For Abused Children, a New Plight : Availability of Foster Homes Is Outpaced by the Growing Need for Them

Scattered around Nina and Vernon Coake’s home are scores of photographs that tell stories of special children. The Coakes have forgotten most of the names, but the faces remain etched in their minds.

The pictures are before-and-after snapshots of many of the children whom the Coakes, who live on a few acres of land on the outskirts of Fontana in San Bernardino County, have cared for during the last 35 years.

“If you looked into their eyes, you could see the difference. Some of them wouldn’t even smile,” Vernon Coake said.

The Coakes have cared for more than 1,000 children since they moved to California in 1950. For years, they photographed the infants and toddlers the day they first appeared at their home. Some children arrived with dirty, matted hair. Others had sores on their faces. An 11-month-old boy had casts on both legs. His father had broken them three times before the child had even seen his first birthday.

The children had been abused in different ways. But fear was reflected in all of them in the same manner: through their sad, withdrawn and distant-looking eyes.

The photographs taken the day the children left the Coake home showed them smiling with eyes that looked bright and alive, like those of children accustomed to tender nurturing and love.

“(Foster) kids are a lot of joy and sometimes they can be hell on wheels,” Vernon Coake said. “They’re gonna fight you until you get their confidence and love. They have to see that you are on their side.”

But social workers and state officials say there are not enough couples like the Coakes. There are not enough foster homes in the state to accommodate the growing number of abused and neglected children.

According to a national study on child neglect and abuse by the American Assn. for Protection of Children Inc., reports of child maltreatment increased 142% between 1976 and 1983. Just last year, about 2 million reports of child abuse were made, including about 250,000 in California alone.

About 35,000 abused children throughout the state now live in some form of shelter care, but group shelter homes are overcrowded and there aren’t enough licensed foster homes to realistically combat the problem. There are no precise figures on the backlog of children needing foster care. But social workers estimate that on any given day about 1,000 children in California are in need of shelter but do not get it.

Kathy Howard, the Orange County foster care registry coordinator, said she receives about 100 new names of children needing long-term foster care each month, but she can only place about 40% of them.

Normal Settings Sought

“The ones I can’t place just go into the numbers for the following month,” she said. “The biggest need is for toddlers because 51% of all requests for foster homes are for children under the age of 5. That is very significant.”

Because the whole thrust of child welfare policy is to make genuine attempts to reunite abused and neglected children with their natural parents, most social workers prefer to place them in a normal home setting, rather than an institution. But while the number of children in need of foster homes is increasing, officials said, the task of finding qualified parents is becoming more difficult because of insufficient funds, inadequate recruitment and lack of recognition of the contributions of foster parents.

“There is a crying need for foster homes. The demand has increased tremendously,” said Pat Reynolds, regional director of the Children’s Home Society chapter in San Francisco.

Five years ago Reynolds’ office had the capacity to care for 85 children. Last month, the center had 216 children placed in 40 foster homes and seven temporary group shelters.

‘System Is Very Strained’

Children’s Home Society, a nonprofit organization with 27 offices in California, is considered to be one of the more successful agencies in handling foster children. The chapter in San Francisco is unique in that the county contracts with it to handle the entire emergency child-care system. But the job has become an almost impossible task for Reynolds and her staff.

“I think we provide a quality service for (abused) children,” she said. “But, frankly, our system is very strained. There aren’t enough resources for these children.”

Support services are lacking not only for the abused child, but also for the people who may be willing to provide care for that child, said Helen Ramirez, deputy director of the Los Angeles County Department of Children’s Services, who handles the adoption and foster care branch of the agency.

“We have a situation that is very tight,” Ramirez said. “We don’t have too many choices for the child, especially for infants and teen-agers.”

Los Angeles County has about 3,500 licensed foster homes that are able to care for about 8,300 children. That is about a 10% increase from last year, but still county officials are giving foster-home recruitment priority because more homes are needed.

Serious Emotional Problems

In addition to there being more of them, the children needing foster care today seem to be different from their counterparts of only a few years ago. Today’s abused child has more serious emotional and mental problems, a circumstance that makes the task of a foster parent much more difficult.

“Kids are much more damaged these days, and taking in a battered child is not like taking in a neighbor’s child to baby-sit for a few hours. It’s a 24-hour-a-day job,” said Barbara Labitzke, foster home development coordinator in Orange County, the state’s second most populous county.

Statistics on the effects of child abuse and neglect are “horrifying,” according to Jeanette Dunckel, the volunteer head of the Foster Care Policy Board of the California Children’s Lobby in San Francisco.

Dunckel said that about 75% of all abused children above the age of 5 have serious emotional problems. About half have severe or chronic medical conditions. One of every seven abused children enters the foster care system “directly from the hospital.”

And then there are those, Dunckel said, who never really survive the system. Those are the children who get bounced from foster home to foster home, or worse, from psychiatric institution to psychiatric institution.

‘Nobody Stops to Question’

“These kids don’t have much of a chance in this world,” she said. “Foster children are invisible. They disappear from the face of the earth . . . and nobody stops to question what happens to them.”

Said Claudia Robsahm, a social worker in San Luis Obispo County: “Kids are more damaged today because the law requires ‘clear and convincing evidence’ before a child can be removed (from the home). The kinds of children we have to remove are the ones who have been physically and sexually abused.

“They have more psychological and behavioral problems. They require much more treatment and care, and it becomes more taxing for foster parents. It’s difficult for them to change their life styles to help these (types) of children.”

Dunckel advocates better training for potential foster parents. And many counties are indeed providing training sessions that focus on emotional and behavioral problems that the foster parents will encounter once an abused child enters their lives.

