Questions about the human cost
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Helen Zelon
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Most of the children in group-home foster care are older than 12 and are more difficult to place in traditional homes, for a host of reasons. Some who have had difficult home lives do not thrive in such settings.
While group homes are far from ideal, some teens forge relationships with counselors and caregivers that lead to eventual adoption or a return to a foster family or kinship care, with relatives instead of birth parents. In other cases, group homes are the fragile platforms from which youth who age out of foster care launch into emancipated, independent adult lives. Shifting these already-vulnerable young people to new agencies means establishing new connections, trust and communication with caseworkers, health-care providers, therapists and caregivers.
“Many children in group homes are there specifically because they require specialized supervision that many foster families find difficult to provide,” Claude Meyers, president and CEO of Abbott House, an agency that provides services to ACS clients and whose contracts were decreased in the current RFP, wrote in an email to City Limits. “In many cases, our youngsters have formed attachments to the direct care professionals who staff our group homes. For these children, the loss of any significant relationship may be traumatic. We are concerned that impending changes may be very difficult for those whose lives have already experienced too many losses.”
Shifting from group homes to foster care will cost time, too, slowing down the pace of eventually transferring children home. Family court processes must adapt to new providers, and steep learning curves will confront new caseworkers as they take on additional responsibilities.
The delays over the RFP have put the focus on process, not policy, and that's a problem, according to Antsiss Agnew, director of Forestdale, Inc. The behind-the-scenes struggle over the RFP has been a distraction, she said.
"It’s important that people stop fighting and calling names,” Agnew told City Limits. “We’re involved in a political process instead of focusing on children and families.”
