Action Urged on Homes for Troubled Youths

In the aftermath of a child’s death last week at MacLaren Children’s Center, advocates for foster children are urging an acceleration in plans to separate juvenile delinquents, the emotionally disturbed and victims of child abuse, who are now housed together at the county children’s shelter.

The county Commission on Children and Families said 10 months ago that it was concerned about the increasingly volatile and potentially dangerous mix of children at the El Monte center, the county’s lone shelter for children.

There is wide agreement that new facilities are needed for foster children with psychiatric problems. But the county departments of Mental Health and Children and Family Services and state officials have been quietly feuding over which agency has responsibility for the children.

“The problem is that the department [Children and Family Services] simply won’t develop facilities for kids who have psychiatric conditions,” said one advocate for children, who asked not to be identified. “Everyone knows [MacLaren] is not a safe facility. But nothing moves, nothing is done.”

Administrators for the county children’s agency said it is simplistic to blame them for the overload of psychiatric cases at MacLaren. They said the county Department of Mental Health and the state--which recently cut the number of psychiatric facilities with the closure of Camarillo State Hospital--also need to help find facilities for disturbed teenagers.

“We are not the experts in this clientele. We are not the Mental Health Department,” said Schuyler Sprowles, spokesman for the county Department of Children and Family Services. “How this population is going to be addressed in the future has to be done in a much more comprehensive manner.”

Intense scrutiny has fallen on MacLaren since Friday, when 12-year-old Jason Pokrzywinski died after inhaling from a pressurized can of hairstyling foam.

Authorities are reviewing how the child, who had a history of emotional disturbances, was left unattended. Their review is also supposed to determine how the boy was able to obtain the aerosol can, despite his history of abusing inhalants.

The death also focused attention on MacLaren, which was designed to house 124 children for 30 days or less. But its population has swelled as it has also become a way station for petty criminals, the mentally disturbed and other juveniles who have been rejected by mental hospitals and who have barely avoided jail time.

Earlier this month, the county Board of Supervisors signaled its intent to untangle the web of commingled populations at MacLaren. It called on the county Department of Children and Family Services to study leasing a Van Nuys home to relocate some children now at the lone shelter.

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The Van Nuys facility, once privately operated under the name Health Care Children’s Campus, would probably take younger children or those with developmental problems. That clientele is considered relatively stable, compared to the many delinquents who lived at the facility when it previously was operated by a private firm.

A series of disturbances at the campus led to complaints by neighbors and repeated police calls that ended in the facility’s shutdown last year. The state now controls the property and is attempting to find a tenant.

“We hope we could keep the place a little more low-key and maybe it would blend in more with the neighborhood,” said one county official.

Plans for rebuilding MacLaren are also underway, although no funds are designated for the work, which could cost $5 million to $13 million. An architect has drawn sketches of new layouts for the campus that would reduce the number of children in each residential “cottage” from the current 24 to as few as 8.

The smaller dormitories would make it easier to segregate delinquents, mental health patients and children who have been abused or neglected, said Patricia Curry, chairwoman of the county Commission on Children and Families.

“Right now, we throw everyone into the same cottage,” Curry said. “If you are a senior boy who is developmentally delayed, or if you are a delinquent or you just are a kid purely there for shelter from your parents, it doesn’t matter. You are in the same place.”

Curry said she believes a combination of private and public funding could be found to rebuild MacLaren with smaller, more “family-like” accommodations.

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As a stopgap measure, the head of the Department of Children and Family Services, Peter Digre, has for several months called for a top-level review each time a child is released from a mental hospital into the county children’s shelter.

But the attempt to screen new admissions has done little to stem the flow of disturbed children to MacLaren, since there are few alternative placements, said one county administrator.

“I think there is just a real lack of beds,” said the official, “and no one knows what to do.”