‘The Placement of Last Resort’

I don’t have any behavior problems,” 14-year-old Damon offered truthfully, sitting in a sparsely furnished bedroom of the Charmichael Group Home in South Los Angeles, a green stucco house next to the train tracks and the curving concrete overpasses of the 110 Freeway. He came to the house three months ago because his mother hadn’t kicked her drug habit, his aunt was arrested and his foster mother was “mean.”

Besides being separated from his family in the San Fernando Valley, what he likes least about living with a rotating staff for parents and six strangers for brothers is that it’s embarrassing. “I keep it to myself. None of my friends know I’m in a group home,” said Damon (which is not his real name). On the other hand, there’s a basketball hoop in the backyard and sometimes the staff takes the boys camping. They get an allowance if they behave.

His mother, unlike those of most of the other boys, is allowed to visit, but he’s still waiting. Meanwhile, there are other things to look forward to, such as the outings officially posted in the living room.”Week after next,” he said brightly, “we’re going to the all-you-can-eat buffet.”

At Charmichael, a home with a good reputation, the boys, ages 9 to 15, already display signs of an institutional personality, said the house parent, Kimberly Jenkins. They avoid closeness and refuse to display family photos if they have them because it is a sign of “weakness.” Knowing most will move on within a year, Jenkins said she does not get attached to the boys. Although operators at other homes said they believe the opposite, she contends becoming emotionally attached would be “dangerous” for everyone involved.

Despite long established policies seeking substitute families for abused and neglected children, at least 5,500 children in Los Angeles County are still in one of a variety of group homes--the modern variant of the old-fashioned orphanage. Surprisingly, no qualified studies exist to show the effects of growing up in a group home.

While officials said many operators of the county’s 460 homes struggle successfully to ensure that the children are better off than they were, others acknowledged that the homes sometimes make matters worse. Among the most serious complaints: Homes are run by amateurs lured by the prospect of easy money; and disruptive children are over-medicated, moved too often to develop basic attachments or re-victimized in facilities whose staff can’t cope with some of the most difficult children in the child welfare system.

And, in recent months, at least four such homes in Los Angeles County have come under investigation for a variety of charges, including sexual abuse and neglect. Some experts speculated that the spurt of charges could be the result, in part, of the increasingly troubled children coming into the system.

Helen Kleinberg, a member of the Los Angeles County Commission on Children and Families, which oversees the child welfare system, said it’s easier to criticize the group homes than to change them. Not only is the entire system groaning under huge and increasing numbers of abused and neglected children, but society hasn’t been willing to supply more than minimum resources to care for them.

Until recently, Kleinberg noted, officials have been preoccupied with safety. Now she said there is a recognition that society must heed its responsibility not only to protect but to nurture the children once it assumes the parents’ role. “We have not viewed this population for some reason as all of our responsibility, but they do exist, “ she said. “One way or another, I think we’re going to pay for them.”

*

On a recent rainy afternoon, an attorney and an observer knocked on the door of a group home in Granada Hills. As the door opened, his client, an 8-year-old girl who has been separated from her drug-addicted mother since birth, could be heard repeatedly screaming an obscenity. Staff members calmed her, but they also had to cope with finding four other girls who had just run away. The police were called.

During his visit with the girl, the attorney said she begged him, “Get me out of here.” If she moves, it will be her 17th home.

In the primitive emotional logic of childhood, being removed from an abusive home doesn’t mean you’ve been saved. It often means you’ve been punished.

Since they are the ones who have to leave home, abused children often believe they are the ones who have misbehaved, said Dr. Janice Carter-Lourensz, a behavioral pediatrician in Los Angeles who consults with agencies dealing with “special needs” children.

“Adults say, ‘You’re lucky. You ought to be happy, you’re leaving.’ The daughter cries. She wants to know why they don’t want her. Why can’t she go home?” she said.

Children who are moved too often after that can lose the ability to attach themselves to others. “In childhood, as in adulthood, divorce is hard. When they have multiple foster placements, we’re asking a kid to commit to this environment, then if something is wrong with this relationship, we move them,” she said.

The average stay at a group home in Los Angeles County is about a year, said Amaryllis Watkins, a group home specialist with the Department of Children and Family Services. “The children with the most problems, unfortunately, are the ones who have multiple placements. They burn out a facility or are unable to fit in with the program.”

