Orangewood’s Crowding Mirrors Rise in Social Woes

They are delivered to the doors of the Orangewood Children’s Home virtually every day. Toddlers whose bodies are scarred with cigarette burns. Teen-age children physically abused and oftentimes sexually molested by their parents. Even the occasional newborn dumped in a trash can moments after entering the world.

Sometimes they arrive all at once, sending the staff scrambling to find more cribs and cots in the cramped 235-bed shelter, which on some days accommodates as many as 260 abused, neglected and abandoned children.

Overcrowding at Orangewood has become so chronic that the Orange County Board of Supervisors recently approved a nine-month study to determine why the average stay of a child has increased from 14 days in 1983 to 33 days this year.

“It’s becoming (increasingly) difficult to give individual attention to our little ones, like consoling them at snack time or reading them ‘Cinderella,’ ” said Bob Theemling, deputy director at Orangewood. “It’s probably not a big deal if the kid misses (the individual attention) one time, but over and over, the kid gets lost.”

The study’s results are crucial because they could determine how long children stay at Orangewood in the future and whether changes are needed to keep the shelter from becoming a holding facility for abused and neglected youngsters.

Children’s advocates are quick to add that the county cannot afford and should not try to combat overcrowding by expanding Orangewood or building another home for abused children. Instead, they say, solutions should lie in programs that attack poverty, drug abuse and mental illnesses, because abused children are most likely to come from homes that experience these problems.

In many ways, Orangewood’s overcrowding mirrors the increase in social problems in Orange County during the past decade. Not only has the county’s population increased by about 500,000 in that period, but there has also been a rise in drug abuse and the number of broken families. These have contributed to the rising tide of child abuse, experts say.

On some days, Orangewood--the county’s only emergency refuge for emotionally and physically battered children--bursts at the seams with children who can tell ugly tales of abuse and neglect.

Those seeking refuge at Orangewood include 12-year-old Annie, whose real name cannot be used because she is a juvenile.

Annie was taken from her South County home two months ago and brought to the shelter after she told authorities that her mother was encouraging her to have sex with a 17-year-old youth, a friend who recently moved to their home.

Both the mother and the youth were also encouraging Annie to try drugs, said authorities, who later arrested the mother.

Annie was left with no place to go because her parents are separated, and she has no relatives in California. Her father, a Navy officer, is stationed in Puerto Rico.

“What happened to me was sick, very sick,” Annie said, revealing the braces in her mouth as she bit her fingernails. “But I want to (continue) with my life. I miss my family and my friends.”

Social workers said they are trying to place Annie in a foster home until she can be reunited with her father.

But finding a suitable foster home is not always easy because abused children now at Orangewood have suffered far more serious trauma than youngsters in previous decades, officials said. Their mentally disturbed--and sometimes violent--behavior makes it more difficult for them to remain in foster homes and other facilities.

Babies who are born with cocaine addictions, for example, require constant attention and some foster parents experience burnout after spending many sleepless nights caring for these restless infants, Theemling said.

Contributing to the shelter’s dilemma is the shortage of foster homes in Orange County, which has only 600 sets of foster parents. That is 400 short of the target by children’s services officials.

Because of the small network of foster homes, social workers must place abused children at homes in four surrounding counties if they do not find “a suitable match” in Orange County, Theemling said.

Unfortunately, hard-to-handle children--including babies born with drug addictions--are often returned to Orangewood by overburdened foster parents. In fact, a 1988 study revealed that 34% of the children entering Orangewood had been there before.

Orangewood’s overcrowding problems are somewhat ironic because it opened in 1985 as a 164-bed facility that was supposed to ease overcrowding at the former Albert Sitton Home, which could only house 88 children.

During the past eight years, officials have expanded the Orangewood facility, adding about 70 more beds and dozens more staff members to cope with the constant flood of abused children.

Now there is no more room for expansion on the facility’s eight-acre compound, sandwiched between the Theo Lacy Branch Jail and Juvenile Hall, and just across the street from The City Shopping Center in Orange.

And even if the compound could have accommodated another expansion, county officials say, it would be difficult to find funding for such a project.

“We’ve run out of rabbits to pull out of the hat,” Theemling said.

Orangewood takes in up to 250 abused children each month, a caseload that burdens staff and compromises the level of care to abused children, Supervisor William G. Steiner said. As director of the private Orangewood Foundation, Steiner helped to raise $8 million to build the shelter.

And officials foresee no immediate relief.

The number of child abuse reports has more than tripled in the past decade--from 8,000 in 1983 to 26,000 last year. And this year, social workers who operate the county’s child abuse hot line have been so deluged with as many as 300 child abuse reports on some days that they place callers on hold.

On many days, Orangewood employees scramble to care for screaming babies in the facility’s nursery, play games with demanding toddlers, and counsel troubled teen-agers--all at the same time.

Many times they see the same children over and over again.

Jemma, a 16-year-old South County resident, is one of these.

She has been “admitted” to the shelter seven times. Orangewood was virtually a second home for her--Jemma has spent a birthday and, two years ago, both Thanksgiving and Christmas there.

The teen-ager was first brought to Orangewood in 1991 after her mother was arrested for drug possession, leaving the girl and another younger sibling virtually homeless.

She acknowledged that she ran away a few times from Orangewood and foster homes because “it did not really work out.”

During the last few years, she said, she has become friends with gang members with whom she abused drugs and alcohol. Jemma said she was hospitalized for a methamphetamine addiction last year after she lost 35 pounds within a few weeks.

Now she wants social workers to place her in the custody of an aunt, who lives in South County.

“I have to take it day by day so this could work out,” she said, adding that getting placed with her aunt “is my only hope. . . .”

Gene Howard, the county children’s services director, said the proposed study would investigate whether cases are being screened adequately so that only children who need emergency shelter are staying at Orangewood, not those who could stay in foster or group homes. In addition, the study would look into ways to provide better counseling and other support services to youngsters at Orangewood and those placed in foster homes or returned to their families.

County officials say they hope that by examining these issues the study will identify ways to cut the average child’s stay by at least five days so that rooms will be available for those who need it the most.

But both Howard and Steiner warned that the county should not follow “brick-and-mortar solutions” by building more children’s shelters. Instead, officials should consider investing in programs that prevent parents from abusing their children, they said.

“We’re swimming upstream when these kids enter Orangewood,” Howard said. “If we’re ever going to make a difference, we’ve got to deal with these problems beforehand.”

Taxpayers would benefit if they invested in preventive programs, Steiner said.

“If we don’t do a good job of caring for these children, then the cycle of abuse is not broken and they become abusive parents themselves,” he said. “The billions of dollars we spend on prisons are to hold casualties of disorganized families. It’s simply unacceptable to pick up the pieces after the damage is done.”

Crowding at Orangewood After a brief decline, admissions to the Orangewood Children’s Home are again rising. The home, which provides refuge to abused youngsters, took in 2,591 children during the 1992-93 fiscal year, a 13% increase from the previous year. The average number of days a child stays has increased 20% in just five years. Admissions 1992-93: 2,591 Average Stay In days 1992-93: 33 1991-92: 27 1990-91: 26 1989-90: 30 1988-89: 28 1987-88: 25 Comings and Goings Physical and emotional abuse, and the inability of parents to provide care, are the major reasons children come to Orangewood. About two-thirds eventually return home or move to a group home or institution. Why They Come... Physical, emotional abuse: 32% Parents can’t provide care: 28% Severe neglect: 22% Sexual molestation: 13% Other: 5%