County Faces Shortage of Foster Homes, Especially for Latinos

Luz Silva says she gets depressed at least twice a week.

That’s about how often Los Angeles County foster-care officials ask her to take in yet another Latino foster child. She has four foster children already and there is no more room in her three-bedroom home in Montebello.

Silva’s depression deepens when she telephones the homes of 62 other Latinos in her area who are also foster parents. No vacancies.

“It makes me want to go out and buy a bigger house,” said Silva, a 50-year-old homemaker who is president of a Latino foster-parents group in the southeast region of the county.

The frustration expressed by Silva and other Latinos illustrates a problem that the county’s Department of Children’s Services, which operates the foster-care program, concedes:

There is a critical shortage of foster parents, and a glaring aspect of it is the lack of Latino foster homes.

In Los Angeles County, where officials say they need to double the 3,900 licensed foster homes to keep up with the demand, only 650 of the homes are Latino households.

Steady Growth Over 5 Years

Each month, about 450 of the 1,200 children taken into temporary protective custody by the county are Latinos.

The number of Latino children needing foster homes has grown steadily for five years, primarily because of the increasing number of immigrant families who have moved into the area and the problems they have encountered in adjusting to life in the United States, foster-care administrators say.

The lack of Latino foster homes hampers a program that is already swamped.

Department of Children’s Services, which oversees the $171-million-a-year program to provide temporary shelter for children who are abused, neglected or abandoned, has 25,500 youngsters in some kind of protective custody.

Under the voluntary foster-care program, a parent receives between $294 and $433 a month for each child, depending on the child’s age, placed in the home.

Because the majority of the county’s foster homes are either black (45%) or Anglo (38%), some of the Latinos end up in households where the parents have little or no knowledge of the child’s ethnic and cultural background.

But others aren’t even that lucky. Without citing firm figures, county officials say a number of the Latino youngsters are placed in licensed private institutions where individual attention from an adult is not always possible.

1,000 Without Shelter

Still others are not placed anywhere. Social workers estimate that on any given day in California, about 1,000 children of all races are in need of temporary shelter but do not get it. They are forced to wait until an opening comes up.

The shortage of Latino foster homes isn’t the only problem pressing county officials. There also aren’t enough homes for preschool youngsters of any race.

Children under 5 years of age make up about half of the 1,200 taken in each month. But many prospective foster parents work full time and do not have the time to devote to an infant, county officials said. Others are unwilling to take on the responsibility of a toddler.

“We’re just in desperate need of more homes,” said Barbara Ushida, administrator of the unit within the Department of Children’s Services that recruits foster parents.

The problems have grown out of a system that has been overtaken by an increasing number of children needing help. In the last 10 years, the number of new foster homes has barely outnumbered the ones that drop out each month. In June, for example, officials report that about 110 foster homes were licensed to accept a child in Los Angeles County. But at the same time, an estimated 90 left.

In the last decade, the number of children referred for some kind of help has doubled to nearly 80,000 a year, according to county statistics.

Difficult Challenge

Unlike blacks or Anglos, Latino youngsters present a particularly difficult challenge to foster-care officials because of their language and cultural differences.

Experts in the child-care field believe that a Latino foster child--already frightened by being placed in a strange home--needs extra care from people of similar backgrounds who can understand him.

“It helps them with the trauma of being taken out of the home . . . (and) to be with people who know the culture,” said Dr. John Enriquez, an East Los Angeles psychiatrist who is medical director at the Eastside’s El Centro Human Services.

Without that reassurance, some youngsters can withdraw and be misunderstood over seemingly minor things.

For example, county workers recall the case several years ago of an 8-year-old Spanish-speaking youngster from Mexico who, when placed in a foster home in South-Central Los Angeles, was reluctant to eat. The foster parent, unable to speak Spanish, couldn’t understand the child’s refusal to eat or his silence when asked by others to explain.

It took a visit from a Mexican-born social worker to figure out the problem: The boy was ashamed to admit that he had never used a fork. He was used to scooping up his food with tortillas.

Concern for Culture

Professionals familiar with the situation believe that it is also important to have enough Latino foster homes to ensure that Latino youngsters maintain a healthy regard for their own culture and language.

“Even with a sensitive (Anglo) placement, there can be a racism that the foster parents might not even be aware of,” said Dr. Marvin Southard, an East Los Angeles psychologist. “Where everything is fine and good, problems could arise where things Anglo are inadvertently labeled as good and things Latino are labeled as bad.”

County officials have assigned three full-time recruiters to look for Latino foster parents and work around the shortage of foster homes by putting children in the best possible situations, ones geographically close to their parents and relatives.

“The important thing is that that child gets love and attention,” one county worker said. “If it’s in a Latino foster home, all the better. But just make sure about the love.”

County officials over the years have learned that foster parenting is a tough sell among Latinos, especially among recent immigrants. Recruiters say they are reluctant because:

- The concept of temporary custody--which can last from several hours to several years--is foreign to them. They seem much more comfortable with adoption, which is not always an option with foster children, foster-care officials said.

- The foster-home system is often bureaucratic and confusing. While little thought is given to leaving a child with a friend or a neighbor for an extended period of time in Latin America, government requirements in this country make such an option difficult. Under the foster-care program in California, the friend or neighbor who cares for the child must be licensed and the home must be regularly inspected.

- Some are not legal residents of the United States, and they must have proof of legal residency to satisfy foster-parent requirements.

Other problems have plagued foster care locally in recent years. Among them is the low compensation paid for care of the child, which forces many foster parents to drop out.

For example, the care and clothing requirements of a toddler are far in excess of the $294 allowed each month by state and county authorities, unhappy foster parents complain.

Most county officials privately admit that the monthly support checks--going as high as $433 a month for a teen-ager over 15--are too low. For now, however, it is the best that can be expected of a program that is already stretched to its financial limits.

Exacerbating the pay issue is the fact that many checks are late in arriving--some by as much as several months. “People should not want to be in this program for the money,” one county worker said.