Under current policies, dependent children are first placed in the least restrictive homes, and if they cannot get along, moved into increasingly structured facilities. “The older they are, the more difficult it is to find people who will stick with them through the really rank behavior,” said Linda Lewis, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Assn. of Children’s Services Agencies.

Observers say they’ve seen the predictable result of repeated rejection. “The child has all kinds of abandonment issues. I’ve had cases where a child came into the system at 5 or 6 with no apparent emotional problems and by the time they’re 10 or 11, they’ve been in 12 group homes and are emotionally disturbed,” said attorney Robert Stevenson, who once led a committee at Edelman Children’s Court to investigate problems with group homes. His committee had developed a survey for children in the system but was swept away with others in 1994 after a new administration was appointed at the court.

Another problem with multiple placements is that they can obscure the children’s medical histories, Lewis said. “It’s amazing. Records fall through the cracks. A child can be on multiple medications and nobody is monitoring the whole picture. There are a number of horror stories in that regard. It’s inexcusable.”

Several observers have also become alarmed at the amount of psychotropic drugs, such as Ritalin, Clonidine or Prozac, prescribed for children in some homes. Said Stevenson: “The group homes will ask the psychiatrist who deals with the home to do an evaluation. Many times it’s quick, not thorough. The psychiatrist, who gets paid by the group home, will write a prescription for psychotropic drugs. It’s easier to manage children that way rather than use behavior modification techniques.”

Dr. Michael Malkin, a psychiatrist who evaluates requests for dependent children’s prescriptions, said that based on the forms turned in, 1,193 children in group and so-called small family homes were given medication during 1995, but that it appears most were medicated appropriately. Youth in group homes are at greater than normal risk for mental disorders due to brain damage from prenatal drug exposure or for inherited abnormalities, he said, and therefore would require more medication or treatment.

Rather than the amounts prescribed, he said he is concerned about the type of drugs prescribed. Some psychiatrists prescribe Mellaril, an antipsychotic sedative that can have serious long-term effects on children, he said. Malkin tries to negotiate with them to prescribe a less risky medication, but said, “We end up arguing with other psychiatrists. They say [the children] will get kicked out of the home because of their behavior.”

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Group homes, said Paul Freedlund, deputy director of the county’s Department of Children and Family Services, are “the placement of last resort.”

Created in the mid-19th century, orphanages were originally intended to provide long-term housing for young children whose parents had died, had abandoned them or were unable to care for them. As the number of orphans declined, child welfare agencies turned to providing foster care for children whose parents were judged to be inadequate. In recent decades, after studies emerged showing the emotional and financial costs of family separation, child welfare agencies have tried to provide services for parents in family preservation or reunification programs--a controversial practice that inflames the public when reunited children have died at the hands of abusive caretakers.

Such cases in recent months have prompted a renewed climate of caution, and more children are flowing into the system every day. Nationally, there are more than half a million children in foster care. In the past six years, Los Angeles County has added nearly 12,000 children to its out-of-home caseload, raising the total to 42,380.

Increasing numbers of mostly younger children have been placed in out-of-home care either with relatives or foster parents. A declining portion of dependents, mostly older children with the most intense problems, have gone to group homes.

There are many kinds of such homes: large homes with 100 beds; small family homes with six beds; with or without on-campus schools; heavy treatment homes; homes where children come and go freely; homes that are segregated by race, age, gender or sexual orientation.

While some, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich, have suggested a return to orphanages, David Liederman, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Child Welfare League of America, said, “No one is taking that seriously. . . . The best thing you can do is keep the child in his own home if you can make it work and do it safely; if you can’t do it, the child needs to be in some other arrangement. . . .

“The whole trick to the whole business is how do you get the right match for a child? We believe you need all parts of the array of services,” he said.

Freedlund said the group homes that raise concerns are usually smaller operations. “They are just overwhelmed by the kinds of problems they’re dealing with right now. They’re not able to respond to the emotional or behavioral or medical problems that many of our kids present.”

State evaluators said that despite state licensing requirements that group homes operate on a not-for-profit basis, some providers are attracted to the work for the money they receive from state and federal welfare funds.

Darren Starks, an evaluator for the state Department of Social Services, said he can spot them immediately in orientation meetings. “The first thing they ask is, ‘How much do you get per child?’ ”

The answer is anywhere from $1,183 to $5,013 each month, depending on the severity of the child’s problems and the intensity of the services the operators promise to provide--including recreation, visits with their families, and group and personal therapy.

