By: Grace Liu
The L.A. county’s Department of Children and Family Services started depending on unlicensed hotel rooms last month to foster troubled youth who didn’t have a home.
After a wave of violence and abuse in group homes across California, the governor, Jerry Brown, signed a law that said that California would move away from group homes, and prioritize placing minors with relatives or with a foster family.
This new policy left counties in California with very few places to house young people with behavioral problems so severe that no one will take them. So, some counties placed them in hotel rooms, former detention facilities, and office buildings.
Many youth facilities in L.A. County are refusing troubled youths, so the county is trying to open a foster facility that could house these youths.
“We know that youth who must live apart from their biological parents do best when they are cared for in committed, nurturing family homes,” said Scott Murray, a spokesperson for the California Department of Social Services. “It’s critical for youth to remain in the least restrictive, most family-like settings possible, supported by a robust continuum of services to address individual needs.”
Politicians in L.A. County say that hotel rooms are not a good option to place youths, but it is better than leaving them out on the streets. These hotel rooms are harmful to the young people placed there and may harm the staff that look after these youth. The Investigative Program at UC Berkeley reported last month that this year, two social workers had been attacked by the youth they were looking after.
“Candidly, I was afraid if it continued as is, and we weren’t going to do anything different, that one of our workers could be killed, and we’re going to be going to a social worker’s funeral,” said David Green, a county social worker.
Green said that the department made changes to the hotel rooms, such as a 2:1 staff ratio, de-escalation training, and security guards. However, the group of social workers in the county were convinced that if hotel rooms were no longer an option, they would need to create a facility with a no-refusal policy.
Until that facility can be built, L.A. County is left with limited options other than using hotel rooms to foster troubled youths as their last resort.
Link to article: