Times, (April 10, 1997).
17. 1996-1997 Los Angeles County Grand Jury, Juvenile Services Committee, Final Report, Early Release #3, March 1997.
18. Margot Hornblower, “Fixing the System,” TIME Magazine, (December 11, 1995).
19. Testimony of Peter Digre, President Clinton’s Budget Proposal For New Funding for Child Welfare Services Targeted for Family Support and Preservation Services, hearing, Subcommittee on Human Resources, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives, April 21, 1993. pp. 87 – 88.
20. Los Angeles County Grand Jury. See note 18.
21. California State Auditor, Bureau of State Audits, Los Angeles County: The Department of Children and Family Services Can Improve Its Processes To Protect Children From Abuse and Neglect, October 1996.
22. Reuters, “Teens In Public Care More Troubled,” (December 13, 1996).