“Their intentions are good in the beginning,” Starks said. “After a while, their vision starts to fade a bit. It’s not as easy as they think. Time out is not going to work with teenagers, let’s face it.”

Over the last two years, state audits of group homes have shown that California has overpaid operators of nonprofit homes $8.6 million (out of an annual $600 million budget). “That’s $8.6 million paid for services to children that children did not receive,” said Rick Haseltine, a foster-care audit manager for the state social services department. One audit that is still under appeal showed a San Diego operator could not account for $1.6 million paid out over four years.

Haseltine suspects most discrepancies result less from deliberate fraud than from ignorance of business practices. “A great majority of these people [being audited] don’t know the regulations and don’t follow them,” he said.

But he said that operators are free to pay themselves whatever salary they choose and that often the group home provides livelihoods for members of a single family. Others are run by professionals as a sideline.

State officials charged with checking for health and safety violations said they visit a newly licensed home three months after it opens and not again for a year, unless a complaint is lodged. The children themselves rarely complain, said Jeanne Patrick, a state licensing supervisor. “Many of them are afraid if they complain they’ll get moved. Unless it’s awful, they go with it to survive.”

Meanwhile, county social workers are also expected to review the care the children are receiving during monthly visits. Freedlund said the county also has a unit to investigate allegations of abuse by out-of-home providers. Even with their high caseloads, he said audits show social workers are “keeping pretty consistent with their visitation.”

To relieve stress on its employees, the county plans to hire 350 new social workers by the end of June.

In addition, a system of ranking group homes, similar to a hotel rating system, is being developed to inspire the operators to raise their standards and to help social workers distinguish between the good homes and the ones that need improvement.

Alfred Watson, 23, a Los Angeles music student, aerobics instructor and model, calls himself “one of the lucky ones.” He lived in a group home, run by Five Acres in Pasadena, for eight years until he was 18.

A dependent since he was 3, Watson never knew his father. All he knows about his mother is that she was “paranoid or schizophrenic.” No relatives would take him on. The foster father spanked him every day, he said. He also witnessed the accidental drowning of another child in the house.

Luckily, he said, his social worker was good friends with Mona Luther, the group homes director for Five Acres, where the average length of stay is five years. The home has to turn away more than 90% of the requests to place children from agencies and courts.

Watson considers Luther his surrogate mother and the staff and children like his family. He returns to the home on holidays and visits a couple of times a month to see how everything is going.

“I’ve heard the horror stories,” he said. “The difference with Five Acres is that Mona, she cares. She puts herself into it. It’s not a job. She thinks of us as her kids.”

Luther, a former county social worker, said the program is designed to provide stability so children can develop a sense of attachment--to their caretakers, to a peer group, even to be able to say, at the very least, “I grew up in Pasadena.”

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Abuse Allegations Against Homes Ebb and Flow

In recent months, several serious allegations of abuse and neglect have been lodged against group homes in Los Angeles County. For instance:

* Counts Group Home Inc. in Los Angeles lost its license following allegations that children were left unattended, that a deaf child was locked out of the home in an area of reputed gang activity and that girls from outside the home were able to come in, having sex with at least two group home boys.

* The state is investigating the operation of four facilities run by the Pomona-based Tina Mac’s Group Homes Inc. after a 15-year-old resident left the home and was shot by police in December and amid other allegations that children were inadequately supervised. The operator has surrendered her license.

* Two administrators and a part-time employee were barred from involvement with the Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services, which runs homes for gay youth, following accusations of sexual misconduct between staff and children. One boy reportedly ran away after he was propositioned and another was said to have put a chair against his bedroom door after twice finding a staff member in his room.

* The state moved to revoke the license of Caring for Babies with AIDS, a group home in Los Angeles, charging that its workers ignored children’s emotional and physical needs, dragged a girl by the hair and told others to “shut up” or that God will not love them unless they behave.

Officials say such allegations ebb and flow for no discernible reason and that the recent wave is not unusual. Carole Shauffer, director of the Youth Law Center in San Francisco, said, “More probation kids are being dumped into the system because of a reduction of funding for camps and ranches. . . . That’s a problem.”

But one state official said privately that the most extreme cases of neglect and abuse are caused more by unscrupulous adults than unruly children.