CALIFORNIA DEBATE

Critics say 'receiving centers' turn into orphanages that are mentally and socially detrimental to kids.

Temporary housing for abused children draws fire

A California detective's recommendation to create a temporary housing facility for abused children until they can be matched with foster parents is drawing protests from national child advocates.

These "receiving centers" become nothing more than orphanages where children — even infants — stay for weeks or months to their mental and sociological detriment, two national groups said.

San Diego County Detective Victoria Reden, who exposed a sex abuse cover-up by Butler County Children Services in 2000, conducted a week-long review of the agency after the death of 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel of Middletown. Among her nearly two dozen recommendations was to build a 20-bed receiving center similar to the 170-bed Polinsky Center her county uses. The average stay is 10 to 14 days, Reden wrote in her report, which was released Tuesday.

Butler County Commissioner Michael Fox, intricately involved in the CSB's reform over the years, supported the idea whole-heartedly. "It allows you to do the right evaluations, be thoughtful and take the time you need to find the right placement, Fox said. We don't have that capacity right now."

Butler County doesn't have the capacity because it removes too many children, said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Children Protection Reform. "The act of placing a child in a parking place shelter is abusive in itself, said Wexler, who visited the county last week to push 23 reforms of his own to county leaders. Any system that doesn't take away too many children doesn't need a receiving center because they already have enough good foster homes to place a child right away."

Receiving centers sound attractive on the surface, but in practice they become something far different than envisioned, said Carol Shauffer, executive director of the San Francisco-based Youth Law Center, a public interest law firm that represents children in foster care and the juvenile justice system. "They wind up being a warehouse for kids that are difficult to place for some reason, Shauffer said. It's not going to solve the problem by creating another."

Candice Brooks Higgins
22 November 2006

http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2006/11/22/ddn112206fieselside.html

home / Previous feature