Kentucky officials and foster care agency leaders gave testimony this week before members of the state senate to explain why some kids in the Commonwealth’s custody are still being housed in agency office buildings, and what steps are being taken to get them into better situations.
Media reports from the past few years have detailed cases of children and teens in Kentucky’s foster care system sleeping on cots or on the floors of office buildings that did not have showers or food services available on the premises.
Last month, the state ombudsman’s office – which investigates complaints about Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) employees and programs – published a report that found 49 kids spent a combined 198 days in offices run by the CHFS’ Department for Community Based Services (DCBS) over a four-month period in 2024.
Speaking to the Senate Committee on Families and Children on Tuesday, CHFS Secretary Eric Friedlander said that some children – especially those with behavioral problems or issues with violence – who end up in these “non-traditional placements” often have nowhere else to go.
“Many of these [traditional foster care] facilities just won't or can't, for the purposes of how they maintain their facility and their facility’s culture. [They] have tremendous difficulties in accepting some of these children,” Friedlander said.
Friedlander said two types of kids end up staying in DCBS facilities. The first, which he said has “always” occurred and still happens on a “fairly regular basis,” is when a child comes into an office for a day or so while moving in between placements. The second category is children and teens that come in and stay longer because the agency cannot find a placement that will accept them.
In the wake of a 2023 report that found that foster children had been sleeping in a CHFS office in downtown Louisville, Gov. Andy Beshear called the situation “unacceptable,” and said at the time he did not “want a single child to have to spend a single night in an office building.”
The state ombudsman’s review from a four-month period in 2024 found that about half of the kids that fell under the report’s purview only stayed in DCBS buildings for one day. In that same timeframe, 12 children spent five or more days in a state office, with the longest stay for an individual totaling 35 days.
Auditor Allison Ball said she asked the ombudsman to look into the trends of foster kids staying in state offices following media reports in recent years. While the ombudsman’s initial report deals with preliminary findings, she said the office is currently working on a “deeper assessment” to look at what policies are in place to guide CHFS staff when it comes to housing foster youth in these non-traditional placements.
“This should not happen at all. Period. It should not happen at all,” Ball said. “To the extent that it has happened, we need to know, ‘are these children being provided for with everything they need?’”
In a presentation to the senate committee Tuesday, CHFS leaders detailed what accommodations look like when foster children and teens end up in non-traditional placements at state offices. In addition to furnished bedrooms, laundry services, medical and mental health support, food and other everyday essentials, Friedlander said these facilities have two-to-one staff-to-youth ratios and keep a security guard on site.
Republican state Sen. Danny Carroll of Paducah said he thinks CHFS workers are doing everything they can to help get foster kids into the best placements possible. He suggested that previous media reports “played up” facts about kids being housed in state offices, and said the situation was not that simple.
“I'm not as concerned about them being in an office. I'm concerned about what happens in that office, and I think that's where the issue is, and I think that's where we have to focus,” Carroll said. “I think what's important [is] looking at the history of these kids, exactly looking into detail, [seeing] what process was followed, who turned them down, why did they turn them down?”
A bill Carroll introduced last week would, in part, establish a procedure for the Department of Juvenile Justice and the CHFS to work together to recommend to a judge the best placement options for kids charged with public offenses or court-ordered to receive inpatient psychiatric care that are deemed “high acuity youth” (children and teens that need intensive services to treat severe behavioral problems). The Republican senator has also previously proposed that the state build a “mental health detention center” to provide acute care to kids in DJJ custody.
In addition, Carroll also suggested other temporary solutions on Tuesday, including looking at whether some CHFS facilities can be converted into shelters and follow those shelter regulations.
“Until we can get this solved, the focus has got to be the offices themselves and what's happening there, and building structure, building safety, building quality of life for those kids that are there for very few days.”
