Supervisors’ Changes at Children’s Shelter
Re “Hard Place for Tough Kids,” editorial, Oct. 15: Progress has been made at MacLaren Children’s Center. MacLaren is now licensed as a “group home.” The county now has far more control of the facility’s youth population--by number and nature. MacLaren now has the ability to refuse placement of youth who should be properly placed in a secured community treatment facility or mental hospital. And the MacLaren staff is working with state-operated regional centers to require that they accept children needing special care as a result of a disability. Mac-Laren can no longer accept new placements of young adults who are 18 years of age or older.
The facility is now secure during hours when reasonable and responsible parents would not allow their children to roam the streets unsupervised. If a child wishes to leave, she or he is counseled against doing so. This new policy has already diverted 34 AWOL attempts.
The Board of Supervisors recently approved a new operational plan for MacLaren that includes greater autonomy for its administrator. The plan includes the addition of one single point of contact, a case manager assigned to each child. I have called this position “the mom,” and just as I am responsible for ensuring that my child goes to school and to the doctor, does her homework and comes home at night, this case manager is to do the same in a timely fashion. Case managers are also responsible for monitoring the child’s placement for a period of time after he or she leaves MacLaren. We have added a clinical director for mental health services to the facility.
I do agree with the assessment that MacLaren is really a symptom of the overall problems facing the Department of Children and Family Services. If the department fails to make the appropriate placement on the front end, children will cycle in and out of MacLaren’s doors. MacLaren should be the safe haven where children are given comprehensive treatment while waiting for an appropriate placement. The only way to accomplish this goal is by allowing MacLaren to be in charge of the children it serves, instead of having agencies “dump” the difficult-to-place kids at MacLaren. MacLaren must place pressure on the system, one child at a time, to do its job on the front end and build placements for our most difficult youth.
Gloria Molina
L.A. County Supervisor
*
We need to establish a public-private partnership for the operation of MacLaren.
One need only look at highly successful institutions including Five Acres, Hillsides Home for Children, the Boys’ Republic in Chino and the Florence Crittenton Center that effectively work with vulnerable youth, and at the continuing failure of MacLaren, to see that the time has come for major changes in the way MacLaren is operated. Our concern should be for the lives and safety of the children at MacLaren, not the protection of a failed bureaucracy.
Michael D. Antonovich
L.A. County Supervisor