Other Facilities May Get Spring Overload at Children’s Home

Overcrowding that occurs each spring at Orange County’s emergency shelter for abused and neglected children has prompted a proposal for a five-year plan to alleviate the problem.

Under the proposal, Orangewood Childrens Home would be allowed to enter into agreements with private facilities for additional space when the home is full. Details would be worked out by the county Social Services Agency.

County representatives and Western Medical Center officials already are discussing the use of a wing of a Santa Ana convalescent hospital operated by Western Medical to handle the overflow at Orangewood. The wing can accommodate 25 beds.

The seasonal overcrowding at Orangewood stems from an unexplained increase in child abuse reports at this time of year, officials said. The phenomenon occurs nationwide, they said.

“We don’t want to build another Orangewood, but we do want to be able to handle temporary emergency needs when they arise,” said Rochelle Hatfield, an aide to Board of Supervisors Chairman Harriett M. Wieder, sponsor of the proposal.

In a letter that will be presented next week to fellow supervisors, Wieder says that any long-term planning must maintain Orangewood’s place as “the cornerstone of (the county’s) shelter system.”

The letter suggests that planners examine alternatives to Orangewood for children who fail to adjust to group homes or placement in foster homes. It also suggests programs that would allow a child to remain at home when the parent or guardian participates in counseling to change the abusive or neglectful behavior.

The 167-bed Orangewood home, which was built four years ago to replace the county’s chronically overcrowded former shelter, is intended to be temporary housing for children who must be immediately removed from their homes. The children are processed there for permanent placement and stay an average of 24 days.

The spring overcrowding is exacerbated by the fact that some children must be returned to Orangewood because their placement fails to work out, said Robert A. Griffith, chief deputy director of the Social Services Agency.

Also, he said, there are not enough foster homes and group homes in the county. A small but significant number of children stay at Orangewood 90 days or longer, Griffith said.

“The number of foster homes was actually declining until about six months ago,” he said. “We have begun what we think is an aggressive recruitment campaign.”

Such a campaign was recommended in 1986 by county auditors who said the Children’s Services Department of the Social Services Agency was not doing enough to find foster homes.

Griffith said the county also is asking some group operators to expand their operations.

Spring is the only time of year that Orangewood is consistently overcrowded, Griffith said. This year, the overcrowding began a few weeks ago, he said, but has not reached crisis proportions.

“We are averaging about 12 children over capacity,” he said.

Spring Phenomenon

Griffith and others were at a loss to explain why child abuse reports increase in the spring. Several theories have been offered, but none fully explains the phenomenon, they said.

Griffith said the total numbers of child abuse reports in Orange County and elsewhere in the nation have been increasing in recent years, largely because of greater public awareness of the problem and reporting requirements to which many professionals must adhere.

In her letter, Wieder said the number of reports in the county had increased from 11,400 to 12,277 over the last three years. The number of children who require emergency shelter has increased correspondingly, she said.

The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote on Wieder’s proposal Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, the board is scheduled to receive the first report by the Child Abuse Services Task Force, which it created in January to coordinate all of the county’s interview and examination services for child abuse victims when they first are discovered.

The task force--headed by Superior Court Judge Betty Lou Lamoreaux, who presides over the county’s Juvenile Court--will inform the board that it has examined coordination programs in California and elsewhere and this month began looking for a single “non-threatening” site at which all victims can be interviewed and examined.