New Facility to Give Special Care to Very Special Children

Sixteen-year-old Sam has severe psychological problems. Because of his difficulties, living at home or in a licensed group facility are not viable options to incarceration at Juvenile Hall.

So Sam (not his real name) has languished at the county’s corrective facility for minors, awaiting the educational and psychiatric attention he needs.

Because of his age and circumstance, law prohibits divulging details of Sam’s life. But Juvenile Court Judge Betty Lou Lamoreaux anguishes over the boy’s plight. For the last four months, Lamoreaux has been trying to find adequate help for the youth.

“There is no place to send this child,” Lamoreaux said. “He can’t go home. A group home will not take him because of his problems.”

But because Orange County is about to open a new, $1.6-million Intermediate Care Facility, there is hope for Sam and others like him who are severely abused or mentally-ill children. With the new facility, which is expected to open in April, the county will be able to expand a 10-month-old program to give a home and much-needed help to these children, who are considered among the worst cases of abuse and neglect.

Before, “There was a gap with what we could do and what the special problem was,” said Orange County’s chief probation officer, Michael Schumacher. “This is a special program designed to handle special types of problems.”

Since last March, New Alternatives, a San Diego-based private, nonprofit organization, has been providing care for 16 children, ages 8 through 16, at the Albert Sitton Home, the county’s former shelter for abused and neglected youngsters. Sam has been targeted to enter the program, but thus far there has been no room for him.

The program will move into the new facility, which is located behind Orangewood, the county’s emergency shelter for abandoned and neglected children in Orange. The facility, the first of its kind in the state, will accommodate 24 children.

The Intermediate Care Facility will cater specifically to children who have traditionally bounced from foster home to foster home, or in and out of Juvenile Hall, without finding help or stability anywhere.

“These kids, in essence, are multiple placement failures. They have been unsuccessful over a long (period) of time,” said Val Peterson, director of the New Alternatives program in Orange County.

Under New Alternatives, which was founded in San Diego in 1978, these children are housed under one roof, where they get psychiatric counseling and schooling simultaneously in a restricted but not confining environment. The program is designed to last two to six months.

From there, the hope is that these children can be properly placed in a less restrictive environment in which they can function more normally.

The children are taught by certified teachers, receive structured counseling and remain at the facility 24 hours a day, although at times they may be permitted short trips outside the facility.

“We provide an intensive structure within a residential setting so the kids can feel safe and still have firm boundaries provided to them,” Peterson said.

She says that the “clinical team” for the children includes a cadre of teachers, social workers, child care personnel, probation officers and clinical psychologists and psychiatrists.

“A big mental-health team is involved,” Peterson added.

Equal Partners

What also is unique about the Intermediate Care Facility is that four county agencies--Social Services, Health Care, the Department of Education and the Probation Department--are partners in the design and function of the program.

“We are equal partners. Nothing like this has ever been done before,” said Gene Howard, director of children’s services for the county’s Social Services Agency.

Michael Bruich, founder of New Alternatives in San Diego, says the new program is probably the first viable alternative in Orange County for providing adequate care for severely abused and mentally-ill children.

“There were no good options before the Intermediate Care Facility,” he said in an telephone interview from San Diego. “Some kids could not be handled in a group or foster home, (and) they were not bad enough to go to a (mental) hospital. But they were sent there because there were no other options.”

Probation chief Schumacher says that instead of confining troubled teen-agers to Juvenile Hall, his officers now will be able to divert them into the facility.

Given Little Consideration

Judge Lamoreaux, long an advocate for providing better services for abused and neglected children, says mentally ill minors traditionally are given little or no consideration from social service agencies.

“There are no facilities for the mentally disturbed minor. The next step is for them to go to Camarillo (State Hospital),” she said. “You can’t turn a minor loose on the streets.”

But with the large numbers of children who need that special care, Lamoreaux said, “Juvenile Hall is becoming a locked mental facility. This is a tremendously needed program.”

Bill Steiner, the former director of Orangewood Children’s Home and now executive director of its foundation, remembers the abused children for whom the Intermediate Care Facility was designed as the type that social workers could not handle at the temporary shelter.

“They are just so damaged,” Steiner said. “These kids are the ones who usually fall through the cracks of the system. With this facility, the hope is to stabilize them and prepare them to be placed.”

Fell Through Cracks

Although many severely abused children will now have a better chance of improvement through the Intermediate Care Facility, Lamoreaux says she remembers some children who fell through the system’s cracks before adequate care could be provided.

The judge says she recently dealt with a 16-year-old girl who was charged with theft and prostitution. The teen-ager, abused as a child, has been in the foster care program for years. But she habitually ran away from every foster or group home in which she was placed.

There was little the judge could do but sentence the girl to Juvenile Hall. Aside from the serious problem of being an abused runaway, the teen-ager is now a criminal.

“The poor kid did not have a chance in the beginning. What do I do with her now?” Lamoreaux lamented.

Another unique feature of the Intermediate Care Facility is that the county is paying little for the facility and the program. The financing was underwritten through a revenue bond issue. New Alternatives will pay approximately $13,000 rent monthly, all of which will go to retire the bond. The organization will receive about $3,250 a month for each child, a figure set by the state Department of Social Services, Bruich says.

State, Federal Grants

New Alternatives will then pay the rent and all operating costs with the monthly stipend it will receive for each child treated at the facility. However, 95% of the monthly cost for each child will be paid to the organization through state and federal block grants with the county assuming the additional 5%.

Although the $3,250 monthly expense for each child does not seem cheap, Bruich says the cost is actually less than half what a private hospital would charge. Steiner says such special care can run as high as $100,000 a year per child.

“Even if the child never gets any better, at least we’re doing it in a financially responsible way,” Bruich said.

Susan Hinman, an aide to County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, says her boss had helped find the financing for the new facility because constituents had petitioned him for such a program to meet the “special need” of severely abused children. She adds that the cost is minimal compared to the old alternatives.

“These children, if they aren’t cared for, will wind up costing us a horrendous amount of money because they’ll end up in state institutions or prison. So far, I think this program is working,” she said.

Closely Watched

The new program and facility will be closely watched by other counties across the state, including San Francisco, which will monitor its progress before deciding to begin a similar program, Howard says.

“It will serve as a model, both in the program structure and the funding structure,” he said.