“I think the children are so difficult now that we need trained and professionally developed foster parents,” Dunckel said. “Foster parenting is a profession. We should look at it as that and pay them accordingly.

‘More Humane Way’

“By training foster parents better, and thus treating them as professionals performing a vital task, they can become part of the child’s ‘treatment team.’ They should make a major contribution to the case of the child. What happens now is that the kid (usually) loses.

“We must devise a more humane way of treating these children,” Dunckel said.

Although the state mandated about $80 million for foster care in the last two years, social service officials claim that more money is needed to deal effectively with the problem.

The state now pays foster parents from $252 to $441 a month, depending on the age and condition of the child. But social workers mostly agree that this is not enough, considering the responsibility shouldered by foster parents. That range of payment, however, still rates California near the top among states.

Even some state officials acknowledge that the pay might be too low.

“Being a foster parent is tough. Hardly anyone becomes a foster parent to make money,” said John W. Hagerty, deputy director for licensing of the California Department of Social Services.

Argument for Higher Stipend

William Steiner, director of Orangewood, a new $7.5-million children’s shelter in Orange County that was built mostly with private contributions, contends that sometimes the state must pay thousands of dollars to hospitals to keep children past their normal release dates because they can’t immediately be placed in a foster home. He said a higher stipend for foster parents could ease the burden and still reduce the amount of money the state pays for emergency care.

“That (money) should not be a dirty word,” Steiner said. “We have to be practical. It is a vital service and if we don’t pay for it now, in a family setting, we will pay for it later with agony and perhaps prison costs.”

Statistics provided by the California Children’s Lobby support Steiner’s point.

One-third of teen-agers in the custody of the California Youth Authority are former foster children, and 69% of the inmates in the state’s prison system were abused as children, with many having spent time in foster group homes.

Some 83% of all inmates were juvenile delinquents, Dunckel said.

“There is a connection there because we view foster care as a form of delinquency prevention,” she said.

‘It Sends Out a Message’

Ramirez of Los Angeles County also said the foster care program cannot be improved without a hard look at state funding.

“It sends out a message that says children aren’t worth it to provide for adequately,” she said. “We make them second-class citizens.”

In Sacramento, Hagerty and Loren Suter, the Department of Social Services deputy director for adult and family services, said counties would have to better document the foster care problem before an increase in state funds would be considered.

“I don’t think money is the issue, but counties have to demonstrate the need,” Suter said. “If they can demonstrate the need, then help will be forthcoming.”

Hagerty added that local officials and social service agency directors must accurately document the extent of the child abuse-foster care problem in order to influence state officials when the counties petition for an increase in funds.

“It is then that we will be in a better position to make a case with this Administration and the Legislature,” Hagerty said.

Ramirez agreed that counties could better demonstrate the need for more individual foster homes.

“Sometimes, we have failed to accurately document the problem,” she said. “And I think the state is right to ask for that information before considering giving us more money.”

Governor Criticized

Aside from financing problems, officials point to a dire need for more recruiters to help attract qualified foster parents. Many social workers criticized Gov. George Deukmejian during the last legislative session for reducing from $3 million to $1 million the amount the Legislature had set aside to give to counties for foster home recruitment.

For example, Labitzke is the only foster home recruiter in Orange County, which has a population of some 2.1 million. She must rely on other foster parents to help with recruitment. She also has organized a speakers’ bureau of interested citizens who appear before business and religious organizations to spread the word about the need for more foster homes.

But at the moment, Labitzke is losing the battle. In the past year, the number of licensed foster homes in Orange County has declined by 8.5%, from 650 to about 600 available homes, while the number of children needing foster home placement has increased by 10%. By contrast, San Diego County, which has a slightly smaller population than Orange County, has twice the number of licensed foster homes.

Juvenile Court Judge Betty Lou Lamoreaux said there should be better organized efforts to find the required foster homes in Orange County.

‘We Need More Help’

“Certainly, in a county of this size we should come up with more homes,” Lamoreaux said. “There’s no way one person can do the necessary things to get foster parents. It’s disgusting. That’s why we need more help.”

Steiner of Orangewood said he was concerned that the increase in child abuse and the scarcity of proper individual foster homes will eventually prompt a return to a “Dickensian era” in which orphanages are the only available means to care for abused and abandoned children.

“As a system, we should have something better to offer these children,” he said. “The bottom line is that if we don’t turn around this foster care problem, Orangewood will not be enough. It will be outdated.

“We have to realize that an institution cannot take the place of a home.”

Social workers point out that, in addition to funding and recruitment, the public image of the foster care program must be improved to attract more and better foster parents. Although the majority of foster parents are qualified and dedicated, there have been instances in which foster parents themselves have abused children.

‘Sins of Few’ Draw Notice

Said Jack Wilson, San Diego County’s foster home recruiter: “The image of foster parenting has not always been held in high regard. Sometimes the sins of the few (bad foster parents) draw the most attention. We have to make the community aware of the tremendous contribution these people are making.”

Wilson also said that if recognition were given to the truly dedicated foster parents, they in turn could “attract the kind of foster parents that can meet the special needs of these children.”

Steiner said recognition is essential to keep the good foster parents from abandoning the program. He said about one-third of the children admitted at his 170-bed facility have already been in foster homes where their problems could not be solved.

“The tragedy of that is that the more failures the children experience, the more difficult they become to handle,” Steiner said. “Not all foster homes are great. There are some saints out there who do incredible work, but there are some bad apples who give foster care a bad name.”

Reynolds of the Children’s Home Society in San Francisco said that too many of the abused children get worse before they are eventually helped, and some do not ever get better.

“About 30% of the children we see are repeaters,” Reynolds said. “They’ve gone from placement to placement and back again. It’s a very serious problem. We see them deteriorate. Something has to be done because these kids are really suffering.”