Troubled Teen-Agers Face Uncertain Future as Group Home Closes

Two world-weary teen-agers sat down recently to talk about where their home will be next month.

They don’t know.

For the moment, Lorraine and Sherrie (both pseudonyms) live at Stepping Stone, a six-bed group home in Santa Monica that is closing its doors at the end of this month.

After 15 years as an emergency shelter for runaway kids and one year as a home for troubled teen-age girls, Stepping Stone has crumbled under anticipated federal, state and county budget cuts.

Lorraine and Sherrie will be uprooted from a stable living situation and thrust into the unknown--new caretakers, new neighborhoods, new schools, no friends.

“I hate being in the system because they don’t care about you at all,” Lorraine said.

Funding shortfalls, in part, stem from a new proposal to pay for the care of neglected and abused children.

The approach, adopted by the House of Representatives but not the U.S. Senate, features block grants to counties rather than appropriating money based on each individual child a county is caring for.

Gov. Pete Wilson has put forward a similar plan to funnel state money to local government for child welfare programs.

In response, Los Angeles County is looking for ways to care for children more economically. At $3,200 a month for a group home, compared to $500-$750 for foster care, Stepping Stone isn’t it.

“There’s certainly a place for group homes,” said Jennifer Roth, division chief for the county Department of Children and Family Services. “We’re just forcing ourselves to be more selective about who’s going into them.”

Group homes offer a structured yet family-like environment for those children who do not adjust well to foster care.

Ironically, Stepping Stone became a group home at the urging of the county just a year ago, said Vivian Rothstein, executive director of Stepping Stone’s parent agency, the Ocean Park Community Center. Several months ago, the county declined to allow the shelter to expand to 10 beds--which it needed financially--and lately has not even kept the six beds full.

Unable to raise enough money to fill the funding gap, and with no way to provide quality services without it, the Ocean Park Community Center board voted recently to close down the program.

Lorraine and Sherrie don’t really care about the fine points of the bureaucratic morass. All they know is that they are facing yet another in a long list of disappointments.

“Our childhood was stolen from us,” said Lorraine, the Belize-born daughter of a maid with a drinking problem, whose father died when she was 12.

As Lorraine tells it, she fell behind in school because for a time she did not attend. Instead, she worked as a live-in maid--without pay--in exchange for room and board for her and a younger brother.

Later, Lorraine said, she took full care of her brother, now 5, during the week, while her mom worked as a live-in housekeeper. Lorraine wound up in Stepping Stone after her mother brought home a boyfriend who abused the teen-ager.

While Lorraine seems sad and shy, Sherrie affects a tough-girl bravado.

A self-professed gang “tagger” arrested on suspicion of stealing a car at 14, Sherrie has been in too many foster and group homes to count.

Finally, at Stepping Stone, Sherrie has settled in and, she said proudly, is doing well in school.

Now this.

“I’m tired of getting moved around,” Sherrie said.