OUT-OF-AREA PLACEMENTS
Two weeks ago Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, signed into law a permanent ban on child welfare and juvenile justice authorities sending children and young people to out-of-state residential treatment facilities. He also committed $100 million over five years to creating new programs within the state. In the run-up to the legislation being passed, authorities had already brought all young people who were in such placements back to California.
While I am not that familiar with the OOHC political context in California, reporting suggests that there were two reasons for this. The first reason was a report compiled by two media organisation. The San Francisco Chronicle and The Imprint documented official investigations into the physical and sexual abuse and treatment of children and young people at some of these, predominantly for-profit, out-of-state ‘campuses’. In particular there were 30 youth from California at the Sequel Youth & Family Services-run Lakeside Academy in Michigan (since closed) where 16-year-old Cornelius Fredericks died last year having been ‘restrained’ by 7 adults who lay on top of him. And if you’re wondering how far Michigan is from California, it is over 3.500km.
The second reason was that while California has previously banned placements to out-of-state for-profit residential treatment facilities, this legislation would also address the loophole that Sequel had apparently been using at Lakeside Academy and elsewhere. The San Francisco Chronicle and The Imprint reporting stated that while ownership of the facility was held by a not-for-profit, Sequel was contracted to operate the facility and received almost all of the income generated.
In comparison to other US states, I have always viewed child welfare in California as better than most. In fact I was a little surprised that California had so many children placed in out-of-state residential treatment facilities. With 38m people, California is by far the most populous state in the US. Larger than New Zealand and Victoria but smaller than New South Wales, if California was a sovereign nation it would be the 5th largest economy in the world. Yet as well as Michigan, it had been regularly sending children to Sequel facilitates in Iowa, Wyoming, Arizona and Utah.
Fundamentally there’s only one reason to place a child away from their immediate area; that’s when it is in their best interests, at this time, to go to that particular residential or foster care placement. In doing so, full consideration also needs to be given to the geographical disadvantages of any such placement and the implications that may arise from this. For example:
What will be the impact of the child having to change from his or her current school, and how suitable is the proposed new one?
How easy will it be for the child to maintain relationships with and see parents, siblings, and other family members?
If a kin care placement is being proposed, does the child have an existing positive relationship with them, and what extended family support will there be?
Is there anyone or anything else in their current community that the child particularly values?
How will the child’s social workers maintain sufficient purposeful contact?
If the child returns to his home area, how will that transition back be supported by the placement currently being proposed?
However, aside from the above, there’s one fundamental problem here with the best interests of the child concept to such situations. It is usually applied in the ‘here and now’; in Court, at a case meeting, or on a Friday afternoon when a 14 year old is sat in the office with ‘nowhere to sleep’ that night following a placement breakdown. As such the ‘best interests of the child’ concept is often resource-driven and may mask a lack of better alternative options. Or in other words, the best interests of the child may be ‘the best of a bad lot’, or even ‘the lesser of two evils’.
As such, to meaningfully make decisions that are in the best interests of the child, jurisdictions and their respective organisations need to ensure that they have access to a sufficient range of high quality residential and foster care placements and related services, and ensure that the specific needs and rights of each and every child and young person in OOHC are met and respected. Any jurisdiction’s continuum of care will likely require some highly specialised, high quality, and effective, residential provision that is provided regionally and/or at the state, province or, for smaller countries, the national level. But what, where and how? And what if the residential provision is not highly specialised, high quality and/or effective?
Very similar dynamics also play out every day in foster care. For example say an organisation targets recruiting foster carers in rural areas rather than in the cities where they are likely to be more difficult to recruit or needed more. Or an organisation that is struggling to sufficiently support and develop their respite and emergency foster carers so that they can in time provide more challenging placements or meet a wider range of needs. Examples such as these can over time seriously compromise both the jurisdiction’s continuum of care and the ability to act in the best interests of the child.
And at the risk of stating the obvious, with the number of children coming into care continuing to rise in some jurisdictions and far too many also experiencing continuous crises, organisations also need to be continuously planning for the future - rather than for the past. Simple? Yes. Easy? No.
I’d love to hear from you on what you think?