Children’s Shelter Filling Up While Foster Care Shrinks

Ventura County’s temporary shelter for abused children has been packed full, or nearly so, since July because low pay has created a critical shortage of foster parents willing to accept youngsters into their homes, officials said.

The average length of stay for children at the county’s Casa Pacifica short-term shelter in Camarillo was 92 days for the last six months, compared with 45 days the previous fiscal year, they said.

On Wednesday, 31 of 35 beds at the shelter were occupied, and it has been essentially full since July, said Diana Caskey, county foster care director. That leaves workers with a daily struggle to find beds for an increasing number of children taken from their families for their own safety, she said.

“We typically slow down during the holidays, but not this year,” Caskey said. “Last year, we had 17 or 18 kids in the shelter at this time. This year, we’re at capacity. Kids are staying weeks and months as opposed to days.

“We need more foster parents. And our need is critical.”

Twenty-one of the 31 children at the shelter have been there more than a month, including two who have been there nearly a year. Eight “normal” youngsters--with no special mental or physical problems that make them hard to place--have languished there for 63 to 300 days, officials said.

“I’ve never seen it like this for so long,” said Debbie Pell, director of the Children’s Crisis Care Center at Casa Pacifica.

One 4-year-old boy, for example, has been there 118 days, she said. And a 12-year-old girl has been there 320 days.

“She’s the most wonderful child. She’s a doll,” Pell said. “She’s gotten student of the month at her school two months in a row. And she’s gotten the highest rating for her conduct here five months in a row. But there’s just no foster homes available.”

And there are fewer every year. Over the last decade, the number of county-sponsored foster homes has dropped from 350 to 150, officials said.

The problem is poor pay, ranging from $384 a month for children under age 4 to $540 for those 15 to 18 years old. The typical foster home cares for two county-placed children at a time.

“That really is nothing compared to the true costs to feed and nurture a child,” Caskey said.

An improved economy also offers foster parents more money-making options, so some are dropping out of the program.

Perhaps a dozen foster parents have left the county system to work for three private companies that provide foster care for children with exceptional needs--and pay parents $200 to $300 more per child a month than the county-run program does, Caskey said.

All together, those companies provide an additional 72 local foster homes. But they have been feeling the parent shortage too.

“We work very hard and spend a lot of money recruiting. It’s very difficult to find foster homes,” said Kris Bennett of Aspira, a statewide company that places foster children in local homes. “We’ve been very busy the last six months. At one point we had 100 children in 65 homes.”

The private companies serve as a backup for the county because when the county’s homes are full, the companies will place children in their facilities. The county prefers not to do that, Caskey said, because the cost is more.

For example, while the county pays just $384 a month to foster parents taking care of a preschool child, the private companies receive $1,394 in public money to provide foster care, and 60% of that comes from the county, Caskey said.

The private agency homes, however, provide extra services not available in the county system, such as weekly visits by a social worker.

Carolyn Gyurkovitz, a county foster parent for 15 years before resigning last month, said she understands why the pool of foster homes is drying up. The job is hard, the pay is poor and there is little appreciation for the sacrifices of foster parents, she said.

“One of the biggest reasons is that reimbursement is so low it just doesn’t cover the cost of actually caring for the child,” said Gyurkovitz, who lives in Thousand Oaks. “And there is a stigma attached to being a foster parent--a lot of people still think we do it for the money.”